just about to finish teaching an intensive one semester elementary hebrew class for the final year students (for those who didn't take hebrew at all) before they graduate so that at least they know a little hebrew and know enough how to use it when reading an ot commentary like wbc or icc series. this group of 5 students elected to stay on (2 dropped out along the way) in spite of their heavy workload and schedule to try to get a grasp of the hebrew language. 3 cheers for their preseverance and staying power!
the debate still goes on whether seminary students should spend so much time studying biblical lanaguages when especially in malaysia they are already struggling with the english language (many of the students come with chinese or tamil as their first language or mother tongue and malay as the language of study in the government schools). english is to many of them their third language. they already truggle with english grammar and to load onto them greek and hebrew grammar? the seminary council has recently deliberated whether to drop even greek as a compulsory subject for credit (hebrew is already an optional subject or elective). that will be a drastic move as it means a seminary graduate can opt to study his 3 or 4 years in a semianry without doing elementary greek or hebrew!
the debate is not new in the west as one can see the links in higgaion as well as the logos bible study blog:
http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ancient_hebrew_poetry/2007/09/do-you-really-w.html
http://blog.logos.com/archives/2007/09/boutique_specialty.html
http://blog.logos.com/archives/2007/09/mountain_climbi_1.html
let's hear it from you guys out there. should a future pastor while being trained in seminary be not required to even learn elementary greek and hebrew?
the debate still goes on whether seminary students should spend so much time studying biblical lanaguages when especially in malaysia they are already struggling with the english language (many of the students come with chinese or tamil as their first language or mother tongue and malay as the language of study in the government schools). english is to many of them their third language. they already truggle with english grammar and to load onto them greek and hebrew grammar? the seminary council has recently deliberated whether to drop even greek as a compulsory subject for credit (hebrew is already an optional subject or elective). that will be a drastic move as it means a seminary graduate can opt to study his 3 or 4 years in a semianry without doing elementary greek or hebrew!
the debate is not new in the west as one can see the links in higgaion as well as the logos bible study blog:
http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ancient_hebrew_poetry/2007/09/do-you-really-w.html
http://blog.logos.com/archives/2007/09/boutique_specialty.html
http://blog.logos.com/archives/2007/09/mountain_climbi_1.html
let's hear it from you guys out there. should a future pastor while being trained in seminary be not required to even learn elementary greek and hebrew?
Comments
however, LCK's comment hit the bull eye to me:
Perhaps modern pastors and Seminarian lecturer need to work together in leading the local churches of M'sia.
I still see a dichotomy between a great and quality theological education and the ministry of a pastor/leader in church. Other than producing future pastors, i do not see how we have utilitzed the resources of seminaries in Malaysia.
How about a think tank? A resource and research centre for the Malaysian church, not only on the isues of theology and biblical studies, but also on science, politics, economics etc? A community of scholars supporting the work of the Church theologically and intellectually in these areas?
We need to encourage our thinkers to pick up serious studies on all these areas. Pak Lah recently in a gathering of Muslim scholars said the same thing to them. I mean, that aside, Judeo-Christian tradition has been the fertile ground for great thoughts in philosopohy, music, art, economics, politics etc.
We must not think that christian intellectualism is being able to defense our bible or our beliefs, i.e. tru the ministry of apologetics. Our studies of hermeneutics and biblical theology ought to be the foundation of our further inquiries into all the other areas of life.
As an OT lecturer, I am not sure you'll agree with me, but i see that Israel's religion of old concerned itself not with endless (and sometimes mindless) defending of religious precepts but with the task of living out god's rule and truth in this god-given earth.
Jack Said
Churches can still be well led and pastored even if their pastors do not know the original languages.With the constraints on a pastor's language aptitude, and the demands on a pastor's time as described ably by chee keat, the original languages can be left to the more interested and talented.
Now I suspect Kar Yong and Tony Siew may kill me for such a view, so I have booked a niche in the columbarium.
Fundamentally apart from all the other things pastors have to do - administration, leading, mentoring, discipling, counselling, mediating, visiting, praying, encouraging etc etc, teaching and perhaps preaching is still a primary task.
