The Biblical languages in life and ministry

Because this blog includes commentary on the modern church and how it relates to the Biblical pattern, I would like to highlight a blog post by Bill Mounce called "The Biblical Languages in Life and Ministry."

In his post, Dr. Mounce warns ministers especially not to use their knowledge of the Biblical languages from the pulpit in such a manner to seem like the "elite few" who have special knowledge that the people in the pew don't have. He also flips up the coin to the other side to reflect on the value of studying the original languages, which he then leaves us to do!

Logos 4 Bible study software released, but a bit pricey

Logos 4 Bible study software has been released. See Dan Phillips' post and Adrian Warnock's post on this.

Now, while this may be an amazing piece of software, here in South Africa it is a ridiculously over-priced piece of software. Of course, I wouldn't mind a sponsor or two for the Logos 4 Gold software package, although, the Platinum edition would be much better! Oh, well! A man can dream! Some men dream of cars. This is what I dream about.

However, for the average salaried South African, and even the above average paid South African, Logos is terribly over-priced. Whether I decide to buy Logos locally or online internationally, it can cost me half or more of my salary for the month. Looking at South Africa, taking a rough guess, probably 98% of people in South Africa cannot afford the Logos software.

It is for this reason that I would recommend a much better priced Bible software package. How about a FREE Bible software package? I thought I'd get your attention!

e-Sword is a free Bible software package for Windows, and has a whole range of translations that can be installed with it for free.

# of free English translation modules	24 (i.e. ESV, ASV, KJV, RV, Geneva, etc)
# of Greek NT modules	6 + a Hebrew NT
# of Hebrew OT modules	2 + Greek OT Septuagint
	Latin Vulgate
# of other languages translation modules	47 (i.e. Afrikaans, Arabic, Chinese, German, Italian, etc)
# of Commentary modules	16 (i.e. Matthew Henry, John Gill, Adam Clarke, etc)
# of Bible dictionary modules	14 (i.e. Brown-Driver-Briggs, Easton's, ISBE, Nave's, Strong's, Thayer's, etc)
# of graphics modules	9 (i.e. American Bible Society Maps, NASA, CIA World Factbook, etc
# of devotion modules	5 (i.e. Spurgeon's Morning and Evening, Day-By-Day By Grace, etc)
# of extra modules	16 (i.e. Ante-Nicene Fathers, Works of Josephus, Calvin's Institutes, History of The Christian Church, etc)

As you can see, this is a lot to get for free. This is also what I use. Although it is not completely sufficient when doing original language work (for this I use the original way of books), it really is a good package to use.

So, without throwing your budget out of whack, download e-Sword and you have a lot to work with.

UPDATE
6 Nov 2009 - Mark Penrith has written a short review on e-Sword.

Some resources

Robertson's Word Pictures in the New Testament

VINCENT'S NT WORD STUDIES

How to Study the Bible (MP3 series)

Confronting the Religion of Islam (MP3 series)

MUST Bible teachers be trained in the Biblical languages?

I read a blog post over at Hebrew and Greek Reader, called Case and Point, that puts forth the thesis that

"all Bible teaching needs to be done by someone trained to read biblical languages. That means that if your pastor can’t read biblical Hebrew and Greek, he should keep his mouth shut and not preach from the Bible. This standard is even more necessary when untrained Bible teachers mistakenly try to incorporate some fun facts from the world of biblical languages, as Rob Bell has done in his Nooma videos. Art Boulet and Andrew Naselli have the skinny, no need for me to repeat their spot-on responses."

On the other hand, Bill Mounce, in a blog post called How do you use Greek in the pulpit? wrote:

"I just don’t think there are many times you need to parade your knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. As I said in the previous blog, people want to put you up on a pedestal. They want to think that you are different from them. But as I have told people many times from the pulpit, we are all gifted people in the same body, and only Christ is the head. My gift puts me up front and puts me in a position of leadership, but I am still just one gift in the midst of other gifted people."

Are these two writers at odds with one another, or are they simply elevating different nuances of the same thing?

You decide!

Banking on Greek!

As most of us know, Greek is very important for any pastor to master! Oh! Sorry, I don't really believe that most of us know of the importance of a strong knowledge of Greek (and Hebrew) to the pastor. Most pastors have a care-less attitude to the Biblical languages!

John Piper wrote an article in the June 1983 The Standard, called "Brothers, Bitzer Was a Banker!"

It is of great importance for pastors to read this article, but also for the rest of us. If only pastors would take the study of the Biblical languages seriously, it would make such an amazing difference in their churches!

HT: Dan Phillips.