A Reader’s Bible is an original language Bible with the less common words defined in the footnotes to help in reading. Let’s face it, most people who graduate from Bible college or seminary consider the day they passed their Greek final as their last day to use Greek. And they don’t know a letter of Hebrew.
That’s bad.
Several years ago, I thought of all the time and effort I had put into the biblical languages, and considered the value of them in Bible study for the pastor, and decided I would not let them go.
So now, most mornings I read a page in my Hebrew Reader’s Bible. It usually ends up being 20-30 verses, depending on the number of words that are defined. I do have an English translation to compare with only after I translate to see if I missed anything or when I am stuck. So far I have read 1 Samuel and most of 2 Samuel, a few minor prophets, a good bit of Genesis, some of Deuteronomy, and some Psalms, and various other passages that I felt led to read randomly opened to.
The good news is that it gets easier. The bad news is that my Greek is not up to snuff, partially because I don’t have the Greek Reader’s Bible. (Email me for an address where you can send your contributions.)
I recently found this site that has an online Greek and Hebrew Reader’s Bible where you can adjust the amount of help you receive. Play around with it some and get familiar with it. And then use it.
Now, don’t get lazy. Use the least amount of help possible, and stretch yourself. If you did ten or twenty verses a day, it would take fifteen or twenty minutes, but over a year’s time, you would be surprised at how much progress you could make. And you could read more in less time.
What would be nice is if John would have some sort of daily feed with a set number of verses that could be emailed to you. It would help you keep up to date and keep on a regular pattern of reading.
So if you took the time to learn the languages, keep them by using them. It doesn’t take long.
If you didn’t take time to learn it, learn now. The rewards are inestimable. I, for one, get tired of hearing pastors talk about the superiority of certain translations when they don’t know a word of Greek or Hebrew. Nothing will cure bad bibliology like reading the Bible in the language God originally gave it in.
