How do we minimise the amount of mistakes we make when looking to Greek and Hebrew in order to understand the Bible?
This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘Where Did the Old Testament Come From?’ (2006).
Well I sit alongside you! I'm not an expert in Hebrew myself. I have to know how to use it. I have to know what they're talking about and that means understanding some of the structure of the language, so that if a writer says that this Hebrew verb should here be, it's a Niphal or it's a Hithpael and should therefore have this particular meaning to the verb, then I have to know what they're talking about, know the structure of the language. Knowing how to help myself, therefore, and in that sense it's useful to know. If you're going to talk with some authority on Hebrew words, then I, like you, and you like me, we have to depend upon the experts. It's good to listen to them so that we know what they're talking about. If you and I were to cite medicine amongst ourselves and I say, 'What's wrong with you?' and you say, 'Well I've got something wrong with my diaphragm,' it would be good if you knew what the medics meant by a diaphragm. Do you see what I mean? There's no reason why we should leave it all to the experts, in any subject. You will have noticed that in a court of law, the people who decide are not the experts. It's the jury who are trusted to deal with the evidence. So there is every reason why we should think about the original languages, only to be careful. We know a great deal more about Greek, and Hebrew for that matter, now than we knew 150 years ago.
We have to be careful to distinguish between language, grammar, syntax and theology. For instance, some people will use Wigram's Concordance and say that here the tense is in the perfect, and the perfect means an action done with eternal results. Well the perfect does indicate an action that has been done and has results, but to slip in the word 'eternal' is to add something that the language itself doesn't have. It doesn't necessarily carry eternal results. If a man says to his wife, 'I've done what you said: I have painted the walls pink.' That's a perfect tense but is that result eternal? Well perhaps your wife wouldn't agree that it is. Next year, she'll want it green! We have to be careful in adding on the theology to the language. If you like to say, 'On the evidence of Scripture, this result is eternal. The work is finished.' Now you can go on and say, 'And we know of course, from the context and from elsewhere in Scripture, the result is eternal,' but simply to base the eternal bit on the Greek would be to go beyond what the language implies. It's that kind of thing where we have to be careful. Develop the habit of being modest and saying, 'According to some experts, this is that and that is this.' I have to do that with most of what I say.
Our blessed Lord said at one stage, 'Do not labour for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life' (John 6:27). It is work. 'Work for food that endures.' That is important. Yes, many times we read Scripture and God gives us much encouragement by his Spirit and shows us this, that and the other. But on our side, we are expected to work. Try to use up-to-date dictionaries and word dictionaries. Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words is very good but Greek grammar has moved on, since Vine taught, to a deeper understanding. It was very good to start with. Use it by all means.
