I came across this very interesting blog called Ancient Hebrew Poetry today and spent some time reading several posts. John Hobbins is a biblical languages scholar with a specialty in Hebrew poetry, as the blog title indicates. Here is a quote from one interesting post on language study in American seminaries. Read the whole post here.
The
situation is the following: seminaries and theological schools in North
America, more often than not, do not require
students to learn the languages of the Bible and of the core literature
of the tradition
they are charged to uphold. In those that do – e.g., evangelical
seminaries that require Greek and Hebrew, conservative Lutheran
seminaries that
require Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and German, Catholic seminaries that
require
Latin - students nowadays come to the seminaries with little or no
background
in said languages. The result is inevitable. Overwhelmed by many other
claims on time and mind, students end up with a merely cursory
and superficial preparation in the literature that is supposed to be
compass,
mirror, and anchor of the ministry they will carry out.
Many students finish seminary with a semblance of familiarity with
critical methods, and a few memorable anecdotes to tell about their OT profs,
who, by all
accounts, are cooler than their NT colleagues, but with no thorough knowledge
of, or “chapter by chapter” and “verse
by verse” familiarity with, the contents
of biblical literature.
Seminaries that have kept language requirements in place, a laudable
policy, are nevertheless failing to raise up priests and pastors with a love of
biblical learning in the original languages. The vast majority of students,
upon graduation and ordination, place their Nestle-Aland and BHS on a bookshelf
of their study, where they collect dust forever and ever, amen.
Which way forward?
I particularly like his line that the literature of the Bible is "supposed to be
compass,
mirror, and anchor of the ministry they will carry out." What person with a high view of inspiration would argue with that? Read further into the post where he compares seminary education in Europe with American seminary education and you will be amazed at what we typically do not get here.
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