Studying the Beatitudes (with a Little Help from the Greek)

Clay Kraby: The approach that you have is a little bit of the best of both worlds, between the convenience of online, but you’re still getting the classroom instruction. Is that right? Is that how you’d characterize it?

Ryan Martin: Absolutely. I mean, we really want to be creative with the technology in a way that makes it so that students can get the most out of the, experience. It’s kind of like a whiteboard style. The students have their curriculum there, and then they’re seeing it on the screen, and the teacher is walking them through it. but hey, I had a student recently join the class from their car in their driveway because they were painting in their house and they didn’t like the smell. The flexibility of it is great, but we try to make it as meaningful as possible and very relaxed. If you have a category for the adult pedagogy, best practice, very relaxed, low pressure, low stakes. but very intentional and organized in the way that we present the material. So, we want to make it enjoyable. We think that if people have fun with it, that they’ll stick with it and make it through the language.

Clay Kraby: Yeah, it’s definitely a difficult endeavor, but a worthwhile one. What kind of folks do you have coming in and taking classes with you? Are these largely pastors that have forgotten Greek and need to brush back up?

Ryan Martin: That’s a great question. I think there’s some of that. I’d say maybe a third, are people that are in professional, full-time ministry of one kind or the other. I think, the other 60%, more than half, is just laypeople that have an interest in the biblical languages, but maybe don’t feel called to pursue seminary ordination. think about the Bible nerd people, the engineer with theology books on their shelf at home, that kind of person. That’s kind of our typical demographic. But we do have a lot of pastors, people that either learned it and lost it and want to learn it again, or, I mean, as fewer and fewer seminaries require the biblical languages, we actually have lots of pastors that went through their theological education and didn’t get Greek or Hebrew. So they’re coming to us as a way to affordably and effectively learn the languages for the first time.

Clay Kraby: Excellent. Well, if you want to learn more about that, obviously I’ll put links, in the show notes for this episode, as well as link to our previous conversations where you and I got a little bit more in depth with what Kairos classroom is and the benefits of learning Greek and Hebrew. So as we start this conversation off, we really want to get into, how it can help us even maybe, not being perfectly fluent even, but having a better understanding of the original languages of scripture can really help us dive deeper into our study of God’s word. So how is that the case? Why is that the case that some understanding of, for the New Testament example, Greek, how can that enrich our study of scripture?

Ryan Martin: There’s two ways, at least for me personally, as I engage the text in Greek. there’s kind of two categories of discoveries one are discoveries that I could have made in English if I had read slowly and carefully enough. I grew up in the church, and I’ve been familiar with the New Testament for my whole life. And a section like, we’re going to talk today, like the sermon on the mount. I mean, I’ve been hearing the sermon on the mount since I was seven years old, sitting in church, scribbling doodles on the bulletin. I know it really well, and almost too well. Reading, it in English, you can almost just kind of get an autopilot. So there’s lots of times that I’ll discover things in working with the Greek. It’s like, oh, that, therefore, or that, because of. Or whatever it’s there in English. I just didn’t notice it until I saw it. I was forced to slow down and see it in Greek. so there’s those, but then there’s also places where an English translation has a hard time bringing the full force of the text, the nuance of the text, and you really can’t see it in English, or you recognize, as we often do, that the translators have made decisions, interpretive decisions, about the text, in their translation, because they have to. Right. in order to put it in readable English, you have to make decisions about things that are more ambiguous in the text. So realizing that, oh, wow, there’s more options here, interpretively than what’s been given to me, even in my very faithful and my very good English translation. So I’d say both of those things just slowing down and encountering the text in a fresh way, which is really important for me, but also just, it’s the original language of it. You’re not going to be able to capture all of that in an English translation.

Clay Kraby: Yeah. And ultimately, all translations are. There’s a layer and a level of interpretation involved. Always, there has to be. No two languages are perfectly one to one. You can’t really just transition from one to the other without making those decisions, like you said. So by having a little bit more knowledge and familiarity, you can start to dig deeper. You can start to notice things, as you said, slow down, and maybe catch things that you probably should have caught in English. And at the same time, there’s such a depth to the Greek language that English often doesn’t have, and we’ll get into that a little bit in this conversation. So, one of the things that, while I was taking Greek in seminary that we were warned of, constantly was the danger of a little bit of Greek. and I think that was just as much a warning against our youthful, exuberance as much as it was just, hey, if you only know a little bit, be cautious with how you apply these things. But I think the warning is sound. What are some ways that just a little bit of knowledge in the original languages can actually get you into a little bit of trouble as you’re trying to read and understand and interpret scripture? And how can we avoid those pitfalls?

