Chapter 19: Exposing the Blindness of Theologians. When Christians today want help understanding or expounding a passage of Scripture, they typically turn to commentaries, study Bibles, and other works that profess to give insights into what the Bible writers were saying. But what qualifies such writers to know what Jesus and the apostles really meant? Typically, they claim expertise because they have advanced degrees in theology or in some biblical subject.
In other words, they are part of the wise and learned class, the very class from which Jesus said the kingdom was hidden. Bible commentators use three primary methods to give the impression they have hidden insights into the real meaning of the Bible writer: 1) their understanding of Greek, 2) their knowledge of history during the New Testament era, and 3) their familiarity with the historic faith. Yet in all three of these areas, they repeatedly demonstrate their blindness.
In this chapter, let me show you the blindness of many theologians when it comes to Greek. The myth of the Greek language. Anyone reading Bible study materials or listening to typical sermons comes away with the impression that ancient Greek is a super language, far more precise than English and full of richness that just can't be expressed adequately in English. But just the opposite is true.
It's far easier to communicate with precision in modern English than it is with ancient Greek or any other ancient language. One reason for this is that the number of ancient Greek words is only 3% or less than that of modern English. Ancient Greek consisted of only 20,000 words. In contrast, the Oxford English Dictionary contains about 600,000 words. Yet even that doesn't come close to including all of the English words used in common speech and writing.
Some say that English now has more than a million unique words. No other language in human history has had the rich vocabulary of contemporary English. It makes me think of the situation I faced in art class in grade school. Our family was always on a tight budget, so the new box of crayons my parents bought me at the start of each new school year was the basic Crayola set containing 12 colors. It was certainly sufficient for drawing the pictures I made during art class.
However, some of my classmates had the Crayola set with 32 colors, and some even had Crayola's 64 color set. When it came to blue, my box of crayons had one choice: blue. However, my classmates with the 64 crayon set had not only blue, but also sky blue, dark blue, cornflower, Prussian blue, and others. They could express many varieties of blue in their drawings, where I was limited to one color. It's pretty much the same situation when ancient Greek is compared to contemporary English.
To be sure, ancient Greek is more precise than most other ancient languages such as Hebrew, but it just doesn't match up to a modern language such as English. The issue with New Testament Greek isn't that it's so much more precise than English, but that it's often so much more ambiguous. For example, take the Greek word Angelos. It has the basic meaning of messenger. Yet as used by the Jews and Christians, the word also can mean angel.
Normally, we can tell from the context whether the word should be translated as messenger or angel, but sometimes the context doesn't make it clear, and even the early Christians didn't know for certain whether the Bible writer was talking about angels or human messengers. For instance, each of the letters to the seven churches in Revelation is addressed to the Angelos of that church. Does that mean every church has a heavenly angel assigned to it?
Or were the letters addressed to the earthly messenger of the church, the pastor, presiding elder, or some other person who acted as a spokesman for the church? We simply don't know. Another example is the Greek word martyr. The basic meaning of the word is witness, but not surprisingly, the word also means martyr. Sometimes we can tell from the context how the New Testament writer is using the term. However, at other times we simply don't know. The problem isn't that most Greek words had more than one meaning.
Most English words have more than one meaning too. But in English, we normally have a list of synonyms from which we can choose to make our meaning clear. In ancient Greek, there often was only one word available with all of its ambiguity. Furthermore, ancient Greek was written without any punctuation. There were no commas, periods, parentheses, or quotation marks. Imagine trying to write a letter or document today without any punctuation. It's not hard to imagine the confusion that would result.
In comparing different New Testament translations, I've noticed that translators don't always agree on where to place commas and where to end and begin sentences. That's not the fault of the translators. It's the limitation of ancient Greek. Please don't think that I'm denigrating Greek scholars. I'm very grateful to the translators who have given us the Bible in English and to the scholars who've published Greek-English dictionaries and interlinear Bibles. We're all deeply indebted to them.
My knowledge of Greek is minuscule compared with theirs. The situation is similar to that of medical doctors. Their knowledge of the human body and of disease is vastly superior to my own. Yet that doesn't mean that I just have to accept without question everything my doctor says. In fact, I found that most competent doctors don't object to my disputing their diagnosis occasionally if I do so in a respectful manner.
I found that the doctors usually are right, but on several occasions my dissenting opinion proved to be correct. Greek scholars are normally right, but their opinions shouldn't be accepted without question. Furthermore, I found that it's usually not the real Greek scholars who pretend ancient Greek is some magical language that means all sorts of things that ordinary English can't express.
