For people who would want to do a deep intellectual study of the bible,they might study ancient Greek or Aramaic.I know people who might want to be a protestant pastor might study some ancient language.

Do any Mormons bother to study such languages,or are they too busy doing home teaching?

Short answer: No.

Rarely (there are a few) do morgbots study Aramaic, Greek or Hebrew.

You would think that with all the bilingual RMs out there, that TSCC would focus on Greek and Hebrew to better understand the Bible. But that really would be counterproductive to their sales force. The Bible is not consistent with Mormonism on so many levels. It is better to focus on modern languages for the good of spreading the MLM message through their missionary sales force.

+ 1000000!

Thanks for the laugh this morning!

Part of the seminary education of our pastors is studying both Greek and Hebrew. Our pastors often explain passages of scripture by referring to the original language.

This is one of my favorite parts of Bible study. Language/culture plays such a big part in learning about those times.

IMO, that's one of the biggest problems with most Christians. They fact that they read the Bible without any context. No matter what translation one reads, it's problematic because the words don't carry the same underlying/implied meanings in one language to another. They don't know about the culture those people were living in or what was going on in history, either.

Ditto with the Lutherans - I did my Greek at my first sem in Ohio, and my Hebrew at my next sem after internship. My second sem also offered Arabic, Aramaic, and I think even Akkadian on request for the masochistic PhD students.

That sounds like a really interesting school! Any of those would have been interesting to learn.

Of course they do...Joeamaic. Requires a felt hat and two rocks...

Doesn't BYU (in its various locations) have a "Reformed Egyptian" department or major? If not, why not? This is the language that the BoM and the BoA were written in, and that Joseph Smith mastered? Wouldn't that be a logical ancient language choice for those who wanted to study, know, and understand the original language of LDS Corp texts?

BYU doesn't even have classes in regular Egyptian. Probably because anyone who's ever studied it has left their church after taking one glance at the Book of Abraham...

Right? Ha ha ha

Ancient Egyptian hiroglyphics are another matter.

There are no extant texts available for study; only a short list of characters submitted to a New York scholar,Professor Anton?, by JS for validation. "I cannot read a closed book."

That's what I was thinking. Send an application to BYU. Tell them you want to study Reformed Egyptian.

"We don't have any classes in Reformed Egyptian."

"Why not?"

"Because there's no such language. How can we have classes in something that doesn't exist?"

"I see. Thank you."

"If not, why not?"

Because most likely people wouldn't be interested in that major. What makes you think that any university would want to offer classes in a major that nobody would go to?

The majority of non-LDS Christians I know don't bother learning it, either. A very few handful, normally the type that are training to be pastors/priests and many of those left Christianity after serious study.

I agree with Marcion. There's no benefit to kolobians studying ancient languages when they claim to have english-speaking elohim on their celestial walkie-talkie.

Other churches don't claim modern revelation. All they have is the hearsay of the bible. So they feel that studying hearsay in the original language the hearsay was scribbled down in will somehow lend credibility to the hearsay they're peddling on sunday.

Either way, so-called modern revelation in english or so-called ancient revelation in a dead language are both hearsay so why emphasize it to the lay membership? They should be out recruiting new tithe-payers and channeling the money up through the Q12's downlines.

I know a lot of people who studied ancient languages at BYU, many of them to enhance their ability to study religion.

I took 3 years of Hebrew, but I chose modern rather than Biblical. They're fairly different, but similar enough to see that Smith and company were playing fast and loose with Semitic source materials.

I had some Latin at BYU too, and I had friends who took quite a bit of classical Greek.

want to know

:)

The study of ancient languages is usually accompanied by some other discipline that requires knowledge of ancient languages. Other than that, why would any one what to study languages that aren't spoken today.

That said I did have two years of Latin.

Latin is sueful to learn Romance/Roman based languages. Historians and theologans syudy ancient langauges to pursue their carres and interests.

Modern Romance languages are more useful to learning Romance languages, in my opinion.

I majored in Latin and from that have at least a working knowledge of French and Italian. With just a basic class in each (community ed in the case of Italian) I can read the languages. I would not be able to do that without Latin.Latin makes it much easier to pick up a another Romance language.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/2012 09:04PM by bona dea.

I don't doubt that it is helpful. I learned Spanish and then learned Latin (though not extensively). I would say that learning a living language that is spoken and has evolving nuances and dialects prepares somebody a lot more for further learning than does a language that is primarily read.

That being said, the two languages I branched out with were Italian and Portuguese. French is still incredibly difficult for me. Perhaps if I had a better understanding of Latin then I would pick up French a bit faster. :)

I found French pretty easy after Latin. Speaking it is hard though. I really have a problem pronoucing French words

My SIL actually did study ancient languages; so many in fact that there are less than 100 people worldwide whose knowledge can compare with hers.

Sadly though, that didn't make her leave morondom - either in behaviour nor emotionally. She even wanted to use the Book of Abraham in her thesis. You can probably guess her professor's reaction to that - it needed a priesthood-blessing to re-assure her that she was on the right track, not her professor.

Mormons are not intellectual and will not read theology or books that might question LDS history and doctrine.. The only TBM researchers who study LDS theology and history, and comparitive faiths, are the apologists or those who figured out they were scammed.

"Mormons are not intellectual"

Bwahahaha! Really?

Saying that Mormons are not intellectual is painting Mormonism with an incredibly wide brush stroke and is irrational. On the other hand, saying that Mormons ARE intellectual is making the same mistake in judgment.

You don't know enough Mormons to make the claim that Mormons are or are not intellectual.

Just look around you here at RFM. We are surrounded by people who are intellectual now and were intellectual when they were Mormons. They are easy examples of why your statement is untrue.

A close friend of mine recently retired as an Institute Director. He taught "the scriptures" for decades. The idea of learning ancient Greek (Koine) or Hebrew never occurred to him. All he needed was what the GA's have said on things.

Do you bother to study ancient languages to try to prove yourself right about various topics? You ask why they don't and the answer is that because learning a language is hard. Learning a dead language is harder.

If America was full of people who learned Aramaic or Koine Greek, but Mormons oddly decided not to learn those languages, then I think we would have an interesting point. But the fact is that most Americans don't and neither do Mormons.

I studied ancient Greek but was on my way out.I was more interested in the classical literature too There were a few Mormons in the class but it isn't very common for Mormons in my experience and I don't know of any GAs who have a knowledge of Greek or Aramaic or even Latin for that matter. On the other hand, many priests and ministers know at least a little of all three.