Ryan Martin: Word studies can be great and can help us to understand the text better. They can also get us into big trouble. I don’t know if DA Carson’s Exegetical Fallacies, I feel like, is just the famous big know. Be careful. that I feel like a lot of people have encountered. but he’s mean. There are so many dangers in looking up a word in a lexicon and importing that whole meaning into the text you’re reading, or even looking up the word in the text that you’re dealing with and finding out where else in the New Testament or where else outside the New Testament it’s used. And assuming that those two words mean the same thing in those different places, I think the best way, I guess I’ll give two answers.

Use good resources like commentaries and Bible dictionaries, and these resources that are put together by scholars to help you start there. And the second thing is, just think big picture about the context of what you’re reading. I think we in the west, especially, have this kind of scientific mindset that the more we zoom into something, the better we’ll understand it. I think there’s some truth to that and some beauty to that. but there’s also a sense in which when we zoom in, we can miss the forest for the trees. And to better understand something, you zoom out, to the paragraph, to the pericope, to the book, to the canon, like, understanding these things in context and not doing wacky things just because you saw a certain definition in your Greek-English dictionary or your interlinear Bible, is really good.

Clay Kraby: Yeah. Don’t build a theology out of the fourth definition option for one Greek word and then ignore everything else. And then I think that the caution that was drilled into us, and I would say to anyone that’s embarking on a study of the biblical languages, is you have to understand that a word doesn’t always mean the exact same thing in the exact same way every time you see it. And that’s true of English. If, you know, “in my grandfather’s day, it took three days to drive across Texas by day.” Well, that doesn’t mean the same thing every time you use the word. And so we do it in English, but I think we’re just so used to it that we get involved in another language, and you’re like, oh, agape. It means this always and forever. It means this. And that might not be the case. And context is, as they say, king.

Ryan Martin: Indeed.

Clay Kraby: When we’re looking at passages of scripture, we can use different tools to help us, obviously. Ideally, great. You’re helping people that could just take a Greek translation and read through it, and maybe with the help of some vocab helps along the way. As they’re new and they’re growing in their abilities, they could actually sit there with the Greek and interact with it. but there’s different levels, right? There are other tools that they might use. even if they’re not fluent in the Greek, they just have a little bit of more exposure. What are some of those tools that they might have in front of them? They’ve got their English Bible. What else might your students have along the way? Between I can only read in English to, I can pick up a Greek New Testament and read it just fine.

Ryan Martin: We really want them to learn the language, like, really learn it. So it’s not that we’re trying to hold off on giving them New Testament chunks to work through. I mean, we want that as soon as possible. I mean, it’s the word of God. We should be excited about it. Right? our focus at the beginning is just, here’s how the language works, so that when they get to that point, they know what to do with it. Once they reach the end of their grammar studies, we’re incorporating more of the New Testament text or Old Testament, if it’s Hebrew, into that learning process. once they finish the grammar, we have our exegesis classes, which are only open to people that have either learned Greek or Hebrew at, a separate seminary, university school, whatever, or, have finished Greek four, Hebrew four with us. And this is where we are starting to read, exegetical commentaries along with the text.

This is where be it a free online resource like Blue Letter Bible, or the KataBiblon, an online lexicon, or like a Logos Bible software or Accordance or Bible Works. These types of things. We’re helping students look at what resources they have and learn how to use them well. So there’s no shortcuts, really. you kind of have to learn how the language works and walk through whatever resources you have access to, and until that point, I think the best case scenario is relying on smart, trustworthy Bible scholars that are taking that information and bringing it down, to a place to where you can benefit and learn from it. And maybe they’ll invite you into those discussions in really meaningful ways. I think there’s really good things about when commentators or theologians that are writing at the popular level are able to do that and kind of give you a peek behind the curtain of what’s going on. I mean, at the end of the day, our English Bible translations are very good, and we should have a lot of faith and trust in them. But when you want to see what’s going on under the surface, learn the language. Come on. you’re welcome at Kairos, until then. And along the way, there’s good teachers and good scholars that can help us to understand what’s going on in the meantime.

