Simple Conversations.

Dog.

Cat.

Street.

Where is the bathroom?

How much is this?

I want . . .

I'm hungry/thirsty/tired.

What is your name?  My name is . . .

These are common words. In fact, if one were to take a class in Spanish, French, or German, you'd learn them quickly.

Could you imagine if you couldn't?  If you took a semester of Spanish, and someone walked up to you and asked you to say something in Spanish, and you were unable to?  Maybe quote something from a book in Spanish, but you couldn't yourself create a sentence in Spanish?

That student would be deemed a failure.  Clearly he must have passed with a D-, if he passed at all.

And yet, go to a seminary, find someone in a Greek or Hebrew class, and ask them to say something in their respective language.

  If they manage to, it will either be a) a quote from the Bible (likely either Genesis 1:1 or 1 John 1:1), b) a stammered sentence that has no meaning (like βλέπω τον καρπον του ανθρώπου "I see the fruit of the man") or c) a legitimate, albeit unsophisticated sentence.  The only person capable of option C is the person who got the highest grade in the class.

Congrats, Greek student.  *slow clap*

There must be a better way.  Simple conversation should be a focus of Biblical language teaching.  Why is it that a high school class can require papers written in German, while Master's level Hebrew requires only that you know it is a Niphal Perfect First Person Singular verb and it's meaning?  That should be obvious?  If I was teaching ESL, I wouldn't stop at them knowing that what kind of verb a word is.  They need to know more.  They need to know how that word fits together with everything else, and work at it until it's second nature (or second language, to be more fitting).

But, that is just the problem isn't it?

Spanish is taught the way it is because it is a living language, we are told.  Something like Koine Greek or Biblical Hebrew is a dead language, so we apparently don't have to try as hard.

That is so damaging.  We hurt ourselves and those we teach by teaching this way.  By teaching Greek and Hebrew the way it is typically taught, we put ourselves in as observers of Greek, not participants of it.  You can master Greek, but you may not feel it.  To think in Hebrew has to be completely different from merely being able to parse it.

  I know, I know.  Changing something as foundational of the basic pedagogy of language teaching would take time and effort that few teachers (and students), much less school administrators, would be willing to pay.  But it is worth it.  Others have said such, like Daniel Streett, or Michael Halcomb.  But they see things differently.  They know Greek.  I'm sure there are those on the Hebrew side of the equation as well.  I'm the one who took a year of Hebrew, a semester of Greek, and have been working on both in some degree for the last two years.  And I still can't speak a natural sentence of Greek.  Do I blame my teachers?  No.  I'm not in Administration, but I understand enough to see how hard it must be to get any change in.  Besides, when you've taught for 20+ years a certain style, there is no reason to expect them to change, even if it is not the most effective.  It still works.

But this generation of teachers, those in seminary or just starting, it's your job to embrace Greek and Hebrew as living languages.  The next generation should learn Greek or Hebrew as natural as they would French.  If God blesses me with a classroom, I hope to teach like Greek and Hebrew are living languages, if nothing else than for the fact that when the Old and New Testaments were written, they were.