Anyone can learn the original languages…at any age!

While recovering from surgery (an MVD) to correct a trigeminal nerve disorder, I have been reading Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas (Thomas Nelson, 2010). Metaxas relates the story of Ruth von Kleist-Retzow.  She had “no patience for wishy-washy clerics.  The brilliant, cultured and heroically combative Pastor Bonhoeffer seemed an answer to hear prayers” (275).  She was a major patron of Dietrich’s “illegal” Confessing Church seminary. The school’s services on Sunday at Finkenwalde were open to the public and on those days Ruth with her family would come and sit under Dietrich’s preaching and teaching.  Ruth was so inspired that she adopted his method of practicing spiritual disciplines and decided to learn New Testament Greek. Ruth von Kleist-Retzow was seventy years old! (277).

NPR interview with Bart Ehrman

While it is a tad outside my OT interest, NPR’s Fresh Air ran an interview (March 4, 2009) with Bart D. Ehrman as he promotes his new book, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don’t Know About Them).  

Ehrman argues for the uniqueness of each individual gospel but rejects that Jesus did (or said) all the works and words each gospel attributed to him.  Ehrman argues against building a biblical theology of Jesus based on the gospels.

His personal testimony demonstrates how one’s view of the Bible has a direct effect on one’s faith.  He attributes the seemingly incongruent existence of suffering and the existence of a good and loving God as the reason for his loss of faith.  (I wish he had spent more time in the OT especially Job).   It is unfortunate that the well-spoken Ehrman has lost his faith in the word and its savior, Jesus Christ.