Clay Kraby: So let’s look at a passage of scripture to get a better idea of what it looks like to get more out of it because you have some access to the Greek language. So let’s talk about the sermon on the mount of Matthew, chapter five. So, as you said before, very familiar passage. Maybe, as you said, too familiar in that you kind of breeze past it when you shouldn’t. one of the words that jumps out at us the most is this word blessed or blessed, the Greek word Makarios. What might a modern reader misunderstand about this word?

Ryan Martin: Yeah, I mean, let’s start with the English here. Like, blessed is a very interesting word with a lot of different meanings and different contexts. and I think it’s impossible for us not as English speakers to hear these kind of things. I don’t know. I’m thinking of Bruno Mars, hashtag, mean. This is not what Matthew has in mind, obviously. Right. But it’s hard. It’s hard for Bible translators to do something different when it’s a passage that’s stitched on grandma’s pillow. there are certain passages, certain texts. Just to give you another example, I wish John 316 were to read, for God loved the world in this way. I think hutos, there is more of, it’s a description of in what way God loves the world. Not, not so as we think God loves the world so much. Of course he does. But I don’t think that’s what that means. But why do Bible translators not, not change it? Because if you mess with John 316, people get angry. Right? That’s my life verse. So I think blessed, is okay if we understand it in context. I mean, makarios by itself, just like on a flashcard, if you were to know, just like, what does makarios means? It means happy. it means, like, it’s kind of a feeling and a state of, kind of the good enjoyment of life. This is Makarios. I’m happy.

Now, there’s reasons why we might not want to translate it that way either. but I think the starting point there is makarios means happy, maybe fortunate or joyful. But this idea, it’s not this, like, just receiving a blessing type of language that I think we think of when we hear the English word blessed. So I, don’t know. Happy is the starting point, and we can go from there with what that means.

Clay Kraby: If you’re thinking of, like, an instagrammable hashtag blessed with my fancy new vehicle or something, that’s not what we’re talking about here. God’s not promising material blessing because, hey, hit these checkboxes, be meek and all these things.

Ryan Martin: No, you’re absolutely right. but I mean, on the other side, I think there’s problems with happy, too, in our English. And, I mean, happiness is a fleeting, a fickle type of, like, can come and go. And that’s not what we’re talking about either. I think that my favorite approach to this, and it’s a little bit, cumbersome, but I think somebody did this with psalm one in an Old Testament. If I remembered who it was, I’d give them credit. this was from our Hebrew lead instructor, Courtney Trotter, that told me this, that, there was a translation of psalm one that said, o the joys of, the one who was planted like a tree. Right? I think that’s the idea here. Owe the joys of the poor in spirit. Jesus is announcing the coming of the kingdom of God, right? Like, we get in chapter four, leading up to the sermon on the mount, Jesus saying that the kingdom of God is, it has come near. He’s going around preaching the kingdom of God, announcing the kingdom of God. I think here in the sermon on the mount, we get a picture of what that announcement looks like. And here in the beatitudes at the very beginning, Jesus is telling us who is benefited, who benefits from this coming kingdom? And it’s not who you would think, right? I mean, if you think of we can jump to the mourning one. We can come back to that later. I think you have it as a question. But happy are those who mourn. Doesn’t that sound like a paradox, like an oxymoron? It’s supposed to. Right. owe the joys of the poor in spirit. That almost sounds backwards, but that’s exactly how the kingdom of God is. It’s backwards. It doesn’t work the way that we expect things to work. It doesn’t work the ways that we, in our flesh and our sinfulness, propel the world into being. I mean, this is anti-imperial, anti-human flourishing in all the ways that we, as sinners, imagine. That that would be Jesus is doing something completely different.

