On Knowing Magic Languages

I have been going back and forth on posting this for a variety of reasons, so allow me to start with a comment and then a couple disclaimers.

First, let me remind y’all of my own credentials. I have earned my BA and MA in Biblical Studies, and am half-way through an MA in Biblical Exegesis at Wheaton; along the way I have completed more than thirty credit hours in Biblical languages. I am still no expert, but neither am I the village clown when it comes to the Biblical languages—I only say that to say that I am speaking from experience rather than ignorance.

Second, I do not mean to offend anyone. This may very well not be my place to say anything. However, I felt that it was necessary to share some advice with my compatriots. If I do offend you, I am sincerely sorry.

Third and finally, since I am speaking from my own experience, it is entirely possible that I am reading my own experience onto others. If that is the case, I sincerely apologize and applaud you for succeeding where I failed.

Now, to the core of the issue. I recently started noticing that a bunch of us are enjoying our new found knowledge of the Biblical languages, and show it on Facebook by quoting from the Greek or Hebrew, sometimes with an English translation, sometimes not. From my own experience as a budding academic—and later as a churchman—I think that this can be problematic for a couple reasons.

An honest question that we should all ask ourselves (in other matters as well!): does the post build up our fellow believers? That is, does seeing the Greek/Hebrew letters explain something to our sisters that they would otherwise be unable to understand from reading the English? If yes, then it is probably a fairly complex exegetical problem, in which case, will your three sentence post be able to sufficiently explain to them what they are missing? Or, does posting the foreign text tear down our brothers by reminding them that they are theologically uneducated? Does your post of a text that they cannot read bring them closer to Christ, or can it move them farther away by reminding them that they can’t read the “real” Bible?

Facebook is public so the purpose of posting on Facebook is for others to see. So what is the purpose of posting in a language that the majority of your friends cannot read?

I won’t presume to answer that question for you, but I will answer it for my own case publicly. In years prior, I never would have admitted it, but in retrospect I feel fairly certain that at least one of my motivating purposes in such things was to show my friends and family how much I had learned. The true focus was not on God and what he had done by communicating to us; rather, the focus was on me and what I knew. After all, if it was the message of the text that I was wanting to communicate to my friends, then doing so in a language that they don’t understand would be a pretty odd way of communicating.

So, perhaps the question I should ask myself: who is being built up when I post in a language that only those of us in the secret club can read? Me? Or the church?

I continually have to be reminded that if my function is to be a servant to the church, then my ultimate aim should always be to build up the church. If I harm those in the church in a display of my linguistic prowess, am I serving them? Ultimately, do my words remind them of the fact that God has written in human language so that they can understand Him, or am I reminding them that they have to go through me to find out what God “really” said?