During his address at President Kim B. Clark’s inauguration, President Gordon B. Hinckley attributed an important part of his personal development to the study of classical languages, such as Latin and Greek.

President Hinckley said reading the New Testament in Greek gave him a greater love and appreciation for our Savior and a greater reverence for the wisdom of inspired thinkers.

“[President Hinckley] is a master of the language and arguably the greatest orator we have in the Church today,” said Murray Hunt of the BYU-Idaho English Department. “I firmly believe his ability is in large part due to his study of classical languages.”

Despite this sort of high praise, the ancient languages offered at BYU-I — Hebrew, Greek and Latin — do not have a clear and certain future at this school.

Because BYU-I does not offer them as 200-level classes or literature classes, the “dead” languages are not part of the Foreign Language Department and, accordingly, no foreign language credit is offered for taking them.

“Our position is that if we’re not going to offer a full program, we don’t do it,” said Brent Strong, former chairman of the Foreign Language Department. “If we were to offer more than one year of classes, we would have to have more teachers or release the ones we have from what we hired them to teach.”

Hebrew, Greek and Latin were once all offered as part of the Honors Program, but because of academic restructuring at BYU-I, the ancient languages were required to find another home. Hebrew was integrated into the Religion Department, and the Department of Humanities plans to house Greek and Latin. Vaughn Stephenson, chairman of the Department of Humanities and Philosophy, is pleased with the projected merger.

“Because so much of what we’re doing is based on Western culture, it seemed a rather natural spot,” he said.

Phil Packer, the associate academic vice president of instruction, explained the administration’s reasoning for the move.

“We needed a department chair to take charge of them,” Packer said. “I think [the ancient languages] will be better maintained than they have been. Right now, they will continue to be taught. Some of their future depends on the initiative of our general education.”

Whether the ancient languages will be expanded into full programs or phased out of the curriculum is yet to be determined.

“No one doubts the value of the classical languages, but the challenge is to decide how they will fit into the program,” Packer said.

Despite varying opinions on what should happen to the ancient languages, most of the teachers and administrators interviewed agreed that the debate is caused by a lack of resources.

“It would take another teacher [to make the classical languages into full foreign-language programs]. Sometimes we assume the Church has unlimited resources, but we’ve got to work with what we have,” said Rodney Keller, dean of the College of Language and Letters.

For now, the administration plans on sticking with the current state of the ancient languages.

“Right now we’re trying to hold the line,” Packer said.