Seminarium

The Elements of Great Teaching

A Case For Required Biblical Languages in Seminary

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It was 8:30am on a Friday and she was using her handmade Hebrew flashcards as tissues. After looming for more than 45 minutes, the tears had finally come—a half-hour before the quiz. When I first signed up as a Hebrew Tutor, my professor wryly observed that I should earn a Pastoral Care credit for my efforts. He was not entirely kidding. As a Hebrew and Greek TA for four semesters at a denominational seminary, I counseled, encouraged, and empathized as motivated, capable seminarians ran headlong into the wall that was our biblical languages requirement.

It is true that seminary students vary in intellectual ability and interests. It is also true that theological educators must reevaluate and innovate their offerings and methods for a new era. Nevertheless, I believe that every seminarian should study both Hebrew and Greek.

But I think we can do it better.

But seminaries prepare ministers, not scholars…

Excellent point. In fact, I believe neglecting this point is the primary issue in our approach to teaching biblical languages. Often, a Hebrew or Greek class is oriented towards the would-be scholar—even if most of the students are preparing for ministry. The language geeks do well but most walk away with a mere passing grade and the unintended lesson that the Bible “isn’t really their thing.” In the worst-case scenario, capable, called, and conscientious would-be pastors are held back because they can’t memorize the aorist passive participle plural paradigm.

What if biblical language courses were realigned towards the knowledge and skills that ministers need? Lesson plans that integrate exegetical practices, homiletical cues, and theological interpretations are not only more effective pedagogically but also more useful in the long run. Effective ministers need not be able to cold translate a random passage but they should be able to help their hearers make interpretive leaps between our culture and the ancient world. Do we test our students on the intricacies of recognizing a jussive versus an imperfect, or on how this distinction has played a key role in the interpretation of Old Testament prophecy? What I’m describing are language classes that help seminarians discern their orientation towards Bible.

OK, but isn’t there an abundance of Bible translations, software, and other tools for that sort of thing?

Yes, and that’s part of the problem. Particularly in English, Bible tools and translations are overwhelming. The Internet has galvanized the proliferation of Bible “experts”—both qualified and unqualified—and it is easier than ever for anyone to access Bible study materials online. Thus, one of the most valuable skills a seminarian can learn in a biblical language course is the ability to recognize and use these materials. How does one distinguish profitable Bible commentary from what is not useful? What are the benefits and limitations of software that does the parsing and dictionary work for you? How do popular Bible translations differ and why does that matter theologically?

Too often biblical language courses succeed only in making students timid when they talk about the Bible. This is in part the fault of instructors who intimidate their students by showcasing the sheer volume of material a first-year seminarian could never hope to learn. Instead, we should be releasing students to make responsible use of the plethora of tools that are available. If they don’t learn these skills when they’re in seminary, when else will they have the chance?

Look, seminary curricula are already bloated with bookish coursework. We need more relevant learning experiences for the twenty-first century.

There are insights in statements like this but also profound risks. Designing a seminary curriculum is first and foremost a theological enterprise and educators should not give in to the fallacy that practical concerns somehow trump consideration of God’s involvement in the process. Further, the theological value of a body of knowledge is not reducible to the effectiveness of the ways it has traditionally been taught. Rather than replacing Hebrew and Greek in favor of courses that more adequately discuss contemporary issues we might first ask ourselves: “How can we teach biblical languages in ways that speak to the concerns of our time?”

Despite the post-Christian trajectory of many modern cultures, the Bible (and what it is believed to mean or “say”) is still a powerful force in contemporary society both in and outside of the church. In a consumer culture saturated with million-dollar Bible entertainment and best-selling biblical “scandal” books, ministers who understand the origins, reception, and languages of scripture are best positioned to make sense of these texts to a persistently curious world.

 The Bible is just too big… 

Ultimately, each teacher, each church, each Christian may define their relationship to scripture differently—yet all must eventually define it. This truth may frustrate those who see the Bible—particularly the Old Testament—as inconvenient, because they believe it touts a theology in opposition to their own. In such scenarios, it is all too easy to marginalize and ignore scripture—perhaps in the name of “changing times.” Yet even in these scenarios, the Bible is still just too big in our past and too important in contemporary debate to be cast aside lightly.

