TITUS: LEARN YOUR HEBREW!
Titus was a Gentile believer who became a preacher.
We have no proof that Titus knew Hebrew. We know he was not circumcised. Galatians 2:3-5 says, “But neither Titus, who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised: And that because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage: To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might continue with you.”
We have a whole book written to Titus and two books written to half-Gentile Timothy, and nowhere in these books do we have Paul telling Titus or Timothy that they need to learn the Hebrew language to make sure they understand the original language. Timothy knew Hebrew since his mother was a Jew, and he knew the “holy scriptures” from a child, but Greek would have been his native tongue. Paul never told Titus to learn Hebrew, and didn’t tell Timothy he needed to use the original language even though he knew it.
Once Timothy is told to “Study to show thyself approved unto God,” but he was not told to study the original languages. To say that is what was meant would be to add to the Bible. If it were that important, then surely Paul would have told them to do it.
We have no verse in the Bible instructing anyone to learn the original language in order to make sure they “really know” what God meant.
In fact, Paul went out of his way to make sure that people knew how important it was to hear words that you could understand.
1 Cor 14:19 Yet in the church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue.
When preachers use, “in the Greek, it means” they are using words that people do not know and do not understand. That seems to be the opposite of what Paul is telling the Corinthians.
We have letters written to many Gentile churches that didn’t know or use Hebrew, and not once did Paul tell them that they needed to know the original languages so they could know what God was really saying. In fact, most of the time when Paul or Jesus quoted the Old Testament, they didn’t quote the Hebrew, but translated it into Greek and used that language. If the original language was so important, then we would have the Hebrew words and Paul would be exegeting the Hebrew to them.
In one of the stories I used to love to hear Bro. Hyles tell about John R. Rice, a preacher preached before Dr. Rice and was talked about how the church was started at Pentecost.
If I remember the story correctly, Dr. Rice got up after that preacher to preach and said that it would be good if the preacher talked as much about the church starting at Pentecost as much as the Bible talked about it, which was nothing!
I think that we should talk as much about learning the original languages as the Bible says and that is nothing!
|