Clay Kraby: It remains. And there’s this element of this stark contrast, this shocking contrast between the scenario that seems, oh, that seems miserable and Jesus saying that you’re blessed, if this is the case, and at the same time, it’s not necessarily that you’re going to be smile on the face, dancing and skipping down the sidewalk, zippity-doo-da happiness. That’s not what it’s talking about either. There is this great contrast, but it’s not just talking about this emotional state, this feeling of enjoyment. You’re not going to enjoy mourning. We’re not asking people who are mourning to enjoy it. but we do recognize that the gospel has something deep and pure and wonderful for those who are in a state of mourning. So we’ve kind of rounded out this idea and a better understanding of what does “blessed” mean in this context. Let’s talk about some of these. You mentioned poor in spirit. “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” We understand all of those words in English. You put them together, and we think we’ve got a fairly good understanding. Clearly, when it says in spirit, we’re not talking about maybe a material poverty or a lack of wealth. What is it that we can learn as we dig into the language here?

Ryan Martin: Absolutely. Great question. so the poor, there is an adjective like, blessed are the poor ones. It’s an adjective acting like a noun. So blessed are the poor ones. And then we get what we call a data. It’s a type of noun that is telling us about the poverty. So, spirit, we can almost think of it like an adverb for you English nerds out there. It’s like. Or grammar nerds out there. spirit is telling us what kind of poverty. You could almost say, like, spiritual poverty. Blessed are those who are spiritually poor. I contrast this with Luke’s accounts of what we call the sermon on the plan, where he just says, blessed are the poor. what Matthew is recording and giving us from Jesus is something that we’re going out of our way to say, not materially here, but rather those that are downcast, downtrodden. I think to get at that oxymoronic, reading of this, it’s almost as if he’s saying, happy are the sad. blessed are those that are down, that are sad. And as you just said, clay, it’s not like, hey, you should try to be sad so you get a blessing. It’s, hey, you, sad ones, those that are broken down by the world, that are depressed. guess what? The fact that Jesus is king is good news for you. You have joy despite your circumstances. Right. Blessed are those of you who are poor spiritually, in your spirit. And that doesn’t, I guess, exclude the material. But the focus here is bigger than that.

Clay Kraby: Yeah. And whenever we encounter kind of unique phrases like that, poor in spirit, I think that’s a pretty clear indicator to slow down, stop, maybe read the commentary or the verse, help, in your study Bible down at the bottom of the page, maybe break open another book. But sometimes there’s words that we feel like, well, I know what that means. Let’s keep moving. We would do well to slow down and study before we move on to the next verse. So, for example, blessed are those who mourn. We’ve mentioned it a couple of times already. we might think of just being sad, mourning for us in English. We don’t use it a lot. When we do, it’s usually probably funeral adjacent. When we mourn. Almost exclusively use that word in. Related to the loss of a loved one. And you’re sad about that. What does the Greek word indicate about what it means to be mourning?

Ryan Martin: Yeah. I don’t think there’s this crazy revelation from some special meaning of this word, as much as it’s, just crazy that we’re hearing that the morning one ought to be, makarios ought to be blessed. go to that funeral space. I think in our sanitized, modern, western existence, where we try to push these things out of our mind as much as possible, it’s strange for us to talk so freely about these things and to think that God’s kingdom that has come in Jesus is for you in that. but it is. This is an oxymoron. This is a dichotomy. It’s like you who are mourning. The kingdom that’s coming is good news for you. It’s good news for the mourning. It’s good news for the sad.

Clay Kraby: Again, we see this steep contrast between what we’d expect, to be the state of one who mourns, which is, just not to be envied. There’s nothing good about it. And yet again, there’s this blessing. Oh, the joys of those who mourn. And just the way that you’ve kind of introduced that helpful phrase there at the beginning of the conversation really sets up that contrast, even more so than what we’d probably think of when we just read it in English. And similarly, we read, blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. What does it mean to be meek?

Ryan Martin: It’s in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics; it’s kind of like the midpoint between, pride and worthlessness. It’s kind of like, okay, I’m humble and self confident, but I’m doing okay. It also has more pejorative meanings, especially kind of in, like, a political sphere. I mean, when we think about the coming of a king, when we think about a royal announcement, a king usually doesn’t come in meekness, right? A king. The victors and conquerors are not usually those that come in gentleness. They usually come in power and enforce and in victory. You could put this in a similar category with the blessed are the peacemakers. that’s coming. We don’t think about conquering kingdoms in terms of the peace that comes. Right. so, blessed are the meek is an odd thing to say in the context of a royal announcement that this is good. but we see this embodied in the life and character, and ultimate suffering and death of our savior. Right. So, blessed are the meek, blessed are the gentle, blessed are those that do not have their victory by force, but their victory by love and sacrifice.

