Nothing Iffy About It, with Philip Graham Ryken: Philippians 2:1

One bit of advice to a budding Greek or Hebrew student.

Yeah, I've always felt in language acquisition.

You need to treat what you are learning as the hardest thing you have to learn and try to get 100% of what is being taught the first time.

If you fall a little bit behind, pretty quickly you're a lot behind.

And biblical language is not really a thing where you can kind of learn, oh, I kind of got the gist of that.

I got about 80% of that.

I can probably write it on the test.

No, you really have to get the details, the vocabulary.

You've got to get the 100%.

the grammar.

So I just think it requires a higher level of intentional commitment than pretty much anything else you're going to study.

And those who pay that price and go through that.

It's worth it.

There are a lot of benefits to it.

We could spend days talking to your faculty about all the things that they're discovering and seeing in these texts.

Sure.

And we benefit from that higher level scholarship.

But I would say just as somebody that's struggled a bit to try to learn these languages, as soon as you started being able to read biblical text, just the joy that came from that and a sense of immediacy with the presence of God and the work of the Holy Spirit.

It's worth the effort.

If you're just starting out, don't quit.

Keep persevering.

All right.