October 5 - Greek - It's not safe in the water

Do you have all of those vocabulary words from yesterday's post memorized yet?  I'm doing pretty well with the nouns - it's the verbs that are difficult for me to get in my head.  Fortunately, the teaching assistant is selling some flashcards that will offer me ways to memorize the entire vocabulary list for the semester.  Those will show up here at some point in the next couple of weeks. 

This morning I watched a lecture from last Friday and he (we) processed through the translation and diagramming of a sentence.  I watched with great joy as I was able to begin making sense of the suffixes and relationships between the words. I can't wait to begin tearing apart scripture and understanding what is happening behind the scenes.

Then the professor scared me.  He wrote out the sentence (in English): "I have the love of God" and asked us to interpret it.  Ok, it seems like a 'duh.'  But, it's really not when we see it in Greek.  This is why the translations that we read are so important.  You see, when we read the phrase 'love of God' we can read this two different ways.  The first is what we believe to be obvious.  God's love comes to us.  If you put an arrow from God back to the word God, this is how that interpretation occurs.  But what if the author's original intent was to read I have love for God.  It is my action instead of God's action.  The entire tenor of the though and intent is changed.

It isn't always obvious in the Greek text what the intent is.  By the way, this type of interpretation is called exegesis.  I'm so NOT looking forward to getting into that, but it's coming, oh my, it's coming!!!

Some of these types of interpretation are what separate denominations and are the things that cause major doctrinal issues to develop.  There is absolutely no certainty on the interpretation of many passages.  Greek doesn't use articles like we do.  Sometimes it won't change the meaning, sometimes it might. 

Another sentence we looked at (not scriptural - just Greek) was "ochloi didoasi didaskalois stephanous chrusou." 

ochloi (crowds)
didoasi (They are giving)
diaskalois (teachers)
stephanous (crowns)
chrusou (gold)

(the endings tell us things about whether they are singular or plural, present tense, etc.)

The crowds are giving teachers crowns of gold.

Now, if you read this without an article, it seems as if the crowds are giving all teachers crowns of gold.  But, since Greek doesn't always use an article, it becomes the interpreter's responsibility to decide whether it is all teachers or some teachers.  Because the sentence's intent completely changes if you read:

The crowds are giving the teachers crowns of gold.

Now, there is the implication that we know which teachers and that it is the teachers we spoke of earlier (or something) who will receive these crowns.  It's a little more specific.

What this does for me is open up entire realms of possibility and understanding within scripture.  We absolutely rely on tradition and history to help with interpreting scripture. But, even as I read through commentaries and Bible dictionaries, I find differences in interpretation.  I have to choose which I feel God is leading me to believe and understand, but it is always based on my background, on my knowledge, on my concept of who God is.

It really is never as easy as we think, is it? Sometimes it just isn't as safe as we want it to be.