Introduction

I am sitting in a rural village in the northern part of a West African country. I’m in the courtyard of an imam. Two other Christians are with me. It’s hot and dusty, but we have come to read Scripture and talk together. As a local Christian takes the lead reading in the local language, I follow along. In front of me is the imam, reading the same text in Modern Standard Arabic. He has no reason to know Arabic, except for the fact that he and his religion consider Arabic so crucial because of the Qur’an. He was educated in the language in order to understand the text and explain it to others. Meanwhile, I, an American with undergraduate and graduate education in Bible and theology, as well as endless resources at my fingertips, could not even begin to read the Joseph story in Hebrew. Something is majorly wrong.

Why does this old imam care more about Arabic than I do about Hebrew and Greek? Why is Arabic so valued and prized in Islam while Hebrew and Greek are incomprehensible to the vast majority of educated pastors? Perhaps there is something to learn here.

I, like nearly everyone, lost the meagre ability I had in Hebrew and Greek. I failed to use these languages, let alone grow in them, with the result that they faded. Yet, I should be a prime example of the very, very few who keep and improve them: I love challenges, find language and languages fascinating, am disciplined in learning, and languages come easily for me. What went wrong? What goes wrong for nearly everyone who learns Hebrew and Greek in college or seminary? More importantly, what’s the solution?

So, we need to figure out the common reasons why the languages are not kept and improved on. Then, I will outline paths for individuals to recover and improve their languages. Finally, I will suggest institutional changes. First, though, we need to discuss the end goal.

The End Goal

Obviously, our end goal in learning the biblical languages is to understand God’s word better. This means we must be able to read deeply and naturally. In essence, we want to be able to read the biblical text in Hebrew and Greek as if we are reading it in English. When we need to look up multiple vocabulary words in a paragraph, parse a verb to understand its function, work methodically through different meanings of the Greek genitive to understand its role, etc., we are missing out on being able to read the text. Instead, we are decoding the text. All of this means that we need to make a number of reading processes quick and natural in order to get to engaging the text as a text. With the end in mind, let’s turn to reasons for neglect.

Reasons for Neglect

Where did it all go wrong? The biggest reason people fail to keep their biblical languages is that learning a language is hard. It takes a lot of work: learning a new script, tons of vocabulary, struggling through many passages where you wonder if you understand the language at all, figuring out a new grammatical system, and so on. I totally understand all of this. Sadly, while there are ways to alleviate some of this (see below), learning a language will always take a lot of time and effort. So, what are the other reasons?

Not keeping and improving my grasp of the biblical languages is one of my major regrets in life. After all, even if I did this fairly minimally while still making progress since college, my Hebrew and Greek would be impeccable. I can see four main reasons, not just excuses, for why the languages are neglected:

1. a perceived lack of utility
2. relative priorities
3. a lack of ability
4. no plan for improvement.

Let’s walk through those. 

Perceived Lack of Utility

One of the reasons I neglected the biblical languages is because it didn’t seem to me at the time that you gain much from being good at them. My view wasn’t that there was zero gain, but that the gain was fairly miniscule. This is a common sentiment in my experience. Why is that?

One main reason is that we often go to great lengths to talk about how good our English translations are, how helpful tools can be, how Hebrew and Greek aren’t necessary, and so on. Perhaps your experience is different, but at least 99% of the talk I heard in seminary and continue to hear in churches, lectures, and books downplays the biblical languages, which forms an environment where they aren’t pursued, treasured, and worked for. The only example I can think of to the contrary was John Piper’s chapter “Brothers, Bitzer was a Banker” in Brothers, We Are not Professionals. The importance of knowing the biblical languages (not simply using tools) is consistently downplayed.

A second reason is that a one-year class will only get you so far in a biblical language. When your language is that weak, it’s obvious that you won’t see how knowing the language deeply is beneficial. It will certainly seem like the payoff is minimal. A third reason is that it seems like scholars and teachers are hesitant to show the payoff. While someone like Mounce tries to show exegetical insights based off learning Greek, these often come across as something that doesn’t require that much language and can be accomplished with tools.

If a Greek teacher starts explaining how knowing the various functions of participles and how common each one is in particular contexts is important for interpreting Ephesians 1, the worry is that the average pastor-in-training will despair of being able to understand the text simply based on his English Bible. The worry becomes more general: won’t this undermine confidence in Scripture? Since no one wants to do that, the payoff is not shown or discussed much.

Relative Priorities

I enjoyed learning Hebrew and Greek. I even saw some benefit of learning them more deeply. I wanted to do so and had dreams of improving. But it never happened. Another reason is because of relative priorities.

