[safisoft]

Sigh... you've not read the Acts of the Apostles or any of Paul's letters, have you?

I have spent years studying the New Testament... in Greek. I am intimately familiar with all of its precious words, I can assure you. On the other hand, I have learned that just as Peter said about Paul, whose, "words hard to understand, which some distort to their own ruin." Without immersing yourself in the language and culture of Paul, you won't ever understand him. Although he likely spoke Latin and Greek... he thought like a Jew, and his training under Gamliel was thoroughly "rabbinic" and that tells far more than you can ever see on your side of the divide. Paul is one of Judaism's greatest sages.

[Cronos]

Ok, bringing in the Greek guns — Kolokotronis can and does read the NT in original Koine Greek and can help me with this. Kolokotronis — can you read post #90 and #97 and help with this?

[aruanan]

Without immersing yourself in the language and culture of Paul, you won't ever understand him. Although he likely spoke Latin and Greek... he thought like a Jew, and his training under Gamliel was thoroughly "rabbinic" and that tells far more than you can ever see on your side of the divide. Paul is one of Judaism's greatest sages.

There are at least two problems with what you said.

1. Assuming that language is so limited that it cannot be understood in the absence of cultural understanding. The extreme position of this would be that everyone is so idiosyncratic that no one can possibly understand what anyone else says or writes without actually being that other person.
2. Forgetting that Paul wrote with full knowledge of both his own training and the linguistic, cultural, and religious backgrounds of those to whom he wrote, especially in the context of his being considered by Peter, James, and John to be the apostle to the gentiles as they were apostles to the Jews.