Classical Languages - Greek, Latin, Hebrew

The Classical Languages Major

As a student of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin at Wheaton College, you will develop an awareness and appreciation of the languages and cultures of the ancient world through encounters with original texts. You will discover in these texts our shared cultural heritage and recurring questions of human existence.

Within the Classical Languages major you will have the opportunity to choose an emphasis in one of the three languages with a view to reading and working with texts of the Hebrew, classical, and Christian traditions. In addition to the area of emphasis there is opportunity to branch out into the other two languages. Periodically, courses in yet additional languages (e.g., Akkadian, Aramaic, Ugaritic) are also offered.

In addition to encouraging you to master the languages, we wish to stimulate you to grasp concepts and shape your own, to ask significant questions and to seek answers to them, to develop original ideas, to become intellectually self-motivated, and to give great attention to accuracy in the use and interpretation of your languages.

[Studying the Ancient Languages] has unlocked the structure of language, teaching me to be an analytical reader and precise writer. — Isaiah Fasoldt 11

The Certificate in Latin for Classical Christian Education provides students with a specialized interdisciplinary education for teaching Latin in a classical Christian environment. The program proceeds from the belief that the best preparation to be a teacher of Latin in a Christian school is the intensive reading and analyzing of the monumental works of Latin literature with an eye to how they communicate the great ideas of the past to us today. One unique feature of Wheaton’s program is that it seeks to integrate Christian faith and classical learning, to ask whether and how Christ and the Christian virtues might be found in the (pre-Christian) classical world. Upon completing this program, students will have a broad training to prepare them to be teachers of Latin and the classical tradition in primary and secondary schools. 

Learn more about the Certificate.

Studying the Classics gave me room to explore not just language, but history, philosophy, literature, and theology. It challenged and expanded my mind—and changed my life. — Alicia Hall 01