Do we need to get inside the Hebrew minds of the New Testament authors?
The Claim
Someone in the modern Messianic movement posted the following on Facebook:
“1. The original Greek of the NT must be filtered through the lens of the Hebrew language.
2. There is a Hebrew language sentence going through the NT writer’s minds as they wrote down the Greek NT and scholars have successfully attempted to reconstruct the Hebrew behind the original Greek.”
The Problem
I am hesitant to comment on these claims because I know it could cause conflict with some of my Messianic Jewish brethren, but the above sentiments simply should not be ignored. (I hesitate to cite any written source due to my concern about personal conflicts).
First, you should know that I worked with a Jewish Christian ministry for 17 years; that I have a Master’s Degree in Jewish Studies from a Jewish university (Dropsie); that I have researched and published scholarly works on the history of early Jewish Christianity and the ancient Jewish-Christian dialogues; and that I have led study groups to Israel forty-seven times. Therefore, I know something about Jewish history and culture and I believe firmly that we need to appreciate better the Jewish background of the New Testament.
What I take umbrage with is the idea expressed in these two statements above, namely that the Jewish authors of the NT were thinking in Hebrew and writing in Greek so we need to get behind their Greek words to understand the Hebraic thought in their minds.
Consider the following. If it was that important to the NT author for us to know the Hebraic thoughts going on in his mind, then he would have expressed those thoughts in Hebrew rather than in Greek! What these comments are suggesting is actually an assault on the sufficiency of the NT Scriptures. The author is saying that the Greek words are not sufficient to convey the author’s intention so we must somehow discover the mental processes that were behind those words, as if anyone could ever do such a thing!
Secondly, this approach reveals an esoteric hermeneutic that sounds like this: “We have Hebraic insight that others don’t possess.” I am not being harsh when I say that this sounds nearly cultic in its orientation.
While the second century church father Papias did mention that Matthew composed the logia of Jesus in the “Hebraic language” (either Hebrew or more likely Aramaic), that group of logia has not survived for us to examine. Furthermore, Matthew’s Greek Gospel does not give any indication that it is “translation Greek” and it consists not of just the sayings (the logia) of Jesus but also of His deeds.
Finally, do we forget that when the two most “Jewish” of the NT epistles were written, namely Hebrews and James, their authors composed them in Greek, not in Hebrew! What did characterize their thought was some tremendous insights into the OT scriptures and they conveyed those thoughts clearly – in Greek!
The Value of the Greek Scriptures
I thank the Lord that He inspired these writers to compose their amazing writings in the lingua franca of the first century (Greek), not in a language that even most Jews could not read at that time. Hence the desperate need, even in pre-Christian times, for a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, namely the Septuagint. Why? Because that is the language that Jews understood! It was this Old Greek or LXX version that was the Old Testament that the NT writers used and quoted, with only a few clear examples of their citing the Hebrew Scriptures.
And in case someone remarks that this is a sour grapes argument by an old guy who doesn’t know Hebrew, I promise you that I do know Biblical Hebrew and have taught it on the college level and I am familiar enough with Modern Hebrew to at least keep from getting lost in Israel!
So don’t fall for statements like those above that appear to shut you out from secret insights that some mental archaeologist claims to have excavated out of a Jewish mind and that you can’t discover in your translations from the Greek New Testament.
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