I believe that teaching biblical languages remains one of the best ways of immersing seminary students in the Christian theological world. When the church loses Hebrew and Greek, it loses a key tool for understanding its scriptures, its traditions, and ultimately itself.

Photo Credit: “DSC00913” by Pavel Yudaev  – CC by 2.0

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Reed Carlson studies and teaches the story of God’s people. He invites his students to be surprised, delighted, and challenged when they encounter the Bible.

Reed is currently a doctoral student in Hebrew Bible at Harvard Divinity School and an Ordinand in the Episcopal Church in Minnesota. Before doctoral work, he was a Fulbright Scholar at Georg-August Universität in Göttingen, Germany and he earned an MA from Luther Seminary in Saint Paul, MN. He has taught Old Testament at North Central University in Minneapolis and is the former Campus Ministry Director at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Saint Paul.

You can connect with Reed at reedcarlson.com.

Comments

  1. Great post Reed, I totally agree. We’ve reformulated our curriculum a few years ago and one of the changes was only 1 semester of each language – and it fell on me to implement. It meant I had to get laser sharp to focus on those skills that would transfer to meaningful use. One of the results is training on and use of Logos Bible Software, particularly for exegeting from the original, right in class. The results have been overwhelmingly positive.

  2. This is super, Reed! I also think it’s important for us to be thinking about how cultural biases in biblical language courses can be alienating for some students. Language classes are often totally embedded in European/Euro-centric philological traditions, which determine the textbooks, examples, anecdotes, even pronunciation. How can we better incorporate other cultures of traditions of translation and interpretation, even at the intro level? It’s something that’s been on my mind a lot lately!

  3. @Danny You raise the great point that a lot of seminaries/Bible colleges/etc… are already experimenting with new ways of teaching biblical languages. I probably could have mentioned this in the post and pointed towards some great stuff happening around the country. These are hardly new ideas!

    @Sarah I hadn’t even considered this but you’re absolutely right! I recall when I first learned Hebrew that we had a number of international students who were studying the biblical languages in their second language. I can’t imagine how difficult this must have been! Compare this to some time I spent in the considerably more international setting of a Goethe Institut in Germany. We studied German entirely in German without privileging any other language (since not everyone in the class knew English). Not only did this speed up our progress, it also unlocked new ways for us to learn the language together.

  5. Man, this is a great post! I really wish I had the proficiency in Hebrew and Greek that my professors hoped their students would have, but I don’t. I don’t ever translate my sermon text from Greek first, even though they said that was a good practice. I can’t read and translate Hebrew on the spot.

    But what I CAN do, and what I think seminaries should focus more on, is use the tools well. I know how to do a word study. I know when NOT to make a big point in a sermon based off a Greek verb tense.

    It seems that maybe 5-10% of seminary grads are good with languages when they graduate, but these are often the students going on to doctoral studies and won’t be directly serving a church. The other 90-95% of grads have deemed themselves “not good at Greek” and so they never use ANY of it in their ministries.

    Seminaries could better serve the church by teaching their students how to responsibly use the readily available tools available. This is similar to teaching non-math inclined people to use a calculator to its fullest ability, even if these students aren’t good a long division.

  6. Dear Josh,

    I am a pastor who uses Greek and Hebrew every week in the preparation of sermons (and every day in my personal reading of the Bible).

    I appreciate the argument you make for the “tools” approach based on the fact that so few pastors actually work in directly in the Greek and Hebrew texts. But I think that this is the wrong solution to a very real problem. We should ask why so many students graduating from seminary lack the ability to read the Bible in its original languages.  The reason is pretty obvious. Most students only take a year or a year and a half of Greek and a year or a year and a half of Hebrew. The problem is that nobody is capable of learning a language that quickly. The current seminary model simply isn’t designed to achieve the outcome of students being able to read the Bible in the original languages. The solution isn’t going to be found in better pedagogy but in the simply reality that students need more time working on the languages. In my judgment, the minimum amount of time necessary is 12 credits in each language. I am not including exegesis courses in this total. If students spend a year on morphology, one semester on syntax, and one on reading, vocabulary acquisition, and practicing the morphology and syntax that they have already learned – they are very likely to work from the original languages for the rest of their lives.