Clay Kraby: So we’ve got a better understanding about what it means biblically to be meek. What about the phrase hunger and thirst for righteousness? What does this mean?

Ryan Martin: Yeah, this is a fascinating one. I, taught New Testament and theology at a university in, Dr. Congo, where French was the dominant academic language and what is essentially the French version of, the king James, just in terms of its prominence and was when the first widely accepted and still has kind of its own theological legacy. The Louis Segond version. It says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for la justice, which is justice in French. so like the main French Bible would say, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice right. We think of justice and righteousness as very different words, in English, but you don’t have to get very far in your Greek studies before you come across one of these words. There’s like a verb form, dikaio. I justify an adjective, dikaios, like just or righteous. And then this dikaosune here, justice, righteousness. Again, those are such different things in English, but I think the best way to wrap your head around it is think about correctness, almost, like rightness. If I could kind of make up…well that might actually be a real word. I don’t know. But rightness, something being correct relative to a standard, is kind of, I think, one way to get at the big picture. Now, again, it’s one of those, like you mentioned earlier, it can mean different things in different contexts. And that is very much at play here. But I don’t know. I find the line of thought that this is correctness or rightness and that that would include both within kind of the way that we think about righteousness in English as kind of like a moral quality and without, and the rightness of the world kind of, What is at stake with God’s promise to make things think, if you can think in that way? The Ryan Martin’s version of the Message might be like, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for the way things ought to be. and we could think about that internally in terms of our own sin and maybe the way that we naturally hear that. But also blessed are those that are hunger and thirsting because things are wrong, because things aren’t right. And that would be all of us. And what a great statement about what it means that Jesus came to do.

Clay Kraby: It sounds like it’s really about having your desires, aligned with what God would have. You know, you think of the concept of hungering and thirsting. If you’re hungry. If you’re thirsty, it’s more than a want, it’s a need. So you need, you hunger, you thirst, you’re eager after righteousness. Is that what this is getting across?

Ryan Martin: Absolutely. Who doesn’t? Whether we align that to God’s will or not, we’re all aware of things that are wrong both inside of us and without. and I think it’s very comforting, to real. And this is. We talked about mourning, and I think there’s kind of this recapturing of the spiritual discipline of lament in the church today, that I think is a really healthy and good thing. What a good thing to know that God desires and has promised to make those things, right. as well. And to think about that as kind of aligning our will with God’s will is a very productive way to think about what it means to hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Clay Kraby: Are there other elements of, the sermon on the mount where you think that the modern English reader is actually sort of missing out on if they don’t have a little bit of exposure to the original Greek man?

Ryan Martin: I mean, I feel like this is the whole nine weeks of the class we did next to Jesus class on the sermon on the mount, in the summer and then the fall, and it was just like every day. Was that all day? Just walking word by word. If I were to think maybe I can zero in on something that I learned this time from my Greek study that I had never noticed before, I’m kind of on this kick with what we call discourse analysis and understanding the way that, the Greek guides you as the list, what would have guided an original hearer or reader through the transitions and understanding the context of the flow of the argument. And there’s something in this category that I noticed that I’d never noticed before. And it’s at the beginning of the don’t worry, because the Lord is taking care of you passage, in chapter six, verse 25. and it starts within your English. Like, therefore, I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or your body, what you will wear. And I’ve read that, therefore, a million times. But this time reading in the Greek, it’s diatuto, which is, like a, connecting proposition in Greek that very closely links the section that came before with this current section. So to the listeners, anybody know what comes right before this section on worry? you probably don’t. I don’t think I would have before I taught this, either. It’s not serving two masters.

