In this episode, Professor Takamitsu Muraoka, who was born in Hiroshima, Japan, in 1938, narrates his life’s story with an eye on how the biblical languages came to be of such importance to him. Following his conversion and years of academic preparation, he taught at Manchester University and Melbourne University, before becoming Professor of Hebrew at the Leiden University until his retirement. He founded the Dutch-Japanese-Indonesian Dialogue against the background of the Pacific War and is Representative of The Japanese Language Biblical Church in The Netherlands. In 2017, he was awarded the British Academy’s Burkitt Medal for Hebrew Bible studies, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the study of Hebrew grammar and syntax and the Septuagint. His many publications include A Syntax of Septuagint Greek,  A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint,  A Grammar of Qumran Aramaic,  A Syntax of Qumran Hebrew, and Why Read the Bible in the Original Languages? 

Learn more about related programs at Wheaton:

M.A. in Biblical Exegesis: https://bit.ly/46OMTHR

B.A. in Classical Languages: Greek, Hebrew, Latin: https://bit.ly/3FkLEV4