I will begin this post by saying the question I am going to ask is so esoteric that I may end up asking Rebecca Miller or Lloyd Hamann or Troy/Oksana Manning. Maybe Ariuka or Andres Dominguez know this locally. Where can I find a Russian Bible that was translated directly from Koine Greek into Russian?

It has been a long time since I took my three years of Koine Greek at Tab. My long distance Bible study with Kimberly this year involves looking at the Greek. I don't remember Greek cases. I am not sure we even got that far in three years with Dr. Caughill, because just doing all possible verb and verbal conjugations in Greek is a total labor of love!!! :-)

I do know Russian cases so in one recent verse, I really wanted to see whether the Greek was in the dative case, to see exactly who was Paul's audience. You can see where I am going with this. The Russian would have made it clear, but only in a Russian translation taken from the Greek (English does not change noun endings to show their function in a sentence).

I love language study. It is very exciting to me and very humbling at the same time. Back in college, my life's goal was to learn Spanish (my major), Russian (I had two years in college), German, and Hebrew in my lifetime. Living in Germany for three years, I did some German study, then just got lots of experience in shops and restaurants. I have since traded Hebrew for New Testament Greek.

I study Russian at work these days one hour a week with a USAF officer. There is a war on and most Ukrainians speak Russian. It helps to know their language, as some are coming here!

I discovered forty years later that, although my Russian emigre professor taught me perfect pronunciation and grammar (not always received on my end, but I try!), we did not and could not cover a huge vocabulary in two years. There are many ideas I could not express in Russian, even now, although I spent many hours with the Russian Jews who emigrated to Detroit in the 1970's. I recently realized I was speaking the Russian of a child back then and they were all so warm-hearted that they received me, slowed down, simplified their vocabulary, and told me I was doing excellently. Very humbling but so lovely, too.

If given the opportunity, I could lead a person to Christ in Spanish. Not in Russian yet. Definitely not in German, though I play with German on my iPad Translator, along with Spanish and Russian. And I could not do it in Koine Greek, but I could look up all the right verses and read them in Greek. And the Holy Spirit could use His Word to bring a soul to Christ!!!!

I am beyond blessed that God filled this world with beautiful languages. I have heard Spanish, Portuguese, Tagalog, and Russian at church. Sometimes our nursery tots are bilingual and that is so sweet.

May God bless our missions minded church and the sweet people from all around the world who attend or serve overseas in our name!