So to kind of link these things together, the way that Jesus is preaching this sermon is, hey, you can’t serve two masters, you can’t serve God and money because of that. Don’t worry about what you will eat or what you will wear, which was just one of those mind blowing moments for me. I guess I just always assumed, like, okay, here’s a brand new section about a new topic. but the fact that our allegiance and commitment to the fact that God is a good master who takes good care of us. And it’s silly. It’s silly for us to try to serve another master at the same time, because our master is a good master, and he takes care of us. This idea, of worry is almost a way of us kind of saying that we have another master, clothing or food or whatever. So, again, maybe I could have caught that in English, but that diatuto, in Greek, is so strong. Like this is linked to what’s before it in kind of a causal relationship, is what we would call the semantic constraint. So, I don’t know, maybe everybody else had noticed that and I’m the only one, but that kind of hit me hard this time, and I just thought that was really cool.

Clay Kraby: That is cool. That’s really helpful, because I know we’ve zeroed in a lot of our conversation on the beatitudes, because we can kind of laser focus in on some of these words and phrases. But you look at the sermon on the mount as a whole, and it’s really interesting to see how you. Because you had to slow down working through the Greek, you have to go slower than you would reading in English, and you’re able to pick up on some things that otherwise you would have missed. And I think that’s a really great example of what you’re trying to equip people to do with Kairos classroom, for sure.

Ryan Martin: That’s all. If I could throw another one at you, just, back where we were talking about the beatitudes, I love how. I love the turn of phrase with the blessed of the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. In Greek, it’s just one word for each of those. The merciful is one word, and the be shown mercy is one word. So it’s almost. I joke with my students. It’s almost like blessed are the merciers, for they will be mercied. it’s kind of this vision of kind of what I know what goes around, comes around is usually a pejorative sense, but in God’s coming kingdom, it’s mercy that goes around and comes around. what is this new reality that is instituted in the ministry of Christ and consummated in his death and resurrection and eventual return? It is the overabundance of mercy in all directions. Obviously, this doesn’t happen in our earthly kingdoms. they’re not marked by the merciful receiving mercy. but in God’s kingdom, that’s exactly what happens. And it just snaps in Greek in a way that in English, imagine, if will be shown mercy could be one word. That’s what it is in Greek.

Clay Kraby: Well, there’s another element you just mentioned. I mean, when you’re able to get into the original languages, you can pick up on an element of beauty, a depth, a richness of the language that you just can’t pick up on English. So whether that’s, some element of wordplay that you’re not seeing, there’s things that hopefully you’ve got a pastor, you’re reading good books that are pointing these things out to you. But when you’re able to make these discoveries for yourself and really get in there, analyze it, and see these things come to life, that has to be really satisfying for the student of Greek, for sure.

Ryan Martin: Yeah, in Hebrew, I mean, talk about think. I think half the people that come to Kairos classroom to learn Hebrew, it’s because they saw wordplay stuff on Bible project or something, and they’re like, I want to be able to find this stuff for myself. but good on you for recognizing it’s in Greek, too. The Hebrew is not the only place where we get the fun wordplay stuff.

Clay Kraby: No, that’s excellent. Well, part of my hope for this conversation is that we’ve got a listener, somebody watching this, that has considered learning the biblical languages, either Greek or Hebrew or maybe even both. If they’re super ambitious, maybe they will actually take that first step towards really learning these languages. What can someone expect if they’re going to go down that journey with Kairos classroom?

Ryan Martin: Yeah. I often tell students or prospective students, if you want to know if this is for you, just ask yourself, like, is this something that I want? we’ve had all sorts of students from different backgrounds academically, different stages of life, from different theological traditions and denominations. It really comes down to the students that want it, can do it. we ask them, it’s 90 minutes of class a week. We ask them to guard another 90 minutes outside of class, to study and practice exercises and learn some vocabulary that we give them each week. So that’s 3 hours a week that you really can work through this language in the course of a year, be it where you’re starting to work with the New Testament text itself. It’s really cool. So we have all sorts of different kinds of people that really find success and love learning Greek and Hebrew with us. So if you want it, if you have the space in your life for it, then come on, we’ll get you on board and get you reading and reading in Greek. Reading in Hebrew.

Clay Kraby: Well, excellent. Well, I’m going to be sure to include links in the show notes for this episode where someone can go to learn more and even sign up to learn Greek or Hebrew with Kairos classroom. My guest on this episode has been Ryan Martin of Kairos classroom. Ryan, thanks so much for joining me.

Ryan Martin: Yes. Thank you so much. It’s good to be back.