Using New Testament Greek in Ministry (David A. Black)--A Discussion, Part I

Many moons ago, I benefited from reading David Black's work, Using New Testament Greek in Ministry. It has many wonderful features, but rather than officially review it, I'm going to discuss certain parts of the book.

Black gives some helpful warnings in the first portion of his work although he seems to have an axe to grind in at times. The book cites 1 Corinthians 8:1--a verse that blog readers likely know well. Then Black urges those who study Greek or ones who preach not to use Greek in front of a lay audience: he later takes some time to lambaste "cultists":

"Here we might learn a lesson from the cultists, who love to flaunt their 'superior' knowledge of the Scriptures by appealing to the original languages to 'prove' orthodox interpretations of the Bible wrong. The fact is that most cultists have only a superficial knowledge of Hebrew and Greek, if any at all (page 25)."

The "cultists" remain unnamed, at least here, but we can imagine ones that he might have in mind. Again, I like most of the book but find his criticism to be somewhat odd. I won't belabor the point; however, I wonder why it's such an act of pride to question "orthodox" beliefs; secondly, just how many cultists does Black know and what does he know about their background in Hebrew or Greek?

Black argues that "truth" will never be settled merely by appealing to grammatical rules or the meaning of words. I agree with him although I think both grammar and lexical semantics are important and it seems that he would concur. Yet Black assures us that people listening to a preacher or biblical expositor don't want to know about words or grammar. As another point of agreement with him, I try to avoid discussions with people who know little to nothing about aorist verbs or passive participles: we discuss such things on the blog or I talk with some of my students and friends about grammar and semantics, but not at someone's door while engaged in the public ministry like we did back in the pre-Covid days.

So Black again sounds the warning--I will quote him, then discuss other parts of his book in subsequent posts:

"Preachers are regrettably prone to try and impress people with their profound exegetical abilities. The greater the education, the greater the danger. But the truth is that people aren’t impressed with participles and prepositions. They are not even faintly interested in the aorist passive imperative. People want preaching anchored in their world, preaching that says: 'Here is what the text says, and this is what it is calling us to do.' Exegetes should never forget that the Greek New Testament was written in the common language of the day. Its appeal was to the people in the street, for it spoke clearly a language they understood."

See Proverbs 16:18; 1 Corinthians 14:9.