Investing that amount of time into Hebrew and Greek simply didn’t seem as “worth it” compared to other matters. For me, those other matters were reading lots of biblical scholarship, theology, and more. After all, knowing Greek inside and out will never solve by itself debates about predestination, the reference of the “root” in Romans 11:17–18, the meaning of “Israel” in Romans 11:25–27, and so on. So, I spent time reading about these topics, reading about the New Perspective on Paul, understanding different theological systems, etc.

For others, the priorities are different: being a husband, being a father, visiting the sick in hospitals, counseling, and so on. There are a million good matters crying for our attention. Based on how things play out, learning the biblical languages is consistently a low-priority matter compared to a multitude of others.

A Lack of Ability

Let’s be honest: after a year of Hebrew or Greek, your ability is closer to having none at all than it is to being able to sight-read the text, and that by a longshot. Let’s stick with Greek, since I think it’s easier to get to a sight-reading level of ability with it over Hebrew.

After a year of Greek in seminary, you have some vague idea about Greek grammar, but this is mostly limited to paradigms of verbs, case systems, and very basic syntax. The average person could not list the most frequent genitive meanings or functions of the participles, let alone give reasons for why one is better than another in a certain context. And the idea of having grammatical intuitions is out of the question.

When it comes to vocabulary, I would estimate the average person after a year “knows,” perhaps, 300–600 words. This means tons of unknown words in even the most basic books. So, the vocabulary situation isn’t very good.

Finally, what about reading fluency? Here I mean the ability to do the act of reading without focusing on the meaning of words or grammar. For instance, think about the fluency an adult can read at versus a seven year-old. Where does the average person stand after a year of Greek? In my view, this is probably the lowest competency. Most programs don’t focus on reading, instead preferring a translation and decoding approach. Even if there has been some focus on reading, it’s probably limited to 1 John. So, as you can imagine, fluency in reading is incredibly low.

Combine all three of these and you begin to see how low the average ability is after a year of Greek. It should be obvious that continuing to improve from here is an incredibly difficult process. Improvement requires moral sainthood. This is why lack of ability is another reason why I (and others) fail to continue to improve.

No Clear Plan

The last reason I did not improve my biblical languages is that I had no clear plan. I didn’t know how to go about memorizing vocabulary besides rote memorization. I wasn’t sure about what books to go to next (besides John in Greek and Jonah/Genesis in Hebrew). I did not know how to get better at understanding grammar. And, as weird as this might sound, I did not have a good understanding of the end goal and how to get there. I assumed that improvement simply meant more of the same: parsing every word and decoding the text. Who wants to keep doing that?

Individual Improvement

Luckily, there’s a better way. The amount of resources we have at our hands is incredible. This includes studies on second-language acquisition, knowledge about spaced repetition, plenty of resources for Hebrew and Greek specifically, and more. Here I want to address the common pitfalls mentioned above while also suggesting methods for individual learners. This means we need to talk about reframing the importance of the biblical languages and outlining a plan for improvement that focuses on growing in vocabulary, grammar, and reading.

The Importance of the Biblical Languages

Prizing and emphasizing the importance of the biblical languages has a long history in the Protestant tradition. While the following quotes might strike us as bold and excessive, history is replete with them:

• In proportion, then, as we prize the Gospel, let us guard the languages. For not in vain did God have His Scriptures set down in these two languages alone — the Old Testament in Hebrew, the New in Greek. The languages, therefore, that God did not despise but chose above all others for His Word, we too ought to honor above all others… And let us be sure of this: we shall not long preserve the Gospel without the languages. The languages are the sheath in which this sword of the Spirit is contained; they are the casket in which we carry this jewel; they are the vessel in which we hold this wine; they are the larder in which this food is stored; and as the Gospel itself says, they are the baskets in which we bear these loaves and fishes and fragments… Therefore, though the faith and the Gospel may be proclaimed by simple preachers without the languages, such preaching is flat and tame, men grow at last wearied and disgusted and it falls to the ground. But when the preacher is versed in the languages, his discourse has freshness and force, the whole of Scripture is treated, and faith finds itself constantly renewed by a continual variety of words and works. —Martin Luther
• You cannot maintain your soul in better order than by meditating on the Word of God day and night. But this can only be done correctly if Hebrew and Greek are properly mastered because, without the one, the Old Testament cannot be really understood, and without the second, the New Testament cannot be correctly understood. —Huldrych Zwingli
• The real New Testament is the Greek New Testament. The English is simply a translation of the New Testament, not the actual New Testament. It is good that the New Testament has been translated into so many languages. The fact that it was written in the koiné, the universal language of the time, rather than in one of the earlier Greek dialects, makes it easier to render into modern tongues. But there is much that cannot be translated. It is not possible to reproduce the delicate turns of thought, the nuances of language, in translation. The freshness of the strawberry cannot be preserved in any extract. —A. T. Robertson
• But if you are to tell what the Bible does say, you must be able to read the Bible for yourself. And you cannot read the Bible for yourself unless you know the languages in which it was written. We may sometimes be tempted to wish that the Holy Spirit had given us the Word of God in a language better suited to our particular race, in a language that we could easily understand; but in His mysterious wisdom He gave it to us in Hebrew and in Greek. Hence if we want to know the Scriptures, to the study of Greek and Hebrew we must go.” —J. Gresham Machen

