The Greek New Testament

A reader from Australia writes:

I am studying Latin and am interested in studying Greek also. I though you would be the one to ask for a recommendation of a good, Catholic Greek Bible. Are there any differences (e.g. Catholic/non-Catholic) in the many Greek editions of Scripture? Also, I think I remember you recommending the book on Biblical Greek by William Mounce. Is that right? Have you any other recommendations for a beginner?

The differences between Catholic and Protestant Bibles in the original languages are essentially confined to the Old Testament. There is not a dispute over the Greek text of the New Testament between the two groups. Both Catholic scholars and Protestant scholars (which is to say, leaving aside Catholic Douay-Rheims Onlyists and Protestant King James Onlyists) face the same set of options in determining the best readings for particular passages, and the discussion is not polarized along confessional lines.

For your purposes–learning to read in the Greek New Testament–more or less any edition will do. I wouldn’t even turn you away from one of the Textus Receptus editions for basic learning to read purposes (though these editions are not as accurate as contemporary ones done after the advent of New Testament textual scholarship). The standard version that most scholars, Catholic and Protestant, work from is the United Bible Societies/Nestle-Aland text.

Here is an inexpensive, leather-bound edition put out by the American Bible Society.

As far as textbooks to learn from, yes, I recommend Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek. It is the best text currently on the market, bar none. (At least until I get around to finishing mine, which is going to be some time, especially with Secret Project #1 filling up my schedule in the interim.) You also need the workbook that goes with it. If you want to get Mounce’s own lectures on tape or CD to self-study with, you can order them from his website.

Two dictionaries that I recommend are:

  • I also recommend Mounce’s Analytical Lexicon to the Greek New Testament, which is an excellent dictionary that parses each word found in the New Testament to help you figure out troublesome word forms.
  • And I highly recommend A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament by George Abbott-Smith, which is an excellent older dictionary that gives references to word usage in extra-NT sources and tries to supply the Hebrew equivalent of NT Greek terms.

For those not ready to take the plunge into learning Greek, but who would like to get a little exposure to it (enough to use Greek NT-related study tools, such as the dictionaries I just recommended), I recommend Mounce’s Greek for the Rest of Us.

Hope these do for now. I’m working on a permalink page for this site in which I’ll give a bunch more language resource recommendations. I also have a couple of articles on the subject coming out in the July-August and September issues of This Rock.

Good luck in your studies! New Testament Greek is an easy and rewarding language to learn!

A Catholic View of Israel

A reader writes:

Mr. Akin,

Within the last couple years, I’ve been an Atheist-come-Christian (not baptized). I plan on converting to Catholicism next year & will soon be
signed up for RCIA. I’ve been enjoying listening to you on the ‘Q&A Open
Forum’ from the ‘Catholic Answers’ radio show archives on the Internet. All of my initial concerns and questions have been entirely & satisfactorily dealt
with (the usual suspects: Papal authority, role of Mary & the Saints, Immaculate conception, works-vs-grace), EXCEPT one.

It is my view that:
1). God has returned the Jews to Israel, as promised.
2). He blesses toughs that bless the Jews
3). He will bring judgment on toughs that divide the land
4). The world will bring their armies against her.
and of course.
5). As a people, the Jews will come to know Jesus as their savior (I know this last point is in the Catechism).

What is the official view on these issues, if any? I must say that I feel very strongly about these issues, and that I’m truly hoping that they don’t contradict Catholic theology.

Could you please help me understand the Church’s view & let me know if there is room for these beliefs in the Church.

The Church does not have an official position on all of these questions. It does, as you note, teach the latter, because St. Paul does in Romans, though even then there is room for discussion about what the corporate conversion of the Jewish people means (e.g., someone might say that it means only most Jews, others might mean that it means absolutely all Jews; I view the latter as unlikely given how God tends to do things in history, but it’s not incompatible with the Catholic faith).

Regarding your first four points, however, it would be hard to establish an authoritative position of the Church on any of them in Magisterial documents. They would all seem to be permitted exegetical options, and thus, as you put it, there appears to be "room for these beliefs in the Church."

I should issue a caution here, however. Sometimes the points you name are put in a larger package of known as Dispensationalism. This is not a Catholic school of thought, and it has many problems, including (in my personal view) an excessively futuristic reading of the book of Revelation. I don’t know what sources you are drawing upon in formulating these views (besides the obvious Scripture passages used to support them), but I would exercise caution regarding them and not try to build a highly detailed view of the future.

Also, I’d be careful in applying these views to the current political situation. Holding the positions you maintain does not mean endorsing a uniformly pro-Israel point of view. Even during biblical days, when the promises of blessings and curses you mention were unquestionably in operation, Israel as a nation made mistakes that it would have been foolish to support. So great were the mistakes that God himself disciplined the nation through foreign invaders that took away the land. This serves as a warning both to Israelis and non-Israelis against an "Israel, right or wrong" policy. In the present situation, both Arabs and Israelis have violated the human rights of each other, and neither side is free of guilt. Both have blood on their hands.

Hope this helps, and welcome home!

It's Okay To Eat Meat Today (Solemnities in Lent)

Although eating meat on Fridays during Lent normally is prohibited, this does not apply on Fridays that are solemnities. The Code of Canon Law provides that:

Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday (Can. 1251).