    I should add that I think the “tools” approach is quite dangerous. A person equipped with the wonderful computerized tools we have but who can’t actually sit and read through a few chapters of Revelation in Greek (or the book of Jonah in Hebrew) in one sitting will inevitably be simply decoding the Greek words as though English were the standard language. To understand how ideas are expressed in Hebrew requires that a person actually be able to read Hebrew.

    If we don’t want pastors to be specialists in the Bible we should be honest enough to admit that fact. But if we love God, love His word, and love His people we will be willing to invest the financial resources to ensure that our pastors can actually read God’s word in the original languages. This isn’t true simply for those who are preparing to enter pastoral ministry. If your pastor only had a year of Greek or Hebrew in seminary would you consider sending him to a program like Harvard Divinity School’s 8 week summer program where he can take a second year of the language in slightly less than two months? If not, why not?

    Best wishes,

    David

    • Yes, I agree, the thing is to learn to read the text, with the help of a lexicon and charts, or even with an analytical lexicon. The big thing, I think, is to begin to have to put the sentence together oneself. And it’s exhilarating, because one is in contact with the original inspired text. And one gets better at it. For me, a helpful step, was to use the UBS Reader’s Edition with its vocab and parsing of the less obvious forms at the bottom of the page. That got me reading larger chunks and within a few months, I was preferring to use a normal testament with a lexicon. Do your daily reading this way, and you constantly improve, and it gets easier and easier. But if you just ‘work’ with the text, as they say, probably with bible software, you never learn to read, and it stays dim and distant, in my opinion.  So the goal of the instruction must be to get students to the point where they start to read the text for themselves, combined with the expectation that if preparing a sermon or bible study, for example, as well as for personal devotions, one starts by reading the Greek or Hebrew text. Andrew

  7. This is a great post, Reed. I think it’s high-time that such a conversation be had in seminaries and theological schools.

    That being said, part of the conversation–it seems to me– would need to be around the utility of biblical languages in the 21st century. What is presumed by an understanding of Christian identification that depends on this sort of hermeneutics? More pointedly, what are the implications for the types of witnesses and considerations in works like Musa Dube’s edited collection on African Women in the Bible (SBL and World Council of Churches, 2001), Leif Vaage’s Borderline Exegesis (PSU Press, 2014), and Ernesto Cardenal’s The Gospel of Solentiname? It’s important in the 21st century to realize that the value of such training is culturally-specific and not universal to Bible reading (even at the scholarly level). That’s not to say we should get rid of it, but we must be careful in how seminaries/theological schools relate such training to professions of piety, effectiveness, and power. I’d love to know your thoughts about this and how you’ve seen it play out.

  8. Richard,

    You raise a really important point about seminary training. We ought to design seminary training to equip people to minister in the 21st century in their own particular cultural contexts. There is no point in training people to minister to sixteenth century Europeans. On the other hand, that is one of the reasons why I believe that more extensive training in the Biblical languages is so important. Ministers need to bridge the gap between the Biblical world and the world that they are ministering in. While our world is changing the Biblical world is not. Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic allow the Bible student to study the word of God in its original context more directly than using translations. I strongly suspect that failure to teach seminary students to read the Bible in the original languages leaves them ill equipped to make the direct application of the Bible to their culture and more prone to give yesterday’s answers to today’s challenges.

    David

  9. Learning one more language for better translations seems fair right? There are lots of translations online but all of us might agree, that those are not good enough. Of course the information nowadays are so easy for us to acquire, thus changed the method of education I think. Students do not need to memorize everything anymore however they should have the capacity to separate the goods and bads of the information they got.