A groom kisses his bride while she is wearing a face veil. The kiss is diminished because of the barrier.
Jewish poet Haim Nachman Bialik applied this analogy to the study of Scripture when he said, “reading the Bible in translation is like kissing your new bride through a veil.” At the time he was answering the question why study Hebrew. But I would change Hebrew to Original language of the Bible, which is Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.
I have been tossing around the idea of studying the original languages in the Circle. The good news is using Logos Bible Software makes this task easier. But the sad news is you are learning a new language and that is demanding work. Some of you will not have the grammar to study, some of you will. As a group we will vote on which grammar to use, and I will tell you more about this later in a few months from now.
In college I learned Greek and Hebrew and today my Hebrew reading is stronger than my Greek. I want to change that. I want to read both languages fluently and you should want that too. If we do this, we will focus on the Greek first.
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