The realities of academic life

If you want to be really serious about bible study, this are the languages you need to know

This comes via Jim West's Blog, that I am mostly enjoying (mostly because he doesn't like Pentecostals, but hey, nobody is perfect):

So, what languages must people know? I’m going to answer in parts-

Part One- Pastors

Pastors need to know the Biblical languages: Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. At a minimum. No pastor worth his salt will ‘kiss the beloved through a sheet’ and come away satisfied and none can expound the biblical text without being able to read it.

Part Two- Old Testament Scholars

These folk need to know Hebrew, Aramaic, Ugaritic, Akkadian, Eblaitic, and Greek.

Part Three- New Testament Scholars

Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, Coptic, and Latin

Part Four- Text Critics

These need to know the relevant ancient languages of the text they are examining. If an OT text, than all those which the OT scholar masters plus those of the NT scholar plus at least German and French. If a NT text critic then, frankly, many more (since the NT is attested in numerous languages from up to the 5th century CE).

All of the languages listed by section above are the bare minimum for each. It really is necessary to read one or more modern language as well so that one can keep up with developments in one’s field and not be shackled to the narrow parochialism so common of pastors and academics in North America.

Without mastery of the requisite languages, pastors will be deficient, and academics will be as well, incapable of understanding that which they profess to be explaining to others.

Therefore, I am in dire stribes, barely knowing Greek and rusty Hebrew. There's a lot to learn, apparently.

So when you see someone saying that they have a Doctorate in Theology, ask them if they at least know Koine greek. If they don't, they don't know what they are talking about.

Academia gone mad/evil

Sometimes academics come up with weird things. This news shows that this is one of those things that should never be supported, yet, there are some who are willing to excuse Pedophilia, even promoting it as a sexual orientation:

….classifies pedophilia as simply another sexual orientation and decries the “stigma” attached to pedophilia,…

Totally disgusting and incredible. But we have been here before. Decades ago, academics and lobbyists did the same things in order to normalize homosexuality.

… similar lobbying, then by homosexual activists, led to the declassification of homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973 in the DSM. As a result of the DSM declassification, debate regarding homosexuality and the many documented harms associated with the homosexual lifestyle has been all but shut down in academic psychological circles.

This is a trend which we must guard against. You can read more about it here.