Preach your Greek

Mounce fields a question I get a lot: how do you use your Greek in the pulpit? His answer is well worth a read. My favorite part:

It starts with your homework. The most important place to use biblical languages is behind the scenes in doing your research, whether it be sermon preparation or getting ready for a Bible study. The languages give you access to tools that are far beyond the reach of English.

In class I have sometimes used a cooking analogy to get this across. Imagine someone in cooking school. One day one they are taught how to make pancakes. The good chef does not respond, “Why should I have to learn how to make pancakes? Why not just use Aunt Jemima?” The master chef does not pull out Aunt Jemima. Aunt Jemima may be easy—the ingredients are already mixed up together, just add water!—but the master chef always starts from scratch. Why? Because he knows his ingredients and wants to use them effectively. In the same way the pastor should be a master exegete. He should not rely on the pre-packaged just-add-water translations available to him. Those translations have already made all the tough decisions! Rather, the pastor should struggle with the original, even if only in a limited way.

And here is another good rule, this time more on presentation:

But I imagine that you have noticed I have not yet used the word “Greek” or “Hebrew” publicly. This is my general rule. When I want to talk about the meaning of the Greek word, I say something like, “The word translated such-and-such has a range of meanings that includes.…”

Read the whole thing.

Related posts:

1. How to Type in Greek Part II: Setting Up the Microsoft Greek Polytonic Keyboard
2. Greek Summer Reading II: Get a Reader’s Greek New Testament
3. How to Type in Greek Part III: The Best Greek Fonts
4. How to Type in Greek Part IV: Polytonic Greek, Linux Edition (Ubuntu)
5. How to Type in Greek Part I: An Introduction to Unicode

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