When we come to grips with how important, invaluable, and worthy of praise learning the biblical languages is, we begin to see that there is so much to be learned through a deep knowledge of them with the result that their importance in our hierarchy of priorities begins to rise. Now that I know the biblical languages at a much deeper level, I’m only beginning to see so much in Scripture that I never saw in English. Once again, examples could be multiplied beyond number, but let me give a few.

First, after translating Ephesians as an exercise for myself in improving my Greek and thinking more about the translation process, I began to see how many passages were hard to render in a neutral way. Basically, there are often good and viable options for different ways to understand the Greek text. Here, I don’t mean theological debates about what predestination is. I simply mean whether “in love” best goes with “to be holy and blameless in love before him” or “in love, he predestined us.”

As I started to notice this, I decided it would be worthwhile to go through Ephesians 1 to see how many translation decisions need to be made. I wanted to only note viable alternatives. Then, I wanted to see whether the ESV (the English Bible I use) renders the Greek text in a neutral way that leaves open the options. While I fully grant that there are probably more of these translation decisions in Ephesians 1 than in the other chapters, I counted 46 of them. By my count, the ESV was neutral on 4/46, arguably neutral on 4/46, and not neutral on 38/46. That’s a not neutral translation on 82.6% of the decisions.

This is not to single out the ESV. I’m sure the same point could be made with nearly every translation. Nor is it to say that they made bad decisions, since the focus is only on whether the translation decision is neutral. Finally, translation is incredibly difficult work, so I am not faulting any of these translations. We have an abundance of solid translations into English. Still, the point remains: learning Hebrew and Greek opens up so much of the text, and it does so more and more as you grow deeper and deeper.

Second, take 2 Timothy 1:3–5. In all of the major scholarly Greek editions of the New Testament, 2 Timothy 1:3–5 is one sentence. The sentence holds together with some key participles (verbal adjectives). In Greek, mastering participles is the key to mastering Greek because these are some key words that can play many functions within a sentence and help determine how it all hangs together. Because of differences in language, these verses are usually made into three sentences in English translations. In doing this, the connections between the verses are obscured.

I’ll speak for myself here: I read 2 Timothy 1:3–5 many times in English without understanding the connections between these sentences. In reading through the text in Greek, I was forced to reckon with the role these participles play. What is the connection between Paul thanking God and his longing to see Timothy? Is Paul remembering Timothy’s sincere faith connected in some way to what went before?

By understanding the language and being able to read (not just decode) Greek, passages like these are opened up. Suddenly, fairly disconnected thoughts and sentences start to take on ligaments, muscles, and flesh. The text starts to breathe. We are seeing the same breath of God that inspired Scripture (2 Tim. 3:16). The structure and thought opens up.

I’m spending so much time on this because this will make or break you learning Hebrew and Greek. If you value them, prize them, see the good of learning them, and begin to see Scripture in deeper ways that help you understand it better, which leads to a deeper understanding of God, love towards him, trust in him, and obedience to him and a deeper love for neighbor, this will be the engine that propels you forward to learn them. If you fail to value them, think it’s not really worth it, and are content with English and some “tools,” vocabulary will wear you down, a few bad days will discourage you, and pretty soon the languages will be neglected once again.

There are treasures in Scripture that begin to come alive as you read them in Hebrew and Greek. Now, onto practical advice about vocabulary, grammar, and reading.

A Plan for Improvement: Growing Vocabulary, Grammar, and Reading

No one loves vocabulary. Yet, apart from a high level of vocabulary, becoming a fluent reader is not possible. Second-language acquisition studies recommend between 95–98% of comprehensible vocabulary for reading comprehension and improvement. Luckily, we have great resources and an understanding of spaced repetition. Here’s my simple solution: use a Hebrew and a Koine Greek deck in Anki.¹

What you want to do is start by building a strong base of the most frequent words. For Hebrew, this would mean around 641 words to reach 80% of total occurrences.² For Greek, this is 310 words to reach 80% of total occurrences.³ From there, the best idea is to get new vocabulary from unknown words in your reading that day. This is best combined with repetition so that you see those words again in context, which can be accomplished well by reading in 3s. However, this doesn’t mean adding every new word in your Anki deck. I usually set a minimal threshold of occurrences for a word to be made active in my Anki deck. That minimal threshold number will vary person by person.

