I’ve posted often enough on the issue of learning Biblical languages that I don’t feel the need to link to my own thoughts on the topic. However, I’ve been part of an interesting conversation over at Hebrew and Greek Reader. It all started with an image my friend Adam created to help himself learn the names of various body parts–in Hebrew. Our discussion over on Hebrew and Greek Reader gave rise to a second post on that blog which further outlines Daniel and Tonya’s view on the subject.
The topic is fairly sprawling, and so I’d like to limit myself in this post to interacting with Daniel and Tonya’s thoughts on why we learn Biblical languages, and how that influences the goals that one has when learning a Biblical language.
Daniel and Tonya (hereafter D&T because it’s faster to type) start out their discussion by examining the question of end use goals for Biblical Hebrew.
Most of her [Karyn Traphagen] students take Hebrew to fulfill a language requirement in preparation for ministry. Some are preparing for a PhD. And adding Tonya and I into the equation, we did and do Hebrew to better confess Scripture. What are the end-goals for these three groups? To read and exegete a text.
So far, I agree with the letter of what D&T are saying, though I suspect we might differ on exactly what constitutes “exegesis.” Nevertheless, I find the next sentence fascinating, “Using the language for communication is not in view.” A fascinating statement given the fact that I think it could be argued quite persuasively that reading and writing are forms of communication. If, indeed, they are not, and only the spoken word constitutes communication than we would need to come up with a classification for what is taking place when people email or text message–but I digress. The above statement aside, I’m still following D&T’s argument, to a point.
Where I begin to get stuck, and hopefully D&T and I can continue to interact on this whole topic, is the idea that grammatical knowledge is mutually exclusive to what might be termed a working knowledge of the language; that is, when one is able to begin thinking in a language. As it happens I agree completely with D&T that memorizing paradigms doesn’t need to be a top priority. I also agree that using the tools one has at one’s disposal is a good thing. However, if students of classical Hebrew do not learn to sight read (which I define as being able to read a passage and understand the gist of what is going on without the use of a lexicon) at least fairly simple passages, they will never use the language. Some of this is simple vocab acquisition. Lexicons are okay, but far better to know the word off the top of your head, even if you need to go look up a few of the words before having a translation you would be comfortable sharing with someone else. Even better if you know what the Hebrew word means not as an English gloss, but because of several Hebrew synonyms (ie, much like we understand the meaning of English words, if English is your first language). In my experience someone is not going to make use of the Hebrew and Greek that they may have learned in seminary or elsewhere if they need to look up every fourth word in a lexicon. Suddenly, reading a chapter of Scripture takes more than an hour. I think there are advantages to forcing someone to slow down in their reading of Scripture, but there are better, and less frustrating ways, of achieving that end.
I also agree with D&T that perhaps the goal of “thinking” in another langauge is too vague and imprecise. I do like their word though, “automaticity.” To some extent, when one looks at a text of Scripture in Hebrew, certain things should be automatic. If you see ויאמר it shouldn’t even require thought to parse it and understand it (notice, not “translate it”). If that is not automatic, you do not know Biblical Hebrew.
So, to sum up, I disagree with D&T primarily in that I believe one must have a solid knowledge of the language, beyond the simple ability to use tools, in order to truly make use of the language and in the end, in order to do exegesis. Put a different way, “automaticity” is a good goal, and even a needed intermediate goal in learning a language, though I agree that memorizing endless paradigms is tedious and that there are better ways of acquiring “automaticity.” However, I have to also say that I’d like more people to learn Hebrew not to do grammatical exegesis, but simply to read the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew, without the intermediary of a translator who is, after all, a traitor.
Some quick responses:
What’s exegesis to you? Why do you think we disagree?
I should be more specific about specific kinds of communication. Of course reading and writing are communicative things humans do. What I meant was that the idea of learning biblical Hebrew or Koine to communicate with native speakers is absurd. My comments about communicating were largely in response to a presentation Adam and I saw at a NAPH session by the Cohelet project. It seeks to teach biblical Hebrew as if it would be used as a spoken language that has living native speakers. I find this erroneous. I should be more specific. Thanks for the catch. By the way, “automaticity” is Diana Pulido’s word. She’s the second language acquisition consultant for the cohelet project.
I like and agree with your assesment of sight reading: its a practical issue not a pedagogical one. We need to be able to do it so we don’t get frustrated all the time. I think we can be more precise as to how and when we make that a goal. Also, this is a place where we can use (and teach how to use) digital resources.
