Why Every Christian & Messianic Person Must Learn Their Latin

Seems a silly thing to study for most Protestant folks. And since most messianic converts come from Protestant denominations the shunning of Latin persists into the new communities too.

But why is the knowledge of the Roman tongue so important? We speak English after all right? And our Scriptures are handed down to us in Hebrew and Greek not Latin. Why would we need to know that old dead language?

You sure our Scriptures were handed down to us in Hebrew and Greek but not Latin?…

Your “what” was handed down in Greek and Hebrew but not Latin?

Scripture.

You’re what?

Scriptura.

Latin for “Writing”. The most common term for our Bibles other than Bible is Scripture. An anglicized Latin word.

But so what? It’s just a word. Why does it matter what language it’s from? It’s English now so who cares? Well few care…but that’s only cause few know how important it is where words come from, how words are used, misused, and change based on that use and misuse.

Did you know that over half the words in the English language are derived from Latin? Even moreso, if we account for the ones the English absorbed from the French after the Norman invasion, which French words evolved from Latin.

With well over half the English language being Latin or Latin-via-french, we’d say that makes the language fairly invaluable to know.

And what’s more, inspite of the fact our translators claim to have rendered their renditions of the Scriptures from Hebrew and Greek into English…they relied heavily on the Latin vulgate translation when doing so.

They also accepted most of the work of John Wycliffe who made his translation into English not from Hebrew and Greek but rather from Greek and Latin. And what he did do very often was simply anglicize Latin words instead of conveying their meaning.

The result is English bibles that contain much Latin because half of English is Latin words anyway, because Wycliffe transliterated Latin into English instead of translating (and everyone repeated his work), and because many of the chosen words for translations we adopted into English from french and were already Latin in origin.

Could this be the source of so much confusion in our English understanding of Scripture?

We are trying to learn a Hebrew document as English speakers but the majority of our words come from a language that is dead, that we don’t understand, and that is not compatible with Hebrew thought, making it extremely difficult to convey the original message through that medium.

How long have theologians argued over faith verses works. Yet never do they consider that “faith” is an English variant of the french “faide” which derived from the Latin “fides” and meaning trusting and believing without seeing. But the Bible talks of “emuna” not “faith”. And emuna is deeds done in loyalty to a belief, cause, person or ideal.

An entire multi-generational war has been waged over this issue of faith verse works when faith was simply a terrible word choice by translators. Okay perhaps as a colloquialism. But the opposite of the Hebrew thought if we are aiming for translation.

Or take the word grace for example. It is an anglicized Latin word gratia. Basically both just mean favor. But in English Bible versions grace is implying the favor is unmerited. And gratia does not specify by definition merited nor unmerited. Yet it’s use in the Latin language was predominantly that of merited favor rather than its English traditional use.

Contrarywise chesed in Hebrew is more along the lines of favor that is earned by loyalty even though the task is too high for us to accomplish.

So much of our English terminology is this way. Even “Scriptura” which originally didn’t imply “holy” writing but simply any writing. A grocery list or a love note are both as much scriptura as the holy Writings of Moses all the way down to the Messiah’s disciples.

Guess where we get the word “disciple”… yup. Latin. But in this case not so bad. A student or apprentice. Similar to a talmid in Hebrew.

But our problem comes with adding in an unnecessary and unrelated step in our scribal duties. For every one word in Latin that matches the Hebrew for meaning, there are ten to twenty that make no sense as renditions.

Lucifer.

You thought this was the name of satan before he fell from heaven?

Why, cause the pastor said so?

Why did the devil have a Latin name?

And why did he not get this supposed primordial title till the vulgate version was written?

Why was that passage rendered as Heosphoros in Greek and Heylel in Hebrew?…not to mention the subject was the then king of Babylon and not the devil…but we digress.

Iniquity. Idolatry. Temple. Altar. Tabernacle. Prophet. Fornication. Salvation. Sanctification.

Resurrection. Spirit. Servant. Similitude. Fornication. Gentile.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

So very much of our religion is recycled Latin.

If we don’t know our Latin we will not recognize the deception. We won’t see the extra steps the scribes took to tread out of The Way to bring in a third language into their work through bad habit. Or to select English that made sense to Englishmen instead of English that helped Englishmen make sense of Hebrew and to try to coax the Hebrew message out of what Greek we have left of the disciples’ writings.

Yes we are likely stuck with what we have been given. But that doesn’t mean we need pretend what we were handed wasn’t tainted. If the lying scribes could take unrelated Latin and Latin derived words at random and plug them in to try to manufacture a British understanding of Scripture, we too can do likewise in reverse when we encounter such terms as grace and faith etc.

So let’s get learning shall we.

Question Everything
templecrier.com