Beginnng in Greek

When I came to that word "righteousness" in the 23rd Psalm something kicked in akin to an old man looking in the mirror and thinking he sees the younger version of himself.  When I saw that long religious sounding word I remembered its Greek counterpart from those days in seminary when I sat through two quarters of Greek.  What I also quickly came to terms with was the reality that there were few Greek words that I really remembered.  After the Greek for love and grace, I found myself running on empty.   

Now, I have a friend whom I envy that is a little younger than I am,  but who still reads his New Testament Greek Bible.  It would be an impossible task for me unless I had a Greek dictionary right beside the Bible and then it would be a questionable exercise.  Some might wonder why any preacher would need to learn Greek, or would want to learn it until it is realized that the orignal manuscripts from which the New Testament is translated were written in Greek.  

So, to read Greek puts us back inside the original text which is not a bad place to be, given all the trendy versions of the Scripture avialable today.  It might be likened to the old game of Gossip.  In a circle one person whispers in the ear of another and then the whispered word is whispered to the next until it comes back to the person who first utterred the whisper.  Like any kind of communication, it got changed a bit in the span of even some short time.  Some of the more modern versions of the Scripture want to use contemporary language to the point that the original meaning gets compromised which is why it is important to find a translation of the Word which is faithful to the original languge.