The Eternal Life Series offers a look at eternal life based on John 17:3 and related New Testament scriptures.
Most or all of the New Testament was written in Greek, so Bible students often dissect scripture by minutely examining Greek words and philosophies. This is natural for Americans because the American education and culture is based on Greek ways of thought.
However, Jesus probably taught mostly in Hebrew, with some of his teachings in Aramaic. Jesus and his followers were well educated in the Hebrew Old Testament. For the first couple of decades after his death, the followers of Jesus were mostly practicing Jews. It seems likely that a better understanding of the teachings of Jesus can be attained by looking at them through a Jewish cultural viewpoint and a better understanding of Hebrew words.
The impetus for this series were some of the episodes of the Bema Discipleship podcast, along with personal study times with Hebrew experts Elle Grove Fricks and Brad H. Young. Working with them, we developed a dictionary of some Hebrew words that you can find in Reference 7 of the Reference section of this website.
Although each episode in this series can be approached individually, the Eternal Life Series is written for viewers to watch all of the episodes in the order in which they are presented.
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The Bible is a “library” of sixty-six books. The books are compiled as the Old Testament and New Testament. The Old Testament was primarily written in Hebrew. It tells of the creation of the world, and the origin and history of the Hebrew people until about 400 BC. The New Testament was written in Greek and tells of Jesus, the early Church, and Christian teachings.
Jesus probably taught in Hebrew or Aramaic, but we don’t have any of his original teachings in Hebrew, just translations of them into Greek. So, his teachings have been translated from Hebrew to Greek to a modern language, such as English or Spanish.
With just these few pieces of information, it is easy to see obvious challenges for readers and translators of modern Bibles. Many times, there is not an exact word or phrase to translate to. Sometimes, the original meaning of a Hebrew word is not known. And, when translating to and from multiple languages, it is easy for meaning to get lost in the translation.
The Bible was written to people with an “Eastern” worldview. When compared to many modern people with a “Western” worldview, they were less concerned with factual information and more concerned with the meaning of things. They were focused on community and less concerned with individual rights. They were more influenced by spiritual forces than by science.
