Hey grimm, I finished How to Read the Bible. There is a lot of references to Greek words and translations. How did the Greek language enter the equation?
Well, before Jesus was alive as a man, the scriptures of the Old Testament were translated into Greek. So that translation, known as the Septuagint, was a translation of the original Hebrew into Greek.
By the time Jesus was around on earth, Israel was a colony of the Roman Empire and much of that empire spoke Greek. When the writers of the New Testament documents were writing their narratives and letters to the early Christian communities {that make up most of the NT}, they wrote in Greek.
It was a long time before either the OT or the NT were translated into English and sometimes, translators had to make choices as to how they would translate certain words. Fast forward many centuries, to the modern day, linguists have discovered so much more about words and their origins and the different ways words were used and that has had an impact on people that want to understand what the NT is saying.
For me personally, long gone {1986 !} were the days when I'd simply trust what a preacher might say simply because it was a preacher saying it. I took it upon myself to check out word meanings and how they are used in particular paragraphs and passages. Now, I'm no Greek scholar or reader, but context often makes a huge difference and for a number of years I've found that much of what has been understood and taught in many churches lacks nuance and context and so I've been able to say "well, that's not altogether right" on a number of things.
But the long and short of it is that the NT was written in Greek. I have a number of Greek dictionary/concordances that give you the Greek word that has been translated into English and how that word could be used.
There are lots of Bible translations {into English} and it is a very useful exercise being acquainted with a few of them to see how various things are translated because language changes and the way people use words in English has changed, even from the 1970s or 80s to now. Most of the time, the differences are minor and don't actually change the meaning. But on significant occasions, that isn't the case.
