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| Rev 1:8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. |
December
22, 2014
https://www.facebook.com/sing.f.lau/posts/10203370062227758
This
is so aptly put...
"With
a large dish of humility, we should all approach our use of Greek in our
teaching and preaching. It is far better
to honestly confess our limitations than to present ourselves as some kind of
expert and then prove painfully that we are not. I've suffered through far too many
"Expert" presentations on a New Testament Greek word or phrase that
revealed far more ignorance of that language than scholarship. I'd far rather confess my limits and, if I
use a Greek point, cite the authority and interact with him rather than falsely
claiming more expertise than I have.
Spending a few hours with a New Testament Greek dictionary doesn't
qualify a person as a scholar. Even
taking a few classes of New Testament Greek stops distinctly short of that
credential. If we spent long hours with
a credible dictionary (And I am one who no longer views Strong's as
"credible") or even if we invest in a few courses so that we could
stumble through reading a few verses in Greek, we are far below the status of
scholars. Perhaps with all of these
investments, we might honestly regard ourselves as first graders at best,
clearly not so advanced as to claim authority or expertise in our preaching or
teaching. I do occasionally pursue words
and sentence structure in New Testament Greek, but I honestly find my time far
more productive if I spend that amount of time with my KJV.
All too often, despite claims to the
contrary, I've read and heard men use their pretense of Greek knowledge to blatantly
attempt to correct the KJV, rather than to clarify or to reinforce it. Little do such men consider that the men who
translated the KJV likely had far more scholarship in New Testament Greek than
they will ever imagine, much less attain.
When we use any resource, directly or indirectly, to correct the KJV
text, we have a more serious problem than language and scholarship. "
~~ Elder Joe Holder