Great conversation.
Daniel and Tonya, regarding exegesis I simply get nervous when we start talking about grammatical exegesis as some form of “super-understanding” for Scripture. I’d get nervous if someone did grammatical exegesis on a paper I wrote, and sometimes I think we focus too much on the minutia and miss out on the big picture. That isn’t to say knowing grammar isn’t important, I just think we need to step back sometimes and realize that a passage doesn’t necessarily have application to our 21st century context.
I agree that learning a dead language to communicate with native speakers is absurd. However, I’m not sure that the Cohelet project wants to have its students communicate with non-existent language speakers. Rather, they understand that all language is communicative, and learning it via an ulpan method is probably the best way to go as far as understanding what the language is communicating (which should really be the first goal of reading the Bible in Hebrew or Greek, only after that can we talk about exegesis).
So exegesis does not regualarly include grammatical and syntactic analysis? We don’t think grammatical understanding is a super-understanding of Scripture either. But it is necessary for us second language users. As well as big picture issues, which is being greatly advanced by text linguistics. I don’t see the correlation between grammatical analysis and modern application. Can you explain?
For confessional reasons, I don’t like the term “dead language”. And for linguistic reasons, I think it an imprecise term. You’re right, the cohelet project doesn’t aim at communication with dead people. But it teaches like you’d teach modern Hebrew. For me, that’s problematic. I like the idea of using it for vocab, but that’s about it. Why not just take modern Hebrew? I did. It made my biblical Hebrew better.
For what it’s worth, I once saw a documentary about research in brain activity during speech acts (sorry, no source on this one—I think it was on TLC). One group was made up of native speakers, another of fluent, 2nd language speakers. The study showed that the two groups exhibited activity in different parts of the brain as they spoke. This seems to lend credence to D&T’s position that there is a fundamental/biological difference between childhood language acquisition and foreign language learning. But that is not the same thing as saying one can’t internalize (or learn to “think in”, if that is the same thing) a second language. I may be mistaken, but I take it that this distinction between the two processes is D&T’s point, not that a certain level of fluency can not be obtained in more than one language.
As for whether this is possible with a dead language— Calvin, ask prof. Kline sometime about his old teacher who dreamed in Akkadian!
Just a couple of thoughts for you:
Communication is a fairly dynamic process. In the case of spoken language a speaker communicates with an audience, in some cases one person, in other cases there are multiple people in the audience. In the case of writing however, there is a writer and there is a reader. Now, hopefully nobody is going to deny that writing is a communicative effort and that the author is communicating with the reader, but to what extent is the reader communicating with the author? There might be some merit to differentiating between the communication of speech and the communicative act of writing and reading. Now, this does not preclude spoken communication as a means of building the necessary skills to understand written text. I think learning to speak a language is an excellent way to learn how to understand the written text. However, I would not necessarily say that the process works the other way around (learning to read first and speak second, you won’t be able to keep up). Finally, take all of this with a grain of salt. I’ve been programming all day, and these are only slightly developed thoughts.
D&T – I may have spoken unclearly. I think that at times people tend to learn Hebrew with the expectation that grammatical exegesis will open all these amazing vistas onto the text. That’s often not the case. It is good to understand the grammar. But at times I think we over analyze the Biblical text from a grammatical stand point. I’m not saying we shouldn’t do grammatical exegesis, just that at times it seems to me we need to simple read what the text says and understand it at that level before delving into a grammatical analysis. Of course, to some extent non-native speakers do grammatical analysis while reading. But I digress.
Luke – I’d love to find that documentary. I agree that there is a difference between being a native speaker and learning a language later in life. There is plenty of research that indicates young children acquire languages more easily than adults. I think I’ve heard that story from Prof. Kline.
Adam – You’re making sense, and after a day of coding, what could be better than talking about Biblical languages? I agree with pretty much everything you said, and my point is really what you already mentioned; acheiving a certain amount of automaticity with classical Hebrew is a huge aid in being able to understand the written text.
D&T – Perhaps part of the issue is a difference in goals. I want people to learn Hebrew to read the text. I think you want this as well, but I think your more immediate goal is exegesis. Is that a fair assessment?
Calvin, you are right about thinking in it. I learned Japanese in country first, then Greek and Hebrew. How you live in a second language determines how you approach the text of scripture. Academics can ruin your total comprehension of the flow of thought of the writer. You must develop your own style of entering this arena.