[nephihaha]

To be fair, there are nuances in the ancient Greek which are best brought out by some study of the language. The most frequently translated ancient Greek text(s) would be the New Testament, and even there you can see a lot of modern churches base their ideas on dubious translations.

I find ancient Greek not so helpful when it comes to etymologies. Some are helpful, but many are obscure or misleading. Climax comes from the word for a ladder apparently, and electron comes from the word for amber. There are stories behind both but they won't get you far. Any word beginning with psych- tends to relate to the mind, but the Greek means "soul".

[ben_w]

Sure, but to the extent that the nuances matter to modern literature, they're documented. For Church stuff in particular, the erroneous translation is more relevant to a full Western education than the truth of the source material it was based on, simply because the culture came from the error; that αἰώνιος in ancient Greek means "age-long" matters less to understanding Christianity than that the theological use is "eternal", the latter of which you can get without ever learning a single word of Ancient Greek: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/αἰώνιος

I don't mean to deny someone's fun side hobby, if anyone wishes to get into the archeology of linguistics that's obviously fine and good for them, but it's not really a useful or necessary thing for a "full" education as claimed by the quotation:

> Ancient Greek is needed to get a full Western education, for reading some of our foundational literature properly.

I wonder if the ancients complained about μονογενής the same way modern people complain about "very unique"? But again, what I question here is if this matters, I don't think knowing the answer is necessary for a "full" education.