I have a couple of books in my possession dealing with koine greek and how it translates in to modern English when reading the Bible.

Are there any Mormons anywhere in the world who study such a subject?I have never heard of any Mormon studying such a language,but I know Joseph Smith might have tried to study Hebrew.

I don't know of any. Studying ancient Greek is something that real pastors in protestant churches who are credentialed from schools like Moody's bible college (back East) would take the time to study. Maybe the students at Hillsdale college would as well. But Mormons aren't into studying theology or logic like Catholics might.

The mormon leadership is more into business and law degrees. The closest credentialed mormon leader in theology, may have been Boyd Packer, because he had a BYU BS degree in teaching seminary to teenagers. And even that degree probably wasn't worth much in learning any Greek or Latin, since BYU is second rate when it comes to Theology scholarship?

Actually, I had a professor of New Testament at BYU who had studied koine Greek and frequently referred to the original Greek in his lectures. I'm sure he was a Mormon.

And I was still Mormon when I studied classical Greek for a year as a graduate student in linguistics.

I also own two copies of the New Testament with the Greek and English side by side.

You are far braver than I am. I took a shot at studying "classical" Greek a while back. I am definitely a "language" person, bilingual (English/Spanish) and know enough German, French, English, and modern Greek to find my way around while visiting those countries.

For one thing, the "classical" Greek textbook was the sorriest mess of an introductory-level book I've ever seen. Imagine - introducing the concepts of male-female-neuter, verb conjugations, agreement of nouns and adjectives, and I forget what-all else, ALL IN THE FIRST CHAPTER!! And of course, this is in the Greek alphabet, which wasn't that big of a deal, as I had studied it before.

I could only take it for three or four weeks. I have never dropped out of a language class before, nor felt the need to. The teacher, a charming young guy going for his PhD in Classical Studies or something like that, told me that I was one of the better students in the class. (Anything I got right was pure guesswork.)

It was awful - students were dropping like flies. Everyone in that class had studied at least one other language, so it wasn't as if we didn't understand the basics of putting language together.

I genuinely salute anyone who can master this stuff. For me, a trained linguist, it was a nightmare.

The presumption was that people came to Greek via other languages. Usually people studied a few years Latin before Greek, or at least something like German or French. That is obviously what happened with your textbook.

If you do Latin before Greek, you find there is some similarity in grammar. Or at least I would say classical Greek is more like Latin grammatically than English - lots of case endings for one

I thought they studied adamic language.

In took a year of ancient Greek at the U and was nominally a Mormon at the time, but I assume you meant Mormon leaders. I don't think so. They are generally business men with no training in anything related to theology of ancient languages. I was more interested in classical Greek literature than the NT. However, we did do some readings in the gospels as the Greek is easier for beginners . It is also pretty rough and not always grammatical.

I took some attic Greek in college. I was Sunday school teacher of my singles ward at the time. I regularly incorporated the original Greek during the lessons. The class really seemed to like delving into the philology with me.

Joseph Smith was the last Mormon to study Greek apparently though, it wasn't "all Greek" to Joseph. From an article about it all:

The Greek Psalter Incident

Professor Henry Caswall, a professor, reverand and skeptic of Joseph Smith, visited Nauvoo on April 18 & 19, 1842. Caswell claims to have given Joseph Smith a very old Greek Psalter to examine and asked him what it was. (A Psalter is a volume containing the Book of Psalms and which often contains other devotional material. In the early Middle Ages Psalters were amongst the most popular types of manuscripts, rivaled only by the Gospel Books.) Caswell knew that Joseph was involved with translating other ancient documents, such as the Book of Mormon from Reformed Egyptian and the Book of Abraham from Egyptian papyri, therefore Caswall most likely wanted to see if he could trick Joseph with his ancient Greek manuscript. Professor Caswell reported that Joseph examined the ancient document and replied that it was a Dictionary of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics. Caswall knew Joseph was wrong as this was a known Greek Psalter and definitely not Egyptian. Caswall says that he told this incident to Mormon apostle Dr. William Richards who said "Sometimes Mr. Smith speaks as mere man. If he gave a wrong opinion respecting the book, he spoke as a mere man."