Since today–Friday–is the solemnity of St. Joseph, the law of abstinence doesn’t apply.

Patrons of the highly-effective Atkins Diet, rejoice!

It’s Okay To Eat Meat Today (Solemnities in Lent)

Although eating meat on Fridays during Lent normally is prohibited, this does not apply on Fridays that are solemnities. The Code of Canon Law provides that:

Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday (Can. 1251).

Since today–Friday–is the solemnity of St. Joseph, the law of abstinence doesn’t apply.

Patrons of the highly-effective Atkins Diet, rejoice!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

One apologetic note: Some of Protestants–particularly those of Irish descent–have sought in recent years to claim St. Patrick as one of their own. In other words, they have argued that he believed in Protestant Christianity and was not a Catholic.

This is completely false. It amazes me that they can even make such a preposterous claim. St. Patrick was a Latin-speaking bishop commissioned by the pope and whose writings abound with Catholic teaching. Only a person who had never read them, or never read them with any degree of attention, could miss this fact.

For the evidence, see here. Also you can read St. Patrick’s Confession.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

One apologetic note: Some of Protestants–particularly those of Irish descent–have sought in recent years to claim St. Patrick as one of their own. In other words, they have argued that he believed in Protestant Christianity and was not a Catholic.

This is completely false. It amazes me that they can even make such a preposterous claim. St. Patrick was a Latin-speaking bishop commissioned by the pope and whose writings abound with Catholic teaching. Only a person who had never read them, or never read them with any degree of attention, could miss this fact.

For the evidence, see here. Also you can read St. Patrick’s Confession.

Jack Chick Update

A couple of updates on Jack Chick:

1) I hadn’t realized, but the Catholic Answers Special Report that I wrote on Chick Tracts is online. (This isn’t the same as the article on my meeting with Chick. I’ll get that online soon.)

2) I finally found a copy of Jack Chick’s high school yearbook photo. This is a photo that I knew existed (one of two) but that I couldn’t find a copy of. Here is the original courtesy of the Jack T. Chick Museum of Fine Art:

Now here’s a comparison of how Chick looked back about 1942 with how he looks today:

Chick c. 1942 Chick Today

I was pretty pleased at how the drawing I did came out. It shows the same wide mouth,  prominent cheek bones, and broad forehead that struck me when I met Chick. There are signs of aging (of course!), and his eyes look larger when he is wearing his glasses (which he doesn’t all the time; he had them both on and off during our meeting), but it came out pretty nicely.

Close Encounters of the Weird Kind (Jack Chick)

A reader writes:

I just read your latest in "This Rock" about your encounter with Jack Chick.  Wow.  What a weird experience that must have been.  It was weird just reading about it.  I’m impressed with how you maintained a charitable disposition.  I don’t think I could have even approached the man for fear of getting beligerent with him.  I can’t help but laugh at how the encounter must have appeared to him through his lense of paranoid narcissism (or is it narcissistic paranoia?).

I noted in my blog (http://flyfishinggalilee.blogspot.com) that the article reminded me of one of those cordial meetings in a casino (or similar setting) between James Bond and his current arch-nemesis.  You should start introducing yourself as "Akin….James Akin."  🙂

What sort of film was he releasing?  Will you be reviewing it on your website or in "This Rock?" 

Thanks. Meeting Jack Chick was a truly surreal experience. I hope folks will check out the article on it in This Rock (it will also be put on the Web . . . eventually). Chick’s film, The Light of the World, is a standard presentation of the gospel as Chick understands it (with a few dashes of anti-Catholicism thrown in). I have a standing invite to review it for DecentFilms.Com,and I’ll post a link here when it gets done.

Incidentally, since Chick is such a recluse that he doesn’t let his picture be taken, I realized that I am now one of the few people who knows what he looks like. As a result, I decided to draw a picture of him–comic book style, of course! Here ’tis:

Close Encounters of the Weird Kind (Jack Chick)

A reader writes:

I just read your latest in "This Rock" about your encounter with Jack Chick.  Wow.  What a weird experience that must have been.  It was weird just reading about it.  I’m impressed with how you maintained a charitable disposition.  I don’t think I could have even approached the man for fear of getting beligerent with him.  I can’t help but laugh at how the encounter must have appeared to him through his lense of paranoid narcissism (or is it narcissistic paranoia?).

I noted in my blog (http://flyfishinggalilee.blogspot.com) that the article reminded me of one of those cordial meetings in a casino (or similar setting) between James Bond and his current arch-nemesis.  You should start introducing yourself as "Akin….James Akin."  🙂

What sort of film was he releasing?  Will you be reviewing it on your website or in "This Rock?" 

Thanks. Meeting Jack Chick was a truly surreal experience. I hope folks will check out the article on it in This Rock (it will also be put on the Web . . . eventually). Chick’s film, The Light of the World, is a standard presentation of the gospel as Chick understands it (with a few dashes of anti-Catholicism thrown in). I have a standing invite to review it for DecentFilms.Com,and I’ll post a link here when it gets done.

Incidentally, since Chick is such a recluse that he doesn’t let his picture be taken, I realized that I am now one of the few people who knows what he looks like. As a result, I decided to draw a picture of him–comic book style, of course! Here ’tis: