Jordash Kiffiak

I am consumed with a desire to better know Jesus of Nazareth, who to me is God’s Messiah, the Lord. And it is my sheer delight to help all who are interested to know more about him, especially by equipping them to read the Gospels in the New Testament in Koine Greek, the language they were written in.

I have been reading the New Testament in Greek for not quite twenty years. And for over twelve years I have been teaching Koine Greek as a living language on three continents, as well as on online.

My passion to know Jesus better took me to Jerusalem, Israel, where I lived for over eight years, studying the geography, archaeology, history and languages of the ancient land of Israel. In particular, I focused on all I could learn about Jesus and the context in which he lived and breathed, doing doctoral studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

After having left the church as a young man and stopped calling Jesus my Lord, I began to study Koine Greek to read the New Testament for myself in its original language, to answer deep-seated questions I had about Jesus. I later learned that God was not at all opposed to being “loved” by me with my mind. This was a big factor in me retuning to the faith in Jesus I had grown up with.

(There is, in fact, an important command in Deuteronomy 6 to love God with all of one’s “heart” - AND, note, in both Hebrew (לב) and in Greek (καρδία), in the version cited in the New Testament, the word in question refers to the inner part of the person, where not only feelings but also thoughts originate. The sense of the common English rendering “heart” has only a partial overlap in meaning with its Hebrew and Greek counterparts. So to not worship God with one’s mind is a contravention of this key command.)

After this, I moved, as I said, to Israel, where I found my faith and my understanding richly nourished in a wonderful church community, Narkis Street Congregation, where biblical languages were no stranger at all! Quite the contrary, in fact, in the weekly congregational bible study presenters habitually drew - heavily(!) - on the Hebrew and Greek languages of the texts in question. And other participants routinely interacted with the presenters on many and varied points (pertaining not only to languages, but also geography, culture, archaeology and further fields). Very humble people, too. I was amazed! I was inspired! Oh that there were more Christian communities like this in the world!

While in Israel, in contexts where modern Hebrew was commonly the language of course instruction and lectures, I was deeply impressed by how Jewish scholars constantly engaged Hebrew and Aramaic sources from the ancient world directly, in their original languages! This was true, above all, for the Bible, the Jewish Scriptures. There was no translation. Just the text itself. And the ability of Dr. Serge Ruzer, my principal PhD supervisor, and other scholars at the Hebrew University and elsewhere in Israel have to access the nuance of meanings is truly remarkable!

I realised quickly that the way that some scholars and especially pastors and church leaders in my Christian tradition engage with the New Testament - namely, reading in an English translation, with only the occasional glance at a word or two in the original language - simply will not do. The standards in our Christian world are set far too low! Not only that, but also so much more is possible!

At the same time, early on during my time in Israel I was introduced to both Dr. Randall Buth and Dr. Christophe Rico, each of whom was then pioneering the use of a communicative approach to teach Koine Greek. They were teaching ancient Greek in Greek. Watching their ability to access meaning in the New Testament in a immediate and unmediated way was a great inspiration. With my growing fluency in modern Hebrew and the rich effect this had on my ability to read the Tanach (Old Testament) in Hebrew, it was clear that learning to speak Greek fluently, too, was the only way to go.

(I had additional motivation, too, as my girlfriend at the time, now my spouse, was already speaking Koine Greek in conversation group led by Dr. Buth at our church community.)

Then, Dr. Buth and Dr. Rico each, respectively, gave me my first opportunities to teach Koine Greek using a communicative method. These rich experiences afforded me the unique opportunity to interact with these two formidable scholars and teachers and to become familiar with their respective textbooks, which were then being developed.

I would later go on to teach numerous courses for Dr. Buth and the Biblical Language Centre (BLC), in Jerusalem, in the Galilee and in the United States. These included beginner- and intermediate-level courses as well as fluency workshops for Greek instructors who wanted to make the transition from teaching using a traditional grammar-translation method to a communicative approach. Personal highlights from this time include teaching about Jesus, reading from the Gospels and discussing them in Koine Greek, while on site at numerous archaeological and historical locations from ancient Judea and the Galilee. Team-teaching with other teachers from the BLC, often with heaps of humour added into the teaching contexts, are other great memories.

In my PhD studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, I focussed on the miracle stories in the Gospels (Responses in the Miracle Stories of the Gospels is a revised, expanded version of the doctoral dissertation - you can read a summary of it, in two posts, on the Zurich New Testament blog here and here). The study has been reviewed by Andreas Lindemann with very favourable terms. My growing fluency in reading Greek enabled me to do a thorough study of every miracle story in each of the four Gospels, focused on the question of how various characters respond to Jesus’ miracles in the narratives (the published version is over 700 pages). Studies of this scope can only be undertaken when opportunities are provided for scholars to develop linguistic abilities that go significantly beyond the low standard that is all-too-often encountered, even in academic circles. (I will forever be deeply grateful to Serge Ruzer and Loren Stuckenbruck - both of whom are formidable scholars - for giving me guidance in pursuing an undertaking of this scope.)

For the BLC, I also taught courses in biblical Hebrew, alongside a co-teacher, using a communicative approach. Later, at the Polis institute, founded by Dr. Rico, Niek Arentsen, a colleague of mine, and I taught classical Syriac communicatively - Syriac is an important dialect of Aramaic. At the same time, Mr. Arentsen, Dr. Buth and I published a textbook for beginner’s classical Syriac, called Living Christian Aramaic, available through the BLC.

For me and other like-minded scholars, gaining proficiency in Aramaic, too, was necessary, in addition to Hebrew and Greek, in order to be able to read all of the Bible in its three original languages (six chapters in Daniel and four in Ezra are penned in Aramaic). Of course there are many other benefits to knowing Aramaic, including Syriac specifically.

Already in 2011 I began branching out on my own to offer courses in Koine Greek, especially online, though also in physical classrooms in Switzerland and Canada. Intermediate courses would typically focus on a chapter from a specific text - such as, Mark, Luke, John, Philippians or Philemon. The focus then, as now and always, remained on Jesus, while observing also how paying attention to the literary features of the book in question can be very rewarding.

Increasingly teaching beginner’s courses for interested individuals and groups in church congregations and in a private high-school context, I became convinced that there is no good reason why regular Christians could not learn about Jesus better, by reading the New Testament in the language it was written in. In fact, it became evident that my high-school students and motivated church congregants were some of the best learners of all. Period.

At the same time, I began creating learning materials for students and teaching resources for instructors who want to transition from traditional, grammar-translation pedagogy to communicative approach based instruction. I did this teaching and material development part-time initially.

(Some aspects of these earlier years are chronicled in more detail in an interview by Seumas Macdonald.)

It is worth noting that, while living in Zurich from 2013-2017, I further developed my German speaking skills. Working as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Zurich during some of this time, conducting significant aspects of my professional and personal life in German, I became further convinced of the great benefit of becoming fluent in all aspects (hearing, speaking, writing and reading) in a foreign language in order to have true reading fluency. I also enjoyed the support there for my unconventional language teaching approach from Prof. Dr. Joerg Frey, also Theresa Heilig and Christoph Heilig, for which I am very grateful.

Then in 2018 I decided to dedicate the majority of my work time to developing Greek learning and teaching materials and offering courses. This brought me to the official founding and launch of ΟΜΙΛΕΙΝ in 2019.

Ready to learn to read the New Testament, with fluency, in Greek?