The Alumni Academy Greek and Hebrew for Life Conference July 30-31 at Southern Seminary gave over 200 participants the chance to retain or revive their biblical language skills.
The event was co-sponsored by Daily Dose of Greek and Hebrew and featured an audience of alumni, current students, and many attendees outside of SBTS who were drawn to campus by the Daily Dose ministry.
Rob Plummer, Collin and Evelyn Aikman Professor of Biblical Studies at SBTS and host of Daily Dose of Greek, is excited to see Christians desiring to know God’s Word better. Alumni Academy was last held on campus in January of 2019.
“Pastors and other Christians are eager to draw close to the Word of God through studying Greek and Hebrew,” Plummer said. “The week prior to the conference, we held one-week Greek and Hebrew review classes with about 80 students in Greek review and 50 in Hebrew review. Half of the students had no prior connection to the seminary. They came as friends of the Daily Dose ministry.”
Daily Dose videos have been viewed 2.3 million times in more than 100 countries, with videos in Korean, Spanish, and soon to be in Portuguese. Two-minute videos geared towards refreshing Greek, Hebrew, and Latin are available online, through mobile apps, and can even be sent directly to your inbox each day.
The Greek and Hebrew for Life Conference is part of SBTS’s larger pattern of prioritizing competence in the biblical languages.
The conference had everything from sessions on pedagogical strategies to upper-level discussions on deciphering ancient papyri fragments, plumbing the semantic nuance of the periphrastic participle, and understanding the practice and cultural context of Greco-Roman slavery.
Plummer is proud of the creative ways Southern graduates are continuing to equip students of the Word with the tools to understand Greek and Hebrew.
“I’m so proud of our graduates Andrew and Bethany Case and their creative Hebrew videos on the Aleph with Beth YouTube Channel. Everyone reading this should go check out their YouTube videos.”
Ray Umphrey attended the latest Alumni Academy. A native of Sweetwater, Tennessee, Umphrey received his MDiv from SBTS in 2017 and is working toward a PhD in preaching at Southern. Umphrey currently serves as pastor of Briggs Road Baptist Church in Columbus, Ohio.
“What I love about the alumni academy is sharing fellowship with others who share a passion for the biblical languages,” Umphrey said.
“It is rare that I find myself surrounded with others who love discussing verbal aspect, papyrology, or sentence diagramming. Alumni Academy provides an opportunity for such fellowship. I even had a significant conversation with another scholar in the field which directly related to my dissertation.”