As for grammar, there are a ton of resources out there from basic to advanced grammars. On top of these, the Baylor Handbook on the Hebrew Bible series, the Baylor Handbook on the Greek New Testament series, and the Exegetical Guide to the Greek New Testament series are wonderful for gaining grammar by working through a book of the Bible. Let me state that I am pro-grammar. While this is not the “decode-and-translate” approach of most colleges and seminaries, grammar does help with learning a language.

Still, do not spend an obscene amount of time reading a grammar book. They are great for laying a foundation along with categories and options. However, you want to begin to internalize the language, which comes through lots of exposure to the text itself. Nowadays, my main approach for improving grammar is to use my typical reading or preparation for teaching as jumping off points to explore grammar more.

Finally, reading is the end goal, so read in abundance. Read comprehensible chapters until you have them almost memorized. Really get a sense for the passage and its flow. Remember, the goal is to know 95–98% of the vocabulary. I recommend a Reader’s Bible for helps with unknown vocabulary or tricky forms, but this should not short-circuit struggling to recall a particular vocabulary word, parse a difficult form, or figure out a word based on context. If that is happening, you need to either re-train yourself or move to a Bible without those helps.

As always, making sure the text is comprehensible and slightly above your level is key. At times, I pushed myself too fast and struggled through books that were beyond my ability. The payoff was much more meagre, and the frustration could have easily discouraged me.

As mentioned above, I highly recommend reading in 3s. Also, Dan Wallace has a great post ranking the difficulty of the New Testament books.⁴ I recommend reading as early as possible. While I have been trying to keep this all free, let me recommend one resource for both Hebrew and Greek. If you are not at a level to read Ruth, then An Illustrated Graded Reader for Biblical Hebrew through Glossa House looks like a good resource.⁵ For Greek, if you are not at a level to read 1 John, you can check out Mark Jeong’s A Greek Reader. I should emphasize here that reading doesn’t need to mean you are only reading it in your head. I highly recommend finding good Hebrew and Greek audio to listen to as you follow along. Later, reading out loud can be really helpful.

Finally, integrating the languages into life is absolutely central to improving. Depending on your level, it might not make sense for your ordinary Bible reading to be in Hebrew and Greek. As your level improves, I have found great joy in my ordinary New Testament reading being solely in Greek, although this can differ by person. Along the same lines, if you regularly preach and/or teach the bible, integrating the languages into your preparation can be good for improvement. In all, time + effort + informed intention is how you improve. Try to make a daily routine that will allow you to grow your vocabulary, improve your understanding of grammar, and take in lots of comprehensible input.

Institutional Changes

There are some great institutions out there preparing graduates well in Hebrew and Greek. For the vast majority, though, one year of Hebrew and one year of Greek gets you through. These seem more focused on giving students a basic taste of the languages so they can stumble through more technical commentaries and use some “tools.” Sadly, they do a poor job at setting students on a path that leads to reading fluency. If we value the biblical languages and resonate with the thoughts of Luther, Zwingli, Robertson, and Machen quoted above, we need to rethink our institutions. There’s a lot to say here, with many competing factors, so this is simply a sketch of the direction we need to go. Here are my basic suggestions: show the importance and value of the biblical languages, increase input, create a curriculum that makes further improvement natural, and show the way forward.

Show Me the Money

We need to kill consistently downplaying the biblical languages. We should, instead, talk about how helpful and important knowledge of Hebrew and Greek is. Part of this means saying the things Luther, Zwingli, Robertson, and Machen said above. Another part is showing it.

This could be done through an exercise similar to the translation decisions on Ephesians 1 I discussed above. Or, a teacher could do this by consistently taking students to well-known passages and then showing points that are missed, debatable, or clear when one looks at the original text. One example would be looking at “love of God” expressions in 1 John.

A third idea here is to have students prepare to teach a certain text. Then, you can see whether students really consulted a number of translations, were able to weigh the various differences, and so on. Finally, show how, since this is not normal practice, the excuse of simply using English resources won’t work. We must go to the text, which means going to Hebrew and Greek.

Increase Input

Input should be increased in a number of ways. The teacher speaking in large amounts of Hebrew or Greek in class would be one great avenue. This can be done similar to Stage 1 in the Growing Participator Approach so that students can associate words with pictures (instead of glosses) and gain a lot of vocabulary quickly. Teachers can even have students start to use the languages themselves in response.

