Greek

I once remember a JC classmate posting on Facebook, saying that he knew why Christianity is so popular in Singapore - because the Scripture is written in English... *facepalm... Immediately, a few people replied in the post to correct the misperception.

The thing unfortunately is that today, most Christians don't even realise that the Bible is a translated text. The Bible in English we have today, depending on the translation you use, is normally translated by a group of Biblical scholars who are well-versed in the original language of the original texts. For the Old Testament, it was the Hebrew manuscripts and for the New Testament, it was the Greek manuscript.

And I would suppose I need to elaborate more about the world behind and that shaped the New Testament to qualify my comments in my previous post on Galatians 4:4. Particularly zooming in, with relations to where we started off, is the point on the Greek language. One needs to take note that when Alexander the Great, through his conquest, cleared away barriers to exchanges of culture, religion, social forms and political institutions between Hellenism and Eastern traditions. By the time the Romans took over, they essentially inherited a world which had gone through a period of intensive hellenization. Alexander's establishment of polis around his conquered world sparked off the process with the building of the gymnasium and lyceum, where youth would be trained in Greek language and literature, athletics and culture, theatres, stadia and hippodromes. Even though the empire was disunited after his death, the process of Hellization continued and took place in the most basic of forms: learning the Greek language.

Learning Greek eventually became necessary as politics and diplomacy were conducted in the language of the conquerors (Alexander's successors) especially if one wished to have a place n the hegemony of the dominant culture. Merchants and artisans would have also been interested in learning at least enough Greek to facilitate doing business. By the time the Romans took over, Greek had become the language of culture and commerce, even though the native Roman language was Latin. From Spain, or even Britain, in the west to Syria in the east, a traveler was well advised to brush up on Greek. It was spoken by at least the ruling and trading classes nearly everywhere, while Latin (and for those uninitiated, English) was not. This linguistic uniformity was not just convenient from a trader's or tourist's point of view, it was also important for the early church, as I have mentioned in my previous post, as missionaries could count on ready hearers if they proclaim their message in Greek, whether in Jerusalem, Alexandria or Rome itself, which was one of the reasons why the Gospel was able to spread so fast and so wide in such a short period of time.

Now this naturally means that the natural language of written communication would be Greek, which explained why the original manuscripts were in Greek and not in English (for those uninitiated). Paul in addressing the churches in Galatia, Thessalonica, Corinth, Rome, Philippi, Colossae, Ephesus and the individuals Timothy, Titus and Philemon would have used Greek. Matthew, although he was addressing a Jewish audience, would also have used Greek to reach the Jewish Diaspora. Mark, most likely addressing the persecuted believers around, would have used Greek. Luke, writing to Theophilus, definitely used Greek. Likewise for John, Peter, James, and Jude. Contrary to some fringe belief from some music school in Singapore, this therefore means that the New Testament in Greek has to be regarded as the sources for any biblical interpretation and translations and should not be disregarded.

Sidenote: I once argued with one of the instructors in this music school. Apparently they believe that the Hellenised culture was a satanic culture and therefore, Greek is a demonic language, hence the Scripture is the purest in its Hebrew form. The problem with them is that they cannot claim that they are a Christian music school if they have to reject the New Testament, precisely because there is no such thing as Hebrew manuscripts for New Testament. Just because the characters in the Gospels and Acts spoke Aramaic didn't mean that the manuscripts appeared in Hebrew first because it would have made totally no sense to a culture which would mostly understand Greek. Even the book of Hebrews was written in Greek, addressed to Jews. 

Now, the issue is that when we now read the English Bible, it is a translation and a translation is a form of interpretation, because the translator needed to interpret the meaning of the original text and translate into English (or any other languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Myanmar, Maori etc). My point is not that we start learning Greek if we want to study the Bible but I think at the very least, if we claim to be followers of Jesus and desires to know more of His word, we ought to be cognisant over this fact and be willing to dig in if we need to. There are tools all around to help us. Translations, at their very best, would still not be able to convey the original meaning of the original language fully to us. One classic example is the word 'charismata' which is commonly translated as 'spiritual gifts'. But the English reader would have lost some appreciation of the word, because he would not have realised that the element of grace is embedded in the original Greek word.

And what am I trying to say in such a long treatise? Just to address the amusing post I was talking about in the first part. And perhaps also to illustrate that at the end of the day, our Christian Scripture is one that is accessible to all and is not restricted to any culture just because it was first written in Hebrew or Greek. Even with translation, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I am confident that God's gospel will still be able to reach the end of the world.

Maybe perhaps, Singapore should have our own Singlish translation of the Bible. That would be fun.

Sources:
Encountering the New Testament by Walter A. Elwell and Robert W. Yarbrough
An Introduction to the New Testament by David A. DeSilva
The World That Shaped the New Testament by Calvin J. Roetzel
The Bible in Translation by Bruce Metzger