I had to laugh because it seems Joseph had a one size fits all answer for everything----It's Egyptian! Egyptian hieroglyphics. Reformed Egyptian writings. Egyptian Papyri. "Walk Like An Egyptian"---he must have had something to do with that too.

"Hey. I know what this book needs. Reformed Egyptian horses and chariots racing through Guatemala! Reformed Egyptian pyramids in the Yucatan! Egyptian Wheat. Yeah. That's it! That oughta get this thing sold in Canada for a pretty penny."

There is evidence that Smith was more interested in Hebrew than Greek. Even in the Book of Mormon one can find the odd bit of mangled Hebrew e.g. deseret for deberet.

Later on it is documented that Smith took Hebrew lessons off an actual Jew (rabbi?). I forget his name.

I thought they studied reformed egyptian.

How could Joseph Smith possibly have mastered anything Greek when he had a hard enough time with the English language.

They was yet wroth. In them days. They done all these things (actual phrases in original BoM)

https://www.deseret.com/2016/3/31/20585705/editing-out-the-bad-grammar-in-the-book-of-mormon#the-book-of-mormon

Any educated person knows his mastery of languages was an impossibility unless they dip into magical thinking.

It is a lesson to us all. If you are going to write anything prophetic, then you need Grammarly.

I have absolutely no problem with Joseph Smith's supposed grammatical mistakes. Bear in mind that spelling was not as standardized back then as now. Some of his grammar was perfectly normal for his time and place. Also, if you believe the story, he wasn't translating by his own inspiration but someone else's.

Yes, I used to have a working knowledge of Greek. I still have a Greek NT, although it's a Nestlé text which makes it biased. I've even studied some Hebrew...

NT Greek is fairly easy to read - at least in the Gospels. John has the fanciest Greek and I think Mark has the simplest. It is much easier to read than Attic/Athenian Greek.

I used to bring up Greek and Hebrew in Institute, Sunday School etc. I got filthy looks for it, and was often slapped down. No one wanted to know. There was one guy who brought up Greek in his talks and got away with it, but I have no idea of how.

That is very true and why we were exposed to NTGreek. It was easier

Joseph Smith's story is predicated on being given word for word, letter by letter from the Lord during the translation. It is reassuring that a perfect being like God even suffers from bad grammar too. This may explain the poor sentence structure as well in his collection of telestial tweets (ie Doctrine and Covenants)

Once you start studying the ancient languages you run into problems when comparing it to modern revelation/translation. Modern prophets see the old writings through the eyes of tradition and magic.

An easy example of how ignorance is passed off as knowledge. Brigham Young when making a statement about priesthood abuses.

D&C 121:37,38

That they may be conferred upon us, it is true; but when we undertake to cover our sins, or to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, or to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn, Amen to the priesthood or the authority of that man.

38 Behold, ere he is aware, he is left unto himself, to kick against the pricks, to persecute the saints, and to fight against God.


So the original meaning of "Amen" is an affirmation or agreement. So in the D&C, Brigham is trying to condemn They guy misusing his priesthood. Using Amen as meaning an ending to that guy's priesthood. Instead, he just said he agrees with it!

This is because that was the slang at the time. But, that gets enshrined into mormon scripture with the opposite damn meaning.

Long story short: Mormons don't research and when they do they run afoul of other mormon crap because most mormons never bother to study history, not even the leaders.

Nice point.

Preaching to the choir takes the stress out of the job?

When your followers are obligated, supposedly by God himself, to believe everything you say since you are the one true prophet, why would you waste your time researching to ensure accuracy in your agenda?

Like my TBM Mom. She knows practically nothing about her church except that it is true and she is going to the CK. Details don't matter to her as they are trumped by her iron testimony and she is the first to agree with with BKP in the truth not being all that useful, and in fact, quite the opposite.