In order to advance as a serious scholar of the bible, it is helpful to have some familiarity with ancient biblical languages such as Phoenician, Akkadian, Sumerian, Samaritan, or Aramaic.

This familiarity is particularly useful if the student is embarking upon a course of textual criticism where the cross-comparison of manuscripts and variant readings is a powerful tool in discovering likely meanings to the biblical text. Phoenician, for example, is a major root of many ancient and modern languages; the Phoenician alphabet was used by the Hebrews and even impacts modern languages.