On top of this, reading should begin early (remember: reading can mean the teacher reading as students follow along). This can be done through Glossa House’s An Illustrated Graded Reader for Biblical Hebrew mentioned above, Jeong’s A Greek Reader mentioned above, or the teacher’s own materials. Reading should also be abundant so that a large portion of class is comprehensible input of the biblical text.

Assignments should include students needing to read all of a book or chapters fluidly. Or, a teacher can build in expectations on outside of class reading. This can be tested over a course of time by expectations on what material should be covered by a certain time so that students need to be prepared to come to class and read a randomly selected passage and talk about it.

A Curriculum Naturally Leading to Improvement

If we want students to end up as fluent readers of the Hebrew and Greek text, our curriculum should reflect that. Imagine we had no data on the Hebrew and Greek ability of the average seminary graduate. So, suppose we looked at the one year required for each language and the expected level the average student would reach. Then, we asked ourselves whether we predict most graduates will become fluent readers or not. We would all wager against it. We know that our curriculum is not set up to naturally lead to improvement.

So, if our goal is fluent readers of the biblical text in the original languages, we need to rethink our curriculum. This is partly covered above in how the classes are done, but it also means expanding the mandatory classes for the biblical languages. After all, even if you had the best teacher in the world who does everything right in class, I still predict that one year of Hebrew or Greek would not naturally lead to the average graduate becoming a fluent reader.

Languages are hard, and they take a lot of time. We need to build that time into our degree programs. I don’t have enough data to say what exactly this would entail. I suspect it’s probably minimally five classes of Hebrew and four classes of Greek, and these focused on tons of comprehensible input, not simply decoding the text and trying to talk students through parsing participles when they cannot actually read the text fluently. For two examples that this amount of language classes can be done, look no further than Bethlehem College and Seminary and Toronto Baptist Seminary and Bible College.

Showing the Way Forward

Another important way is by showing how the biblical languages should be integrated into life. For instance, this could be by talking about how the goal is to read the biblical text in the original languages as our normal reading. Obviously, that goal is a bit far off, so one could also emphasize this by showing how they can be integrated into sermon and teaching preparation. This would best be done by giving a pattern to follow, showing how one can work through a passage to gain new vocabulary, consistently read through it for retention, parse relevant words, think through the grammar, and consult relevant resources. By integrating the biblical languages into ordinary life, improving in them becomes less an additional matter to be added to one’s life and more a part of what the person is already doing.

For vocabulary, this would mean talking about getting vocabulary from one’s reading. This can be done well through a Reader’s edition. Then, and perhaps above all else, this would mean consistently talking about and encouraging students to use Anki for vocabulary retention.

For grammar, this would include continuing to parse tricky words. On top of that, this means pointing students to helpful resources like Baylor’s Handbook on the Hebrew Bible series, Baylor’s Handbook on the Greek New Testament series, and B&H Academic’s Exegetical Guide to the Greek New Testament series.

For reading, having students acquire a Reader’s edition for Hebrew and Greek is key, although note the cautions above. On top of this, providing them with a graded list of books or chapters for further reading is super helpful. As mentioned above, Dan Wallace’s list is here. I would also suggest implementing reading in 3s.

There is a lot more work to be done in thinking through institutional changes, but I hope this sketches a useful start.

Conclusion

I am not sure why I finally decided to recover and improve my knowledge of Hebrew and Greek. Perhaps it was from that experience sitting across from the imam. My Greek is now at a point where I do my ordinary New Testament reading and preparation in Greek. My Hebrew is a work in progress, as I continue to expand my vocabulary and reading fluency. Through this, I have seen wonders in Scripture that I never knew were there. To Hebrew and Greek we must go.

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Calvin Hays is one who writes as he learns and learns as he writes. He focuses on theology, bible, and languages. He writes at The Fire and the Rose.

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NOTES

1. One area for improvement in these resources is incorporating more pictures, sample sentences, and audio. Anyone who takes up this task would greatly help future learners ↩︎
2. It’s a bit more complicated since knowing the lexical form of the word does not entail knowing all forms, especially with non-standard verbs ↩︎
3. It’s a bit more complicated since knowing the lexical form of the word does not entail knowing all forms, especially with non-standard verbs. ↩︎
4. I know of no similar list for Hebrew. If anyone is aware of one, I would love to hear about it. My experience with Hebrew is that a more fine-grained approach that uses books and chapters instead of whole books would work better. ↩︎
5. I have not used it myself nor can I see a sample online. So, I’m basing this off of the description, endorsements, and table of contents. ↩︎