Bill Mounce: Why Greek Matters

I get asked a lot of the time why do you spend so much time in Greek why do you write the textbooks and the reference books and translation and all that kind of stuff and the answer is very simple as long as I'm using a translation I'm one unnecessary step away from the Word of God and I know translations are good they're helpful you can trust them but for me and my personality I wanted to get past that and to get one step closer to Lourdes actual words when I preach I get to a point where I'm comfortable saying thus saith the Lord doesn't mean I'm always right but I really tried to get to that point in my studies where I can be with real confidence I can say this is what the text says and this is what the text means now like I say sometimes I'm not right and I've had to come back to Nick's Sunday and say hey I changed my mind on something but for the most part what Greek does is give me the confidence to stand in the pulpit and say thus saith the Lord and I'm very very thankful for that I'm not actually naturally given the languages and I don't think many people realize that my kids are they came home the first day from Spanish class just bubble up above just Spanish Spanish Spanish well how did you learn all that stuff so fast and they're just good at it I had I have a struggle at languages it's just a little harder for me but what I found is that as I took the time and as I worked through the language that I was gaining a confidence not just in the language but in my understanding of the text and I really encourage people to especially if you're gonna have public ministry you have to be familiar you have to be able to get to the Greek at least to some level now I've written two levels of books and so I'm a little biased on this and I've written a book for a full Greek and you can it walks you through and when you're done with that and the following books you can with confidence really second this is what the text is saying I've written another series of books for Greek for the rest of us where you're in just enough Greek to use the tools intelligently there's a real problem of abuse when you give someone a concordance and they can see the Greek or Hebrew word behind the English or they can do a mouse-over in their software program and they can see what the Greek or Hebrew is and I remember going to I won't say where I went to church but in seminary I attended a church and I'd had mmm at that point three years of Greek and I eventually had to leave the church because it seems that every time the pastor said the Greek says he wasn't right and that's that's a scary thing of giving people tools and in fact it took me quite a while to decide even if I was gonna write those tools for laypeople I finally did because it's not a little Greek that's dangerous as a little arrogance that's dangerous so when we address the topic of Greek and the lay market let me really emphasize if you if you get a concordance or you get your software programs with all their abilities please understand that you're just learning the language now there's really good things that you can do when you've just learned the language you can study the word the concept of love in the Bible or you can actually look at the Greek word that's being used in the verse you're looking at and study what that word specifically means and I mean there's great joy in that and confidence in your Bible studies and and whatnot but you need to remember that you're just learning the language and languages are complicated they are difficult they are nuanced they're they are subtle in in ways that until I became a translator I really didn't appreciate but you need to just be so careful at saying well the Greek says this and therefore my interpretation must be right and you must believe me kind of stuff and that's just not a helpful way to do ministry everyone who's watching this can learn to find out what the Greek word behind the English is and what that word means you you never have to use an English word study ever again I mean I promise you I've taught this enough times everybody can get it but you can do you can do Greek word studies so you're not discussing again love you're discussing agapao or one of the other greek words for love and so a little bit of humility but you can do this my concern is it has to do with inspiration that if we believe that the words of the Bible come from God then there's a good reason to really get at those words because God used words he used the word incarnate to reveal himself to us and he use words and words are important

Channel: Seedbed

Views: 9,846

Rating: 4.9263802 out of 5

Keywords: Seedbed, Christianity, Asbury Theological Seminary, Greek Language (Human Language), William D. Mounce (Author)

Id: fH8MOb01qJA

Length: 5min 12sec (312 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 01 2015