by Eddie Tafber

Created on: October 24, 2009

Before entering in any more details, please allow me to illustrate my point by writing down a question that happens to be more or less of the same nature as our original topic. Think of an answer for the following: "What country is more prominent: Denmark or Sweden?". Did you give a straight answer considering your own knowledge, cultural background and personal preferences? Great. Now, imagine that you made this same example question to someone from Denmark, then to someone from Sweden, and right after to someone who lives in an isolated village on the Himalayas and for whom the existence of neither Denmark nor Sweden is relevant to their life. Can you predict each of the responses? I bet you do.

The same rationale applies when asking whether Hebrew or Greek are more essential to study the Bible. Opinions will be extremely varied when asking this question to different people. The same applies to this specific inquiry about the importance of learning Greek or Hebrew to study the Bible. At the end of the day, the answer to the question cannot be objectively addressed without inquiring first: Who are you asking to?

I have no doubt that, for instance, if we asked this question to a Rabbi, his answer would be Hebrew. You can count on that 110%. And, for his case, it will be true, since he is a person who doesn't read the New Testament. For what matters to him, reading the Old Testament in Hebrew, its original language, has much more value than reading a translation of it in Greek. On the other hand, we can approach a Bishop and ask him this question. Guess what is he going to say? Chances are that Greek will be his answer. Because for him, the New Testament has a slightly greater cultural value than the Old one.

So at this point, the difference in opinions by two experts in their own religions, who have studied Bible in depth, is evident and valid. As far as the Greek against Hebrew debate goes, does this mean that one of them is right and the other one is wrong? Probably not.

Of course, we can also think that the question of whether Hebrew or Greek are more important to study the Bible is not necessarily bound to be asked to religious priests only. At this point, you might be thinking that we should be asking "normal people". What would their opinion be? I dare to say, our results would be no different than our example of the Rabbi and the Bishop. John goes to church every Sunday and he will say Greek, David celebrates Chanukah and would say Hebrew, Jane watched "The passion of the Christ" by Mel Gibson and would therefore say Aramaic, and Sue would probably don't care. Try to make a consensus, and most likely you won't find one.

All these differences in ideas and opinion would only reflect the very nature of the question: Which language is more essential for Bible study? Well, it's all to the eye of the beholder.

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