Seminary Professor Caught Inventing Fake Greek Words

LAWRENCE, MISSOURI

The aim of Lawrence Temple Bible College is to "teach young men to be preachers." For the past fifteen years the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist school has sought to train the men who attend to be "well rounded preachers" by focusing on two main aspects in their teaching; a firm understanding of the King James Bible and soul winning. But in the world of accredited institutions LTBC struggled to gain respect in the field of higher eduction over the years. As a result they began a campaign to expand their curriculum and hire new more "qualified" faculty.

The college's first addition came with the hiring of Dr. Robert Green. Green, a noted fundamentalist, KJV-only pastor, came to the college with an impressive list of credentials including a high school diploma from Northshore High School in Riverwood, Indiana and four honorary doctorate degrees with three being from Hyles-Anderson College in Hammond, Indiana and one from Texas Bible College in Longview, Texas. Dr. Green's primary responsiblities would be to teach courses in preaching and Bible translations with a specific emphasis upon the merits of the King James Bible and the Textus Receptus. With Green's resume stating that he had "extensive training in and knowledge of Biblical Greek" excitement was high among the members of the LTBC faculty, with hopes that the school had finally found someone who could show the errors of the other "Satanic translations" of the Bible on a scholarly level.

For Green's first semester at the college all went well. Students seemed to enjoy his class on Bible translations, and more than ever students were convinced of the merits of the Authorized Version and the superiority of the Textus Receptus. But as the second semester rolled around and a new batch of students entered Green's class a problem began to emerge. One student's "real" knowledge of Greek would soon prove that Dr. Green not only did not know Greek at all, but he consistently invented "Greek-sounding" words that he presented to the class as authentic Koine Greek.

The problem was discovered by Jack Cartwright, a first-year student at LTBC. Cartwright had studied Greek for three years during high school, expecting to go into the medical field. Instead he enrolled at LTBC believing he was called into the ministry.

"I was sitting there in Dr. Green's class on the first day thinking everything was alright" said Cartwright. "Dr. Green seemed like a pretty nice guy and all that. He started talking about how the King James Version was translated from the Textus Receptus, what he called a 'superior Greek text' and how all of these other translations were taken from corrupt texts which made them inferior. Well, that all sounded fine to me. But then he started giving examples of what he called 'corruptions' in the Greek. He started talking about 'Greek' words that weren't really Greek words at all."

Cartwright sat dumbfounded for the next two hours while Green lectured on why "charity" is a better translation than "love" in 1 Corinthians 13.

"Dr. Green told us that the word for 'love' in the Greek is 'kaiposoluptis'" said Cartwright. "Well, at first I thought he was just joking, then I realized that this guy was serious! Not only is "kaiposoluptis" not a Greek word, but as far as I know it's not a word in any language."

As Green's lecture continued he presented more and more "Greek" examples to the class that Cartwright caught.

"I started writing them down" he said. "They were downright funny. He said that the verb for 'to run' was 'hapalomelama.' I almost lost it when he told the class that the Greek word for 'Lord' was 'elohim.'"

After class Cartwright talked to some of his classmates about the situation only to find himself rebuked for his questioning of authority.

"I talked to some of the other guys in the class and they were all like 'Man, who do you think you are?'" he said. "They all told me that I have no right questioning 'God's man."

The problems for Cartwright did not stop there though. He soon took his complaint to LTBC's Academic Dean only to be told to "cease his spirit of rebellion." Cartwright soon dropped all his classes and withdrew from LTBC.

"I'm done with that school" he said. "They're absolutely ignorant and almost proud of it. I don't know what I'm going to do exactly, but I know I won't go back there."