background on Language

Why worship in our native language? Well, for one thing, it can keep people from distorting the Christian faith into a superstition: In one stream of church history, this can help explain worshipi...

One development of the exile was an additional language for the Jewish people. The Babylonians and Persians spoke Aramaic, and out of necessity the Jews learned it. Some even became more conversant in...

Rather than translating the culture, then, we need to try to enter the culture. When people want to study the Bible seriously, one of the steps they take is to learn the language. As I teach language ...

Some people may wonder: why was the light of God given in the form of language? How is it conceivable that the divine should be contained in such brittle vessels as consonants and vowels? This questio...

Recently I (Stu) was watching a lecture on Old English (yes, the nerd levels are extremely high here), which looks almost nothing like the English we speak today. It is essentially the result of Germa...

In her book Keeping Place: Reflections on the Meaning of Home , Jen Pollock Michel reflects on the nature of home in a transient age. In this short excerpt, Michel focuses on the language associate...