After all, practically all the minsitries we are involved in are based on our understanding of Scripture.
Many church members and people outside the church are generally no longer satisifed with cliches and they are well read. They ask deep penetrating questions (or will one day ask) that will require us to give answers that require us to show from the Bible why we believe what we say we believe. We need to go deeper than the surface of what the English translation of the text seems to say.
I think Eugerne Peterson offers a realistic balance in saying that: "Exegesis is nothing more than a careful and loving reading of the text in our mother tongue". He of course goes on to say that Greek and hebrew is worth learning but if we cannot, we have good commentaries which we must learn to read proplery to help us. This for me is the key for most of us who are not gifted by God to be academic scholars.
Seminaries need to look not into dropping the bibilcal languages out of the curriculum BUT rather how to better teach them in a practical and dare I say fun way so that seminary students don't lose their grasp of the languages once they graduate,
I took Basic NT Greek in seminary but lost it very fast - by the time I graduated I forgot most of my Greek as it was boring. The spirit was willing (in the sense that I desired to be idealistic and keep up the sue of what I knew) but the flesh was weak. Too many things came up and Greek immediately took a back seat as it wasn't "practical" (at least at the time that was how I perceived it).
BUT at the same time while at seminary, I also took a short experimental course developed by Low Chai Hok called "Intro to Research Languages" (?) which had the goal of giving us a basic grasp of Hebrew and Greek for the purpose of making use of the languages to better read commentaries etc. That to me was a good compromise as I think seminaries shoud primarily be producing theologically and bibilcally competent pastors not wannabe academics who end up being pastors.
It gave me just enough to decently understand and follow the major arguments of some of the more critical exegetical commentaries.
unfortunately, there are so many demands on the seminarian. churches expect that when a seminarian graduate, he or she is already competent and well-equipped for everything! the pastor must be able to preach eloquently, counsel people pastorally, evangelize with passion, etc.
i believe a seminarian needs seminary training a few times round in order to fulfil the churches' expectations! one round for biblical studies, another round to train him or her to be an administrator, another round for being an evangelist and missionary etc. maybe like the roman catholic training, it takes 7 years to train the seminarian. why 7 years? because the first 3 years is basically the introductory stuff e.g. OT introduction, NT introduction, biblical languages, etc, then the last 4 years is the 'real' thing, i.e. philosophy, theology etc.
so, if our churches are just looking for a ceo-type of pastor to take care of mega churches, seminary training like stm's is inadequate anyway. you will need to send the person to attend leadership seminars and talks, haggai institutes, etc. if our churches are looking for church-planters type of pastors, then a seminary like bcm or acts would perhaps be more appropriate.
so, coming back to the question, it all depends on what type of pastor our churches want. but that is only one side of the argument. the other side is what type of training should a seminary provide? here, the logical answer should be 'scratch where it itch'. the seminary should be providing the type of training to produce tha type of pastors wanted by the churches. but if we do that, we can see how fragmented our seminary curriculum will be. each denomination and church will have its own emphasis e.g. the lutheran churches wnat their seminarians to be able to say the liturgy correctly (from the mouth of the elcm bishop himself). every church and denomination will expect a bit of this and that in the curriculum. the seminary have to also decide what it thinks is adequate seminary training. con't
hence, in stm, we have a curriculum review committee made up of lecturers and council members (lay people and pastors) sitting to review our present curriculum in order to fine-tune it. e.g. with datuk dr alex mathews sitting in the committee, we can prick his brains to see how a medical school draw up its curriculum and what sort of training medical studnets are expected to receive.
also, when the atesea accreditation committee visits stm, it will also look at our curriculum and make suggestions. thus, the seminary's curriculum is not static but flexible or fluid to adapt to changing times. in the latest review, some courses are now compressed into shorter hours in order to make space for other electives.
so, the suggestion to drop greek as a credit subject was brought up. this is because of some of the reasons mentioned by chee keat. with the seminarian also busy with other important subjects, should greek be made optional? this is made on the assumption that the more academically inclined students will still take greek while the others will happily drop it. my own feeling is that the clear majority will want to drop it (maybe up to 95%)!