It's the commentators and other theologians who had a few years of Greek in divinity school and who used their limited knowledge of Greek to bully others. The foolishness of root meanings. I'm sure we've all listened to sermons during which the speaker reads a passage of Scripture and then says, "Now the Greek here literally means..." The speaker then uses the literal meaning to reinterpret the passage, making it say something different from what we read in our Bibles.
The problem with this approach is that the speaker is not really stating what the word or passage literally means. Instead, he's merely giving the etymology of the word, that is, its root meaning. The folly of this approach is that the root meaning of a word usually has little bearing on what the word actually means in the time and circumstances in which it is written. We all instinctively know that this is true with English. For example, in Texas, there's an immense amount of oil and gas production.
As a result, when landowners sell their property, they typically reserve the oil and gas so that they can continue to own the petroleum after the property is sold. Now let's suppose that John Doe sold his property to Bob Smith, reserving the oil and gas. Let's further suppose that Bob Smith planted a grove of olive trees on his land. When it comes time to harvest the olives, John Doe comes driving up in his pickup and tells Bob not to harvest the olives because they belong to him.
"What?" Bob would no doubt say in disbelief, "What makes you think you own the olives?" "Because I reserved the oil and gas on this property, and the literal meaning of oil is olive. Therefore, I'm entitled to all the olives." If the matter went to court, what do you think the court would do? No doubt John would be laughed out of court. The fact that olive is the root meaning of oil has absolutely no bearing on what the word means in ordinary usage today.
In Texas, when sellers reserve the oil under their land, everyone understands that they are reserving the petroleum. We all can see how ludicrous it would be in English to try to interpret a document based on the etymologies or root meanings of the words used. What is farcical in English doesn't somehow become logical and insightful when we switch to Greek. My dictionary defines literal as based on the actual words in their ordinary meaning, not figurative or symbolic.
So the literal meaning of a word is not its root origin, but its normal meaning in context at the time it is written or spoken. Let's face it. Most people don't even know the root origins of the words they use. I certainly don't. Did you know that our word gas comes from the Greek word meaning chaos? I didn't. I was also surprised to learn that the root word for employee means to fold and that the root meaning of coin is wedge. I could go on and on.
Word meanings typically undergo numerous changes over time, so the root meaning of a word is irrelevant when interpreting any written instrument. It might make an interesting piece of trivia, but nothing more. Yet commentators and theologians continue to use word etymologies as a means to interpret Scripture. It is ignorant, dishonest, and blind, but they continue to get away with it. How do we know what a word means?
All of this raises the question, how does anybody know what an ancient Greek word meant in the first century? The issue is neither what a particular Greek word means today nor its root meaning. The question is, what did it mean to the New Testament writers and their readers? It's important to understand that there were no Greek dictionaries written in ancient times, nor do we have any ancient Greek grammar textbooks.
So to arrive at the proper meaning of a New Testament word, we have to examine how that word was used in ancient sources. With regard to the New Testament, we have three main sources: classical Greek texts, the Septuagint, which is an ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, and the early Christian writings, particularly those of the second century. The beginning place for the study of ancient Greek has generally been the Greek classics, of which there are many. There are some limitations on this, however.
For one thing, the New Testament was written in the common Koine Greek, not the polished Greek of the classics. Second, most of the classic Greek works were written many centuries before the New Testament. Like any other language, the meaning of Greek words changed over time. So what a Greek word meant in the time of Plato, 400 BC, is not necessarily what it means in the days of the apostles. Finally, the biblical writers often used words in a different sense than the secular writers.
So for the study of New Testament Greek, the Septuagint, is a far more valuable resource than the classics. For one thing, it was written in Koine Greek. Second, it was much closer in time to the New Testament than the writings of philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. Finally, the Septuagint was the Old Testament of the first-century church. Both the apostles and their readers were steeped in the vocabulary of the Septuagint, and this is reflected in the vocabulary of the New Testament.
As one Greek scholar noted, humanly speaking, without the Septuagint, there could have been no New Testament. For the Septuagint provided to the New Testament not only its vehicle of language, but also to a great extent its patterns of thought. Despite this, I find that most New Testament commentators and theologians are abysmally ignorant about the Septuagint. My guess is that most of them have never read it.
The writings of the early Christians, particularly those in the first century after the close of the New Testament, are another extremely valuable resource. The Christians of that age spoke the same language, lived in the same culture, and used the same Christian vocabulary as the apostles. When looking into the meaning of a New Testament Greek word, a key question should always be, how did the first and second-century Christians understand the apostles' words? That's only common sense.
