POSTED 01 NOVEMBER, 2004

Getting Beyond Strong's Concordance

by J.K. McKee
editor@tnnonline.net

I have been the editor of TNN Online since 1997. Certainly, in this period of time, my understanding of the Bible has changed, and my ability to better understand it from a scholarly perspective has developed, and continues to move forward. I have to admit that when I first started digging into some of the issues that were floating around the Messianic community in the late 1990s, that my knowledge of the Bible was limited to what I read solely in the King James Version and Complete Jewish Bible. Later on, I started using the New American Standard Bible and started consulting software programs with various other English Bible translations. My knowledge of Hebrew and Greek was first limited to what I found in Strong’s Concordance. Occasionally, I would consult the Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon or Thayer’s Greek Definitions available in Quickverse.

As I moved forward, however, and entered into college, I knew that I was going to have to do better. I knew that using lexicons and dictionaries would not be enough, and that I would have to have the ability to pick up a Hebrew or Greek Bible and read directly from it, with at least a working knowledge of what I was reading. When I was in college (1990-2003), I took what was available at the University of Oklahoma for a student whose major was not linguistics. I attained a working knowledge of the Biblical languages. When I attended Asbury Theological Seminary for my M.A. in Biblical Studies (2005-2008), I received more targeted instruction on the Biblical languages, and how to use them in exegesis of the Scriptures.

I realize that many of you reading this are not called to service as a full time Bible teacher. To you, you are simply thankful that others have committed the time and energy to doing this work. But, many of you still desire to have a slightly deeper understanding of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. You want to know how you can access these texts a little deeper than an English translation. Hopefully, when many of you finish reading this article, you can be aware of how there are many excellent Hebrew and Greek resources out there, that you do not have to be a genius to understand.

We face a problem today in much of the broad the Messianic community, because not enough of the teachers and local leaders validate various opinions and conclusions they make about the Bible from credible, well-respected, scholarly resources. One has to clearly understand that something being taught about controversial issues like Torah observance, the restoration of Israel, and in many cases post-tribulationism, runs against much of the flow of what is present in contemporary Christianity. However, even though various Messianic positions may be contrary to some evangelical Christian viewpoints—this by no means justifies us just “throwing stuff together” without any substantiation. Sadly, just as there are Christian Bible teachers who base their teachings solely on the King James Version, or worse, the New International Version, and who rely on the opinion of their constituents to justify what they teach—so is the same similarly true among many in the Messianic community today. One will encounter teaching materials marketed as “Messianic,” which do not have footnotes or a Bibliography. If they actually do, then the author often does not use a standardized documentation format as laid out in the MLA Manual of Style or Chicago Manual of Style. It makes you wonder how the person is documenting the source and whether or not the source is actually credible.

I remember how a while back I was able to meet with a well-respected and scholarly teacher in the Messianic community. I met with him in his office, where he surely had many more books in his reference library than I did. Of course, many of these reference works were compiled over a period of thirty or more years in ministry. As I noticed his books and many resources, and certainly made note of some of the works that I needed to acquire, he made the pertinent observation that “about 80% of all presumed Messianic Bible teachers and leaders in this movement are not qualified.”

What did this Bible teacher mean by “not qualified”? Did he mean that all must have doctorates or teach Scripture? I do not believe so.

No one has to have an M.Div or Th.M or Th.D to be a Bible teacher. You must have the hand of God on your life and be called by Him into His service. You must have a proper heart and honorable intentions whereby you are trying to help people grow in their walk with the Lord and know Him in a better and more intimate way. But certainly, as one must have the hand of God on his or her life to be in ministry, there does come a certain point where one must have training, or at the very least have the proper tools to use as an expositor of the Scriptures. The Apostle Paul, who wrote almost a third of the Messianic Scriptures, was a Rabbi trained by Gamliel, a revered Sage of Judaism to this very day:

“I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated under Gamaliel, strictly according to the law of our fathers, being zealous for God just as you all are today” (Acts 22:3).

There have been some works written in recent days describing the Rabbinical training that Paul had, how he was born in the city of Tarsus in Asia Minor and was taught in Jerusalem, and how he had a strong command of the Hebrew Tanach, but also knew about the larger Greco-Roman world in which he lived. Paul was uniquely trained for later evangelizing not only his fellow Jews, using Rabbinical teaching methods consistent with his time, but also using philosophical teaching methods for getting Greeks and Romans to consider salvation in the Messiah of Israel. Nevertheless, we know that Paul was well-trained, and he “knew his stuff,” so to speak.

Now is Paul the exception? Were the original Twelve Disciples of Yeshua just “stinky fisherman” as is commonly asserted? Were they just “country bumpkins”? More than a few in the Messianic community say that they were, and like to say that they had no formal education or scholarly training. This is often used as a mask to justify poor scholarship and poor handling of the Scriptures. Since there is no Biblical record of Peter, John, or even James the brother of Yeshua going to yeshiva or the First Century equivalent of “Bible college,” why should any of us have to worry about it? This is the attitude, sadly, that many Messianics have.

Obviously, the Original Twelve had the hand of God on their lives. They had the call. They had the anointing of the Almighty, and so regardless of their background or upbringing, they were used mightily by the Lord to accomplish His tasks and His assignments. But the problem is where we misunderstand what they did prior to their time of being called out by the Messiah. Certainly, many of the Disciples had occupations that involved manual labor and very little “brain power.” But if they were involved in the First Century Synagogue, the beit midrash or house of study, they were exposed to intense and detailed study of the Scriptures. They may have not been as formally trained as the Apostle Paul, but they would have had a greater training in and exposure to the Scriptures than certainly most people who today attend Sunday school. They would have been exposed to the world around them through the many travelers who came through First Century Israel for commerce.

Today, we face an unfortunate situation where people think they can get away with teaching the Scriptures as those who have little or no formal training, and not only little or no formal training, but are unwilling to submit themselves to any training whatsoever. Education is sometimes viewed as being a problem, as opposed to a solution. While it is true that education is not always a good thing, as one must have applied knowledge in the workplace or ministry field, if one has no training or does not know about the appropriate tools to use, we can have a serious problem on our hands. We can have a serious problem on our hands because we can be accused by outsiders—namely Christian theologians and Bible teachers who are sincerely intrigued about the Messianic movement—of “making stuff up.” I cannot tell you how many times I have run into this problem and have, in the past, had to “make excuses” for some other Messianic Bible teachers. Too many claiming to be “authorities” on particular subjects have especially caused problems in their teachings by exclusively using Strong’s Concordance.

J.K. McKee (B.A., University of Oklahoma; M.A., Asbury Theological Seminary) is the editor of TNN Online (www.tnnonline.net) and is a Messianic apologist. He is a 2009 recipient of the Zondervan Biblical Languages Award for Greek. He is author of numerous books, dealing with a wide range of topics that are important for today’s Messianic Believers. He has also written many articles on theological issues, and is presently focusing his attention on Messianic commentaries of various books of the Bible.