Dr. Rob Plummer author of Beginning with New Testament Greek shares insights to learning biblical Greek!

From time to time in Master New Testament in Greek, we sit down with professors and authors and ask them questions about the works they’ve been working on and also the material that they’ve been publishing. This time, we sat down with Dr. Rob Plummer, and the members of Master New Testament Greek put some questions to him to help them with their own Greek mastery journey.

Hi, I’m Darryl Burling from Biblical Mastery Academy, and each week I help people just like you master the Greek of the New Testament one step at a time. And if that sounds like you go ahead and take our free getting started course at bma.to/getstarted.

So from time to time the Greek Mastery Membership sits down with professors and people who have written books and things like that, just to talk through what is it that drives them and, and get an understanding of their work and what it is that they’ve been working on.

This time Greek Mastery Members asked questions related to learning Biblical Greek.
Some of these questions were questions about Dr. Plummer personally. Some of them were questions more related to Greek. One of the things about Dr. Plummer is that he understands that Greek is a responsibility that we share…

… a privilege, in a way that we have if we can learn the language. And so he carries himself with this. And so one of the questions was, who was it? What are the, some of the influences and the authors who’ve influenced him in this way by placing upon him this feeling of responsibility? Here’s his answer. 

Well, thinking about influences on me,

I mean, you’re, you’re quite honestly, I, I feel a little bit impoverished when we talk about historic authors informing me in the way that perhaps some of my colleagues could speak of. I think about my, my respected colleague, Michael Haken. And you almost feel like he, he hangs out with Jonathan Edwards. You know, he knows, and he knows all these puritans who,

who I’ve never even heard of, you know, and read their diaries. And I wish I could tell you that I had done that, but I have not. I mean, I think that for me, speaking about influence, especially looking, you know, over the course of my education and subsequently, people more recent have influenced me. Probably more so like Don Carson,

I love DA Carson, his writings, I think he’s very, he’s just tied to the text. He, he allows the text to, you know, he just bows before the, the authority of the text. So I, I think of, of living scholars, maybe, of all scholars that I’ve read, he, he’s influenced me some of the most.

Now I do love reading historic Christian work. I mean, I love Luther. I love reading Luther. I’m always challenged by him. He’s so provocative. I love CSS Lewis. Not that I agree with everything CSS Lewis said, because, you know, you read CS Lewis, you’re like, oh, this is so good, so good. And then he is like,

maybe there’s purgatory. You’re like, no, there’s not purgatory. Stop it. Yeah, no. So, so, but I love he, he’s the way he can phrase things like, when I read c s Lewis, I find that then when I’m walking around, I’m thinking about stuff more than, than something I’m, I’m just read and leave behind.

But I feel, I mean, I have on my, on my deck, on my shelves over here, I see it almost every day, the complete collective works of Jonathan Edwards, which I think leaves out some of his works. But at the time it was printed, you know, it was these two huge volumes. And I feel guilty for not reading it every time I see it.

But I, you know, I’ve read some Jonathan Edwards, but I, I’m not, I I wish I were one of these people who, who could, you know, I just feel like I know Augustine. Yeah, I’ve read Augusta, quite a bit of Augustine, but I’m just not, not the historic, the historic theologian, the, his theological historian like Greg Allison or Michael Haken or something like that is,

I did a few years ago do a book with a friend Matt Haste called, held in Honor Wisdom for Your Marriage from Voices in the Past. That was a lot of fun because we, we found 50 quotes spread all throughout the 2000 years of church history, beginning in the first century, going all the way to John Piper. Just kind of like nail you,

bam, kick you in the stomach. This is what marriage is about, paragraphs. And so I, I love the, that’s possibly the fav of the books I’ve written or co-written or edited. That’s maybe my favorite, maybe because half of it is not written by me because it’s, it’s just the words of Luther and Edwards and Augustine and Ignatius and all these people.

And it’s just, it’s, there’s a depth, you know, like it’s one thing to get marriage advice from a 47 year old. You’re like, okay, or you look a bit older than I am, Dennis. You know, you get marriage advice from someone who’s been married 40 years. F you’re like, wow, you know, but how about someone who lived 1500 years ago,

you know, and didn’t, their life didn’t end in some kind of public scandal, you know? But there’s, there’s this weight to, to it that I, I really like. 

Another question that came up was, other than your job, what is it that drives you or motivates you to continue to grow your understanding of Greek? And this really goes to the question of motivation.

Yeah, that’s, that’s funny. The, the first clause there, other than your job. And it is, my goodness, I do have a great privilege in that I am, my employment is to do what I love to do. You know, like, I love, we can’t let this get out because someone might stop paying me. But what I,

you know, I I love to read the Greek New Testament. Think about it. You, Dennis, you’re at least you said you’re doing the Daily Dose. I have this little, some of you may be familiar, I have this little screencast where I read through Greek, and I don’t get any compensation for that. I mean, we, we receive donations to pay for fees,

you know, internet, email, service fees and that kind of stuff. But I, I’m doing it for free. ’cause I love it. I do love it. And so, yeah, I mean the, the, the Bible is the word of God, and, and there’s just something beautiful and rich and nourishing about reading the scriptures in the original language.

