Christ and the Apostles probably spoke Aramaic. Aramaic words appear a few places in the New Testament. Some scholars claim to have found an Aramaic structure underlying the Gospel of Mathhew.
Because they lived in the Hellenistic Eastern part of the Roman Empire some of the Apostles probably knew Koine, Paul and Luke certainly did. The New Testament was written, I agree, in Koine. In the first 3 centuries it was translated in to Latin, Sryiac, Armenian, probably Arabic, Coptic, and so on.
Oh those goofy Muslims! First they tell you Mohammad was illiterate and did not write, then he’s taking dictation from Angels. Next they will tell us he’s riding a magical horses named Barack to the farthest Mosque in a city that was not conquered by Islam until 3 years after his death!
Hey Pete
I was wondering yesterday if you found a way to get in to see POTUS. I made a few calls but no luck. My son has done some security details in the past but he has moved on to bigger things.
Happy for the folks along I29 that got the honk for Q. Very cool.
Aramaic was a mishmash of many dialects spanning geographically separated towns, villages from Jerusalem to Babylon. It was like a Pidgeon English used by travelers to communicate with villagers whose dialects were not understood.
When there is no mass communication, no national language, no education system to promote a uniform language, people resort to stringing together bits and pieces of words and phrases to get thoughts across.
“This afternoon we are traveling west to purchase bread”
becomes
“We go (points finger at the Sun and moves finger west) buy bread”.
Aramaic was more developed but it was not a written language. The Aramaic of the Bible is not the spoken Aramaic. It is a Hebrew-adapted Aramaic. Scholars agree that the Aramaic of the Bible is a Hebrew version of Aramaic.
Hebrew and Greek were the educated languages, the written word. Hebrew scholars adapted Hebrew to mimic spoken Aramaic because the writings involved Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon, the witnesses spoke in Aramaic. The Hebrew scribes worked to translate the spoken Aramaic witness accounts into Hebrew but went further to adopt Aramaic into the Hebrew structure. The written results were spread back out to those towns and villages in the thousands of miles between Jerusalem and Babylon so that a faithful record was established.