my main concern is that the pastors we are training today from stm will not be able to read a greek NT (or a Hebrew OT). within a few more years, none of these pastors, if they wish to go for a mtheol to major in OT or NT, can do so since they lack the biblical languages. e.g. singapore ttc mth requires the prospective student to sit for a hebrew or greek exam before allowing them to embark on the masters program. neither will malaysian guys go overseas, e.g american universities, to do their masters and doctorates since they lack the biblical languages.
what a difference with england in the 17-18th century in the time of the wesleys. john and charles could read and write in greek to correspond with each other. they were equally competent in hebrew.
when hwa chih left stm in the 90's, there was no one teaching hebrew in stm until i came in in 1998. for about 10 years, stm produced graduates with no hebrew language background (except for 1 plucky student peggy who personally attended mbs klang to get her hebrew langauge training!).
if we keep up this trend of dropping the biblical languages, in no time we will have pastors in malaysia who cannot read the bible in its original languages. (e.g. you can't do that with the koran as one must have arabic to read it in its original language. anything less is still not as good. using an english translation to read the koran is still not as good as reading in the original). if adherents of other faiths insist on learning the original languages of their sacred text, why should christians be different? con't
running to the west may not help either as many seminaries there already have taken that route. because they asked the same questions 'what type of pastors do we want to produce?', they ended up seeing that biblical languages are not as importnat for a seminarian's training. one can do a mdiv course without greek and hebrew in many seminaries in the u.s. imagine in some seminaries like fuller, one can take a m.a. in intercultural studies without taking any biblical subjects like exegesis of a prophetic book or gospels etc!
the action to take in malaysia is not running away, for the grass not alway be greener elsewhere. at the moment, stm is still offering greek as a credit for bth (2 semesters) and bd and mdiv (3 semesters).
only hebrew is optional but next year, there will be a class because many 1st and 2nd year students are requesting for it. so there is still a good sign that biblical languages will not die a natural death like that in the u.s. the situation is different in the uk where biblical languages are complusory for the ba/bd course for ordinands.
(3 semesters)
http://myhomilia.blogspot.com/2007/09/are-biblical-languages-still-necessary.html
I like your comments Paul, and I have quoted you as well: here :)
if the seminary study of biblical langauges can be shown to be a good foundation for the students to build a super macrostructure of future learning and utilizing of the languages in their future preaching and teaching ministries, such learning is seen not to be a waste of time and effort.
for example, i have continued to use my hebrew a lot in preparing for not only lectures but sermons as well as writing articles and devotionals. my greek is rusty now due to a lesser use compared with hebrew but still good enough to make sense of the greek text. again, it comes in handy when i preached through the book of 2 timothy in my church from mid 2005 to mid 2006.
i never gave up my greek and hebrew when i graduated from seminary in 1984. had no regrets as the languages were important tools for my preaching and teaching in the many churches i served as i preached a lot of exegetical expository sermons, often working through whole biblcal books from the OT and NT.
having been a methodist pastor for 24 years, i can understand those who argue that they have no time to use the languages. no time? so, we create time for them. it is a discipline to read and use greek and hebrew at least 30 minutes a day for each. the guy in the hebrew journal blog (found in the link) is doing 1 hour each for greek and hebrew each day! i wish i have his discipline to put in 1 hour a day for each language.
there is a book called more light for the path. it has the daily scripture readings in both greek and hebrew so that one can do one's daily devotions with the biblical languages. kinda kool for the busy pastor! i think i will eventually write one such book on a simpler scale for the malaysian pastor!
below is a link from john hobbins' blog. here is a great write-up on the issue of studying biblical languages and trying to make seminarians love them. one can see that this is a major issue even in the u.s. seminaries but evidently not in europe where the educational background already provides the in-coming student with a good grasp of the languages and philosophy. perhaps we can think of something like that here in malaysia - provide in-coming seminary students with a good grasp of the essentials:
http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ancient_hebrew_poetry/2007/07/whats-wrong-wit.html