Last issue I wrote about the need for more apologists who know how to work with other languages, particularly the biblical ones. This time I’m going to recommend some resources to make filling that need easier.
Except for sign languages, the main form of every language is spoken. We sometimes forget that, particularly when focusing on dead languages that now exist only in written form, such as the dialects of the Bible. If you really want to learn a language, learning to speak it is what you need to do. That’s the way our brains are designed to learn languages, and that’s why children learn to speak before they learn to write.
You also don’t need to be taught complicated grammar. It’s possible to start by learning how to converse with others (instead of waiting until second or third semester to study the conversational art of a language). All you need is what children learning their first language have: exposure to the language and a chance to practice speaking it.
Unfortunately, most of us can’t afford to take a total immersion course, but there is a language program that is a good substitute. It was developed by a language teacher named Paul Pimsleur, and the Pimsleur Method is the easiest way I’ve found to learn a language.
Here’s how it works: Each Pimsleur course comes with a set of audio tapes or CDs containing thirty-minute lessons. (Get the CDs; they’ll last longer than audio tapes, which allows you to go back and review the language in future years.) Every day, you do one lesson, simply listening to the CD (which features native speakers conversing) and repeating what you are asked to repeat.
I can’t express how much easier it is learning a language by this method than by traditional methods. There is no complicated grammar instruction; you learn to talk by talking. This is quite different from traditional methods, which want you to memorize lots of grammar, such as tables of verb and noun endings.
Neither does the method do what virtually every other program forces you to do: study on your own by doing memory drills after you’ve finished your lesson. In Pimsleur, there is no after-lesson drilling to be done. When you’ve finished your half-hour lesson, you’re done studying for the day.
There are two drawbacks to the Pimsleur study materials. First, they are more expensive. Fortunately, almost nobody pays full retail price for these. The least expensive way I’ve found to buy Pimsleur is to get one of the small starter kits (extra-cheap on eBay) and then call the manufacturer, who will give you a couple of discounts that will bring the cost of a Level 1 Pimsleur set down to less than a hundred dollars.
The other limitation is that although there is an impressive number of modern languages offered (Italian, French, German, and Spanish are only the beginning), the biblical languages are not available.
With one exception: Hebrew. Modern Hebrew is close enough to biblical Hebrew that if you want to learn the latter, I would suggest doing Pimsleur’s modern Hebrew course. That will get you a running start for studying the biblical form of the language—and take the fear out of it.
Alphabet Soup
Many students of the biblical languages are intimidated by the different alphabets they use. Standard editions of the Bible in the original use two alphabets: Greek and Hebrew. If you want to read related works in Aramaic, you’ll need to learn a third alphabet.
Often the thought of learning another alphabet gives people the willies, but it isn’t really difficult. Alphabets typically have only twenty to thirty characters. Anybody can do that in a short time.
The Greek alphabet is the easiest since it has only twenty-four letters, and half of them look like stylized versions of English letters that we already know (alphalooks like a stylized a, beta looks like a stylized b, etc.). Anybody can teach himself the Greek alphabet using flashcards in a few hours.
The Hebrew alphabet (which is really a modified form of the Aramaic alphabet) is a little harder. But still, we’re talking only about a twenty-two-letter alphabet, plus about fifteen vowel signs. Anybody can teach himself the Hebrew alphabet using flashcards in a few days.
Biblical Aramaic uses the Hebrew alphabet, so you don’t have to learn anything new. If you’re reading the Aramaic liturgy or the Pshitta (the major Aramaic translation of the Bible) then you’ll need to learn a different alphabet, but it also has twenty-two letters and only seven vowels. It’s also related to the Hebrew alphabet, which makes it easier.
The Aramaic alphabet is easier to learn than Hebrew, and if you want to learn it, let me recommend a book: Classical Aramaic: Book 1 by Rocco Errico and Fr. Michael Bazzi. This is a workbook that teaches the alphabet and will give you a hundred or so vocabulary words.
Learning to Read
In the last few years the textbooks available on the biblical languages have been improving dramatically. A hundred years ago, when the most famous grammars were written, textbooks on Latin, Greek, and Hebrew were often large, highly technical works that were not adapted to the needs of the beginning student. They were basically reference grammars that a scholar would use after he already knew the language.
Now there are textbooks that use innovative teaching techniques and make it as easy on the student as possible. The best example is Basics of Biblical Greek by William Mounce. It is head and shoulders above the other New Testament Greek textbooks out there, and I heartily recommend it. When I teach Greek, I use this book.
Of course, there is always room for improvement, and I think there are things one could do to write a better introductory text. For example, Mounce places too much emphasis on morphology, or how words get formed, but a teacher can have the student ignore places where Mounce goes overboard.
I’m afraid that there isn’t a perfect equivalent to Mounce for the other biblical languages, at least not yet. Mounce’s publisher, Zondervan, has come out with a Basics of Biblical Hebrew (Miles van Pelt and Gary Pratico) that tries to do for Hebrew what Mounce did for Greek. It’s a good text, but not quite up to the same standard.
As a result, let me recommend a few additional Hebrew grammars you might want to use: Beginning Biblical Hebrew (Mark Futato), A Modern Grammar for Classical Hebrew (Duane Garrett), and Biblical Hebrew: An Introductory Grammar (Page Kelley). I’ve chosen these because they are among the easier Hebrew grammars to use.
As I noted above, though, I think the easiest way to learn biblical Hebrew at present is by using Pimsleur Hebrew to study how to speak the modern version of the language, which is close enough to the classical that it will make using any of the above texts far easier.
For Aramaic, there really aren’t any beginner texts that I consider satisfactory for self-study. Most of the ones that are out there assume that you already know Hebrew, and if you don’t, then they won’t help you.
