Used to; failed to exercise the ability and lost it. I read quite a bit of theology in French for my Master’s thesis (along with quite a bit of German), but I can’t even understand an old Jacques Cousteau TV show these days.
Why do you ask?
I’m wondering what word(s) they used. The reason is that I remember instances of one or more early Fathers referring to the Word of God as inerrant, but they meant it the way an archer would use it, that the Word always flies straight to its target.
Also, thinking of Jews… a rabbi I used to bump into now and then at St. Louis University down in the rare books room made the intriguing mark one day about the first Genesis Creation account that of course the days are meant as literal days, it’s just that the story isn’t meant as literal. He didn’t expand on that, but years later at a seminar on ancient near eastern literature I found myself getting a handle on it when a presenter was describing a certain kind of ANE literature and suddenly it clicked in my mind that his description fit the first Genesis Creation account – and he described how for the purpose of expounding on the main point of this kind of literature the details could be treated as literal, in fact were meant to be, but that the account as written was not meant literally and so the details couldn’t be carried outside a piece of this kind of literature; they were only literal for “internal purposes”.