Beware of the Greek New Testament!

Beware of the Greek New Testament. It is dangerous and may cost you your life. Now you are probably thinking, "What!? Greek being dangerous? What are you talking about?" This is usually not what one thinks of when the study of the NTG is mentioned. Oh how we have forgotten the past...

I came across the following words by James Hamilton and would like to share them with you all. Some may suppose them to be humorous. May it never be. They struck me as being anything but such, rather I found them to be edifying, challenging, and utterly sobering.

• "If you decide to read through the Greek New Testament, be careful. The things in that book got most of its authors killed, and when people have taken it seriously in the history of the church, crazy things like the reformation have happened and some folks even got themselves burned at the stake. The Greek New Testament is decidedly unsafe. If you embrace it, you will be hated (see John 15:18-20). To paraphrase Lester De Koster: 'There it is, throbbing on your desk, the living word of God.'"

Greek is anything but a dry academic and intellectual exercise as some suppose; it is lively and full of power. May we never study this book without soberly remembering what it cost many others to deliver it to us!