I didn’t want to write this blog.
People are going to get mad at me for asking the question. I don’t even want to face it myself, … but it’s nagging at me.
Many will quickly give me their answer as if to squelch the question altogether. But I’ve been forced to sit with it and It won’t go away.
Let me first say, that to justify my position in asking such a difficult question, that I’ve spent over five decades pondering God, life, and what it’s all about. It’s not the Hokey Pokey.
There are oh so many people and beings (God and Angels) greater, more powerful, and wiser than me. My intellect and wisdom only go so deep. I have no doubt that some readers can go way farther than me.
Now that you know where I stand, here’s how this whole thing went down. I was telling someone about my understanding of a verse in the Bible. The person told me what I was saying was wrong because the text was originally written in Greek and there was a word I was misinterpreting. “It could not mean that”, they said.
Although taken aback, it wasn’t personal. I’m often wrong. It’s one of my superpowers.
‘Well gee whiz’, I thought, ‘I spent a whole lot of time mulling over that passage of scripture and (face slap) I was completely wrong in my analysis’.
That person was right. I did not know Greek. It’s a stretch for me to know (without time and Google) the original meaning of any passage.
But wait a minute. I betcha there are only a teeny tiny fraction of people on this planet who know Greek. I mean, … who teaches Greek anyway? Is it offered at Community College? How do you yammer in Greek? In front of fraternities and sororities there are a few Greek letters, often with plastic beer cups strewn at their feet and big speakers behind pumping out the latest bass-filled popular songs, but that doesn’t make it a legitimate language that’s commonly understood.
So, the question that I dared ask was, is it useful to read scripture at all if I don’t know the original language it was written in?
Gasp! I can just about hear my faith-filled friends whispering, oh my goodness, … she’s gone too far. Stop her! Stop her!
For those of you who are nerds like me, you’ll be interested to know that the Old Testament was written (mostly) in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek. This makes it doubly bad for me since I don’t know Hebrew either.
To make matters worse, Google tells me that when you look at the whole world, 86% of people are illiterate (those over the age of 15, since you should have learned to read by then).
So, if you take the 14% of people who ARE literate and multiply it by .00000001 (my made-up number based on how many people I think understand Greek), you get 1.4E-9. Go ahead, use your cell phone calculator and see if you come up with the same answer. I don’t even know what this means.
So, I sit with this terrible question, is it useful to read scripture at all if I don’t know the original language it was written in?
I don’t want the answer to be no. I want people to carry around well-worn Bibles, quoting this and that, confident they are living the way God wants them to live. I want to believe that I somehow get an inside track to God by reading the Bible because I’m literate and at least at this point in my life, can still read with contacts and cheaters. I don’t like the mystery of not being able to Google the answer and instead sit there like a dummy, wondering what is true.
But where does that leave those of us who don’t know Greek, those who are illiterate, and those who are raised in a culture without a Barnes & Noble in every city carrying 10 different Bible translations? Are we totally disconnected from the Creator? Eeee gads, I shudder to think. Are we left in limbo, without a connection to the Source? Is it true that I can only know God if I am literate, privileged, and know Greek?
What do you think? Why do you read the Bible (if you do)? Does it bother you that you don’t know Greek or Hebrew? Are you convinced that what you are getting out of it is correct?
I’m not so sure anymore.
And … this leads to more questions that I won’t even bring up lest you write me off all-together because of my questions.
The redeeming part of this story for me is that for years, I have heavily relied on the Holy Spirit. Although I’ve never actually heard her, nor do I always sense her, I do believe she exists, living inside of me to help guide my way. There have been a handful of times in my life that I’ve been clearly directed to do something that didn’t make any sense at all but turned out ‘supernaturally’ well. You can be the judge of my sanity. I don’t mind.
The person who told me I was wrong, and clearly upset me, also gave me a gift. I’m even more sure now, the Holy Spirit is my primary guide … because I don’t know Greek.