Biblical languages personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

I first opened a Greek New Testament because I wanted to settle an argument with myself. A reading at church had two very different translations printed side by side in the service sheet, and I could not see how one set of words had produced both. Working through the alphabet from a charity-shop grammar, then stumbling over the opening of Mark's Gospel, I discovered that the interesting part was not which English version was right but why translators had to choose at all. Aspect, word order, a participle doing work that English needs a whole clause for: these are the places where meaning is actually made, and I found I wanted to spend my time there rather than reading about it second-hand. Hebrew came later and slower. The root system fascinated me because it rewards patience in a way that suits how I like to learn, and because poetry in Genesis and the Psalms behaves so differently from the prose around it. I am applying now, at thirty-four, because two years of evening study have confirmed that this is not a passing enthusiasm. I want the discipline of formal grammar teaching, proper work on textual variants and manuscript evidence, and the chance to read Aramaic and perhaps Septuagint Greek alongside the Hebrew Bible. I am also drawn to the questions that surround the texts: how a community's translation choices shape what it believes it has been given. I would rather approach those questions with a lexicon open than rely on someone else's summary.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

For the past two years I have studied an Access to Higher Education Diploma in Humanities at my local college, two evenings a week and one Saturday morning, while continuing to work. The units in religious studies, English literature and history have given me the academic habits I did not acquire at school: constructing an argument from evidence, referencing properly, and accepting that a first draft is a draft. My religious studies essays covered the development of the canon and the problem of miracle in Hume, and for literature I wrote comparatively on translation and poetic form, which sharpened exactly the instincts I hope to use on biblical texts. My earlier qualifications are GCSEs and a BTEC National Diploma in Business, taken at eighteen when I had no expectation of returning to study. Alongside the Access course I have prepared independently. I have worked through the first two-thirds of an introductory Greek grammar, writing out paradigms and translating short passages from the Gospels and 1 John, and I attend a Hebrew reading group at a community centre where we spend an hour a week on a few verses of Jonah and Ruth with a retired teacher guiding us. Progress is slow and frequently humbling, but I have learnt to sit with a difficult verb form rather than reach for a translation. I have also read John Barton's A History of the Bible, which helped me understand how much of what I assumed was fixed is the product of long transmission and editing.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

I have worked for eleven years in the customer accounts team of a water company, the last three of them training new colleagues on our billing system. Explaining an unfamiliar system to someone anxious about getting it wrong has taught me to break material into small steps and to check understanding rather than assume it, which is how I now approach my own language learning: short daily sessions, written-out paradigms, and honest testing of what I have actually retained. Dealing with customers in genuine financial difficulty has also taught me to listen carefully to how people use words, and to be precise with my own, because imprecision costs somebody something. I sing second alto in my church choir, which has given me an unexpectedly practical advantage: I already knew many psalm texts by their cadences before I could read a word of Hebrew, and noticing where the English settings stretch or compress a line has made me curious about the underlying structure. Each Thursday I help run a lunch club for older residents at the church hall, setting up, serving and washing up, and I have taken on the rota since the previous organiser moved away. It is unglamorous and reliable work, and it has kept me organised during a demanding two years of study. Managing shifts, coursework and family commitments has meant planning my weeks properly and protecting time for reading. I am used to studying when tired and to asking for help early, and I expect both to be useful in a degree built on steady daily practice.

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