by Robert W. McDonald

Created on: February 07, 2010

The first thing to consider when deciding which of the two languages, Greek or Hebrew, is more valuable depends on which scriptures you intend to study. If your primary interest is in the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament), then Hebrew would be the logical choice. On the other hand, if your interest is in the New Testament and the works of the Apostolic Fathers, then Greek is far more valuable than Hebrew. As someone who survived a year of New Testament Greek, and currently attempting to survive his first semester of Biblical Hebrew, I am of the opinion that Greek is of greater utility than Hebrew in understanding the scriptures in their classical form.

First of all, Greek is by far the easier of the two for a “westerner” to learn. In fact, of the 24 characters in the Greek alphabet, 14 will already be familiar to someone whose native language (e.g. Italian, Spanish, English, or French) derives from Latin. Once you learn these 14 (A, B, E, Z, H, I, K, M, N, O, P, T, Y, and X) in their upper and lower case forms, with a Greek-English dictionary you can “stumble through” almost any Greek you might encounter.

You should also recall that the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek, as the Septuagint (LXX), starting in the second century BCE. By the time of the apostles, there were far more Jews that understood Greek than there were Jews who were literate in Hebrew. A Greek translation of the Hebrew Scripture would, therefore, be closer to what was being read in the primitive Church. Also, remember that the epistles of Paul, being addressed primarily to either Jewish congregations in Asia Minor (where Greek was the language of commerce) or to Greek-speaking Gentiles, were originally written in Greek and are much better appreciated in that language.

Although the Greek Septuagint is not without contextual shortcomings, e.g. the substitution of the Greek word “Hades” for the Hebrew “Sheol” and the infamous translation of  the Hebrew term “almah” (young woman) into the Greek “parthenos” (virgin), these shortcomings did find their way into the early Church where they exerted considerable influence on Christian doctrine.  

My final argument in favor of Greek rather than Hebrew is that once you learn Koine Greek it is much easier to learn Classical Greek, the language of the Pre-Socratic philosophers and epic historians such as Pythagorus and Hesiod, respectively. Since one of the greatest influences on Jewish religious thought during the Second Temple Era was the Hellenism of Alexander and, later, the Seleucids, it is very helpful to be able to read those earlier works in their original form rather than what someone else “thinks” the authors “intended” to say.

Based on the above considerations, I would recommend Greek as being more useful to the serious student of Biblical texts.

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