Learning Hebrew a little earlier than expected...help!

That's smart, not cheating! I "Get At" the languages with the tools I learned to use well in those courses and I think the tools courses at Liberty in the M.Div. program are sufficient to equip a pastor to "go deeper" with word studies etc.

BUT, I actually find my self doing a little bit less of than in preaching after taking those courses. Learning entry level Greek & Hebrew gave me a much deeper appreciation for the complexity of the languages and I tread a little bit more lightly than before.

Just throwing around a word study here and there seems seldom applicable in the pulpit. I will use BDB, Strong's, Young's, and the Complete Word Study tools in sermon prep to help me develop a stronger sense of the passage but I seldom bring the Greek exposition into the pulpit in a direct "In the Greek it says fashion..."

It strikes me that intro languages is a bit like intro psychology for a Pastor. It can be just enough to make you over confident and dangerous... :tonofbricks:

 

Agreed on all counts and you make the best argument for language study being requisite for pulpit ministry. If nothing else, it teaches you what NOT to do.

I told a class once that my language knowledge can either lead to the goldmine or the landmine and the choice is mine! I wish I was fluent enough to read the Greek and Hebrew as well as I read English. But being able to intelligently understand, say, why the translations of Gal 2:16 differ is good enough for the pastor as an exegete

 

Gotchya :thumbsup: Good stuff. I loved studying with Liberty. My doctoral studies with Tennessee Temple have been amazingly beneficial to the ministry as well. Have to tell myself to stop at some point. :laugh:

 

Interesting. They're giving you credit for a class lower than an intro? That usually doesn't happen, especially in languages. When I was at SBTS, you could only get credit for one of the intros to Heb or Greek but not both. Back in the day of the AMdiv, you couldn't get credit for either (you had to have proficiency past both)

I'm surprised they offer the tools classes now. The "Greek for the Rest of us" and the Hebrew version kinda supplants those. I did hear they were using them at one point and that's a good idea.

 

i hope you took no offense at my question. My undergrad language courses were every bit as hard as my seminary ones. Then again, I did do what is tantamount to a seminary education, just on the undergrad level. My alma mater is kinda famous for that.

 

Here is a site that I have found very helpful for vocabulary, both Greek and Hebrew. There are a number of ways to do it.

http://home.earthlink.net/~vikn/

Here is a another site that may be of help: http://www.laits.utexas.edu/hebrew/

BTW, I haven't found audio as helpful as visual, since we don't hear Hebrew, we read it. Hearing it generally won't help distinguish between, say, an aleph and a ayin, or a samech and a seen, or a tet and a tav.

For me, there's nothing like seeing it.

 

I can't decide if hearing it helped or not. I had audio cassettes for Hebrew and none for Greek. I guess it helped maybe a tad, but still, you're learning to read the language, so that's primary.