People who don’t have that opportunity. We have wonderful translations. So I’m not, not in any way disparaging that if someone doesn’t have the opportunity, but if we do, you know, what fun, what fun. 

Sometimes when you learn a language, it takes a little while to get to know how the language works. And so this next question was asked by somebody who also speaks French, and he asked this question, what’s the benefit of learning Greek so well, that translation takes no effort?

This is a great question. So listen to how Dr. Plummer responds. Yeah, That’s a good, good question. And I think it’s just recognizing that we’re all on a lifetime journey to read the Bible better in Greek and Hebrew. And there are,

it’s just, it’s not gonna come instantaneously. I’ve found for many students who are frustrated with their fluency, like they wish they could read easier, one of the things that really helps is we do this one week bootcamp on campus where you just four and a half days, you just, you’re in the classroom. I make you read over and over and over some of the same texts and something happens about the second or third day for students.

They’re like, I can read this and I understand it, you know, and I think it’s just, there’s the many of us, we don’t have the margin in our lives to read enough texts or to read them long enough that we, we develop that fluency. There’s, so some of the people you saw at sbl l I mean, one of the reasons that they could do that is that’s,

that’s their job, right? They’re, they’re paid to read the Bible and think about it. And so they, they have that, that privilege, that that responsibility. I think one of the benefits as we grow, all of us are growing in fluency and, and ability. One of the benefits of that is the easier we can read it, the more we can just soak in the meaning and not be tripped up by,

whoa, what is that word? Or that’s strange. What is that thing doing there? You know? So we’re not tripped up by the grammar. We’re focusing on just understanding the meaning and responding to it. So increased fluency, leads, reads to increased. It’s like if you, sounds like you read French, so when you’re reading French, you’re not thinking,

oh, is this a passe sola? Is this I mfe You just are reading it. You’re just thinking about what it’s meaning. And, and it’s hard to do that. I mean, Greek, unless you’re speak modern Greek, we are learning to read. And modern Greek is, is different from biblical Greek. There there are different auxiliary like uses of the verb,

and they create tenses that we don’t have it. So it’s, it’s a different animal. But we’re, we’re learning to read a language that we don’t speak to people. You know, we’re not going around asking, how’s it going? You know, where’s the bathroom? We’re, we don’t say those things. Whereas if you speak French, you say,

you know, you know, you know how you could just immediately say those things. And so it’s, it’s, I wish, I wish our brains could be, and I know there are groups that try to do coin a as a living language, but then how do you keep speaking it without, you know, without being some weirdo who only talks to five other people on the internet,

you know, you like, how do you, I don’t know. It’s just, so I, I think if we can incorporate more living language elements in turn teaching biblical Greek, it would be great, but it’s, yeah. So I’m commiserating with your, your say, I, I wish I could, you know, read Greek, like, like I read French,

sort of the, my brain would be wired for that more. That’s I think a desire a lot of people have. 

Now, this raised a question during the time that Dr. Plummer was answering this question, someone else sent me a message asking a follow-up question. That question I think is a really important question today. And that is, what is the value of being able to speak Greek fluently?

And this goes to these groups of people that are around today who are really advocating learning to speak and converse in coin a Greek. And so this is a really great question here. 

I just had a colleague who teaches Latin here at the seminary, who went to a camp where they have to sign something where they’ll only speak Latin for the whole week.

And he is doing it more to investigate how this works, how to incorporate some of that into his own teaching. Yeah, I’m, I’m certainly not opposed to it. I think it’s, it’s, it’s great to, to I think l learning, it is true, your brain is wired differently when you’re speaking a language as opposed to just reading it.

But I also recognize just the limitations of time and ability and communities that we live in. And so I, I’m inclined to think that, that you’re, while you’re gonna have some of these groups that, you know, come here for a week or two and speak coin a the, the way that’s gonna survive is probably a little bit more of incorporating parts of it.

Like, I, I teach my students when they learn vocabulary to speak it out loud, to act it out, like, to act it. So they’re using their body, they’re using their, their voice. But I think it probably unrealistic to think about them having a communication about politics in, in coin a Greek. I just, and let’s be,

let’s be honest, I mean, that’s not the way biblical, that’s biblical languages have been taught for hundreds and hundreds of years. Yes, RA yeah, Latin, there was, Latin was a living language, but even those guys were not speaking in coin, a Greek or in Hebrew. If they knew Hebrew, they were, they did not learn them as,

as living, living languages. But I mean, we, I wish we could go on a time machine and learn to speak coin age, you know, and, and let it soak into us. But it’s just recognizing the limitation chronological and, you know, natural physi, physiological limitations that we have, how we learn and who we’re around.

So I hope you found those questions and answers helpful. Thank you so much to Dr. Plummer, who’s been not only willing to have this Q&A with us, but also has been a great supporter of Biblical Mastery Academy. Very thankful for all his support. 

And if you’re interested in learning more about Greek, then I wanna encourage you to take our free getting started course at bma.to/getstarted. And this is gonna give you a roadmap to mastery fluency of the Greek New Testament. And hope you’ve enjoyed this. I look forward to seeing you in the next post!

By Dr. Darryl Burling
Founder of Biblical Mastery Academy