One good reason for a guy like you to arm yourself with Greek, if you ever were inspired to give it a shot, would be to provide a good defense against that sort of sloppiness. Language is a tool, but as a former boss of mine used to say, “a fool with a tool is still a fool.”

Yes I do speak two other languages (one barely and one pretty fluent) so I understand the difficulty of sometimes finding words. Yeah, the reformation did change things based on different interpretations of the Bible. But I have recently started a comparison between the Protestant and the Catholic Bibles and they appear to be pretty much the same. It seems to be more what the reformers believed the words say and not the words themselves.

One of the examples of “if you just read…” mentality that I came across recently is where the Bible again and again has Jesus using the word “command”. The person said the Greek word for that is just not that strong; it is more like suggests to him. Of course, the person is from a denomination that minimizes works in a Christians life so I think there is an agenda at work there.

I don’t know if you speak any languages besides English, but if you do, you know that some things can’t be conveyed in a simple word-for-word translation from language “a” to language “b.” There can be nuances, thoughts, even significant meanings that are lost, or at least obscured, in any translation. No less so with the Biblical texts.

The problem that drives me back into Greek, is that for so long, “everyone” has simply “known what it says” about certain things, that even if they attempt a new translation, the chance for any real discovery of meaning is slim because the translators inevitably bring their own doctrinal assumptions to the task of translating. This is what I’ve argued regarding 2 Tim. 3:14-17, that because “everyone knows” that Paul is laying out the case for verbal & plenary inspiration of Scripture, nobody notices that VPE isn’t the subject on his mind at all.

It’s not a conspiracy, so much as it is a failure of imagination, that assumes that 1,700 years of church doctrine can’t be wrong. . .and yet if you believe the Reformers (to pick just one example) had any justification at all, then at their time, 1,200 years of doctrine WERE wrong. . .and if error can be perpetuated for 1,200 years, why not for 1,700?

I’m not going to claim that you’re an inadequate Christian until you learn Hebrew, Greek, and/or Aramaic. But don’t dismiss every insight those who have studied one or more of those languages comes up with. . .not all are arrogant displays of superiority.