I Have Read the Whole Bible in Its Original Languages

Those who’ve known me for a long time will recall that I cut myself off from reading devotionally in English Bibles at the beginning of 2018. You may also recall that when I quote Scripture in these blog posts, I have generally produced my own translations for each quote. In one sense this effort has finally paid off. As of earlier this week, finishing the book of Revelation, I have now read the whole Bible in its original languages.

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There is behind this a debt of gratitude to key professors and instructors–all my Hebrew professors, one of my Greek professors, etc. And indeed, I used a lot of Accordance, the Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, Bauer’s Dictionary of Ancient Greek, The Greek Reader’s New Testament, etc. But at this point, I have read every word and at least translated every sentence in my head, sometimes then comparing to English translations if something seemed off. About five years of work has paid off.

What Does This Mean for Me Spiritually and Devotionally?

One thing this experience has taught me is that reading in the original languages can create a mere illusion of independence from other people’s interpretations of the Bible. However, since I have to use lexicons, reference other people’s text critical decisions, interpret the medieval rabbis’ notes, etc. throughout the reading process, this independence cannot truly be. More on that later, but I think that has been a helpful lesson in humility and a fruitful process of learning to understand other perspectives.

I’m never going back to reading in English translations. Seriously, at this point, the literary richness and clarity of perspective that reading in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek gives isn’t worth giving up for ease of reading. I personally don’t resonate with the idea of a heart language the way many people do. The kind of emotional and personal apprehension of a concept that people sometimes ascribe to hearing things in your mother language doesn’t work for me in reading. I get the emotional and personal apprehension from my working to understand something–and that will always come for me more in reading from the originals than in reading in English.

What Does This Mean for Me Theologically?

I do think forcing myself to read things in the languages they were originally written has given me a better appreciation of theological development. The semantics of words in one language just do not match the semantics of any translation equivalent in other languages. Translations can be faithful and reliable, but every translation is also terrible. This has practical ramifications for engaging theological viewpoints. For example, I think many American evangelicals might distrust the term sacrament because they cannot find it in the Bible. I myself would have done so in college. But sacramentum is used in several places to translate μυστήριον in the Latin Vulgate. While it is not the only translation option used in the Vulgate, this points to the theological idea that perhaps the English mystery does not perfectly correspond to μυστήριον.

An extension of this is that reading the Bible in its original languages has strengthened my bias and distrust against theological developments and movements that seem uniquely American. Given how extensively American evangelical theological movements have relied on English translations and poor, outdated resources on biblical scholarship and languages, this was unavoidable. Indeed, fundamentally reading the Bible this closely and carefully has given me a much better respect for the construction over time of different theological traditions and their readings of the Bible. Biblicism as a theological methods seems increasingly untenable given the difficulties of interpretation and the shifting of definitions and terminology over time. Reading the Bible in its original languages both affirms my belief in the core creeds and confessions of the Christian faith and strengthens my conviction on the need for confessionalism in church and theology.

What Does This Mean for Me Personally?

This part gets a little more off the wall. Over the course of making my way through reading the whole Bible in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, my attitude toward consistency and routine changed. In college and early seminary, with all the randomness that comes with the early twenties, I honestly struggled with the idea of doing things every day, having a routine, etc. I worked irregular jobs, had odd class schedules, engaged in many spontaneous activities. I still enjoy spontaneity, travel, and some randomness, but I appreciate routine a lot more now. I had struggled with maintaining routines when my consistency got interrupted; making it through the whole Bible in its original languages helped me flexibly adapt routines to the inconsistency of life. In other words, this played a vital role in helping me grow up.

Of course, growing in my relationship to routine, consistency, and ritual has downstream effects on other parts of my life. Until about two months ago, I had never dieted and had not consistently intentionally exercised since high school. It wasn’t something I really thought would be worth putting effort into. As of about two months ago now, I’ve hit the gym every weekday morning, started tracking my food…and lost twenty pounds. The result honestly kind of shocks me and might not actually prove sustainable in the long term, but my growth in attitude toward consistency and routine from reading the Bible changed how I looked at the feasibility of routine in other parts of my life.

Now is this really a case of causality? Did reading the Bible in its original languages cause me to grow personally? Perhaps not strictly speaking, but I’m sure there are many things in your life that are big projects that would take a long time to accomplish, and I would like to offer you hope in that you can grow in being able to do those things, and those can help make you a better person intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, and practically. And perhaps for you, that could be through reading the Bible through for the first time.