Yet once again, I find that most commentators and Bible expositors are totally ignorant of how the early Christians understood the New Testament. As I've mentioned, I'm no Greek scholar. My special field of study has been Christian history, particularly early Christian history. But as a historian, I can't help but notice that the early Christians were obviously understanding certain New Testament words and sentences differently from what our experts today tell us those words and sentences mean.
Agape, a case in point. Like most of you, I grew up being taught that agape, one of the Greek words used for love in the New Testament, has a special meaning that differentiates it from other Greek words for love, such as eros or philia. We've all heard that agape love is the highest form of love, that it is unconditional love, or that it means seeking the highest good of another person. In contrast, we're told that philia is merely having affection for someone or liking that person.
Finally, we're told that eros is romantic love. One Christian source put it this way: "Philia is an emotional, brotherly love, a love which would be best illustrated in the Bible as that between David and Jonathan." It is important that the command to love is never phileo because it is an emotional love that comes out of a mutual reciprocal relationship, but rather agape. Finally, there is the Greek word for love, agape, which represents an attitude of love that is non-selfish.
It has a selfless interest with its focus on primarily giving to others. Agape can be described as unconditional, positive regard, a personal state of mind that spurs us into helpful, needful action in personal simplicity, humility, compassion, and equanimity. Agape is a higher form, a manifestation of God's true love for all of us, which we all still do need to personally have, promote, cultivate by letting God have full control of our lives.
The Greek word agape is mostly foreign to classical Greek because its origin is from God. 1 John 4:7, "For love comes from God." The first disciples of Jesus Christ were incapable of agape love until after Pentecost, for agape love comes from the Holy Spirit alone. I've heard this type of teaching most of my life, and I've even said similar things myself in sermons.
Therefore, you can imagine my surprise when I read the early Christian writings and noticed that they never said there was anything special about the word agape. That got me wondering, so I checked to see if the word agape appears anywhere in the Septuagint. In other words, was it a Greek word primarily used only by Christians, or did the Jews use the word a century or more before the time of Christ? To my surprise, I found that agape is used 283 times in the Septuagint, from Genesis through Malachi.
So it's not true that it was a special word virtually unknown before our New Testament. The reason Jesus and his apostles used agape so often is because it's the word the Greek-speaking Jews were accustomed to reading in the Old Testament. Obviously, it's not true that humans were incapable of agape love before Pentecost. After all, in the Septuagint, God commanded the Israelites to love agape, "The Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength." Deuteronomy 6:5.
The Septuagint also uses agape in the commandment to love one's neighbors as oneself. Was God commanding the Israelites to do something they were incapable of doing before Pentecost? Obviously not. The Old Testament speaks of persons who loved God. Psalms 5:11, 18:1, 31:23, 97:10, and chapter 119, verses 1-27. In each of those places, the Septuagint uses agape. What about the claim that the type of friendship love that David and Jonathan had for each other was philia, not agape? False again.
In describing David's reaction on hearing about Jonathan's death, the Septuagint reads, "I am grieved for you, my brother Jonathan. You are most pleasant to me. Your love, agape, for me was to be admired, surpassing the love, agape, of women." 2 Samuel 1:26. What about the claim that agape love is a higher, selfless love that can only be produced by the Holy Spirit? Once again, false.
In reading the Septuagint, I found that the Jews used agape to cover all forms of love: love of God, affection for friends, romantic love, and even love of wrong things. Here are a few examples of the many ways that agape love is used in the Greek version of the Old Testament. "Then make me savory food, such as I love, and bring it to me that I may eat." Genesis 27:4. "How long, O you sons of men, will you turn my glory to shame? How long will you love worthlessness?" Psalms 4:2.
"Those who hate me love death." Proverbs 8:36. "Your love is better than wine, and the smell of your ointments is better than all spices. The young maidens love you. I sought him, whom my soul loves. I sought him, but did not find him. Much water will not be able to quench love, nor will rivers drown it." Song of Solomon, chapter 1, verse 2, chapter 3, verse 1, and chapter 8, verse 7. Thoroughly intrigued from discovering these things, I decided to search the New Testament to see how the word agape is used there.
Consistent with the Septuagint, I found that Jesus and the apostles used agape to cover various types of love. In each of these passages below, the Greek word used for love is agape. "Even sinners love those who love them." Luke 6:32. "Woe to you, Pharisees, for you love the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces." Luke 11:43. "Men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." John 3:19. "They loved the praise of men more than the praise of God." John 12:43.
"Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world." 2 Timothy 4:10. "They have forsaken the right way and gone astray, following the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness." 2 Peter 2:15. "Do not love the world or the things in the world." 1 John 2:15. Well, so much for our learned commentators. Yet if theologians and commentators are often blind guides when it comes to the Greek language, they're infinitely more so when it comes to New Testament history.