Probably the best one for the beginning student who wants to learn the language on his own is Introduction to Syriac (Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic) by Wheeler Thackston. It has some idiosyncrasies, but it’s probably the best self-teaching book out there for now.
For Latin, a deutero-biblical language due to the Vulgate, you would think there would be an embarrassment of riches to choose from, but there’s not. There are plenty of good, introductory texts for classical Latin but not for ecclesiastical Latin.
The text that I learned from was A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin by John Collins, which is the major recent grammar. I had a great teacher, but, boy, did I hate this textbook. Collins’s presents grammatical concepts in an unduly drawn-out order, with poor explanation and inadequate examples. This is tolerable if you have a teacher to fill in the gaps, but the text is unsuited to self-study.
There are a few other grammars of ecclesiastical Latin out there, but they tend to be older (meaning that they are likely to be harder for the self-study student to use), and I’m not as familiar with them at this point, so I can’t recommend any.
Let me make an alternative suggestion: To compensate for the deficiencies of Collins, use a short, easy-to-use classical Latin grammar and then, once you have the basics of the language down, tackle Collins. The one I’d recommend is Learn Latin by Peter Jones. This is a short book that originally appeared in England as a series of newspaper columns that proved so popular that they were collected in book form. It’s user-friendly, good for self-study, and does cover some ecclesiastical Latin.
One note of caution: If you use a classical Latin grammar, be sure that you learn ecclesiastical Latin pronunciation. The two are not quite the same. If the text you use doesn’t have a section on ecclesiastical pronunciation, check the Web and get the information there.
Further Resources
There are many good language resources besides grammars. Among the most useful are vocabulary-building resources, such as Greek and Hebrew flashcards. You can make your own flashcards or download software from the Web and program it with the vocabulary of whatever language textbook you’re using.
A good book for vocabulary building is Warren Trenchard’s Complete Vocabulary Guide to the Greek New Testament. This not only has a complete list of New Testament words sorted by frequency (so you can learn the most common words first), it also has other helpful tools.
A similar work is The Vocabulary Guide to Biblical Hebrew by Miles van Pelt and Gary Pratico. It also contains a frequency-sorted list of the vocabulary of the Hebrew Old Testament, letting you bone up on the most important words quickly.
Another kind of language tool is the interlinear. This is a text that has the original language on one line and a jerky, word-by-word translation immediately below it on another line. Usually there also is a smooth translation in a side column.
Often I am asked to recommend a Catholic interlinear, but my response is, “You don’t need one.” The controversy concerning what Bible you read applies to how it is translated and what books it includes, but these are largely irrelevant to interlinears.
What most people are after when they ask for an interlinear is an interlinear New Testament. Between Catholics and Protestants there is no substantive disagreement about the Greek text of the New Testament, and the translation question is largely moot, since the whole point of an interlinear is looking at what the Greek says rather than simply relying on someone’s translation of it. As a result, almost any interlinear (except the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ deceptive Kingdom Interlinear) will do.
It would be nice to have an interlinear of the Catholic Old Testament, but it would be huge, enormously expensive, and it would have four languages in it (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and English). In any event, I’m not aware of one, so, if you really want an Old Testament interlinear, you will have to make do with a Hebrew interlinear and a Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) interlinear.
One caution about interlinears: They are not for language study. Do not use an interlinear while you are studying a language. Use it before or after. If you use it while you are studying, you will become dependent on the English line and not learn the language the way you need to.
Another thing I am asked to recommend is a Catholic concordance. Again, my response is, “You don’t need one.” First, the existing Catholic concordances are based on lousy, non-literal translations and are inferior to Protestant concordances. Second, you shouldn’t waste your money on a concordance at all, because Bible study software blows concordances out of the water and makes them obsolete.
You can do far more powerful and precise searches with software and save yourself an enormous amount of time compared to using a concordance. There is basically no point in spending money on a concordance anymore. Either get yourself Bible software (some of which is inexpensive or even free) or just use the search features at www.biblegateway.com.
A language tool you will want is a dictionary. There are many dictionaries out there for Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and even Aramaic (though the latter are harder to find). But let me call attention to an especially useful work: William Mounce’s Analytical Lexicon to the Greek New Testament. This is a dictionary that lists every Greek word in the New Testament in every form that the word takes. It also analyzes the grammar of the different forms and offers basic definitions.
Not everybody is ready to take the plunge and start learning one of the biblical languages. To that end, let me recommend another work by William Mounce: Greek for the Rest of Us, a book that gives one some exposure to Greek and the role it can play in Bible study without requiring the full commitment to learning the language. If you’re not ready to take the plunge with biblical Greek, this is the book to get.
Parting Advice
What I’ve covered so far is only a fraction of the language resources that are out there. There are many other resources, including many good ones that I don’t have space to list. The ones that are here can serve as a starting point.
I’ve recommended these on the assumption that you want to do self-study. If you have a teacher, then the question of what resources to use is simpler: You have to use what your teacher says (though you can supplement that with my suggestions).
If you can get a teacher, do so. The accountability involved in taking a class from someone, even if you aren’t tested and graded, generally will help you learn the language much better than studying it on your own. I’m highly motivated to study languages, but I find that I usually do better if I have a teacher I meet with every week.
You can find teachers in many places: local colleges, seminaries (including Protestant ones), synagogues, etc. If you can’t find a class in the evening and can’t go to one during the day, look into getting a private tutor. Call a local language teacher and ask him to recommend one (perhaps one of his better students). If you can’t afford to pay, offer something in trade. That was the deal when I first took Greek: The tutor would teach Greek and get Latin instruction in exchange.
Whatever you do, get started! Apologetics needs more people who know other languages, especially the biblical ones.