[Havoc]

Only if he were born in those countries, IMHO. Where in the Bible does it say that he spoke Greek? Oh. that's based on the archaelogical, EXTRA-biblical stuff, right?

Hey I dropped it as supposition - not proof. But if you want to split hairs on the supposition, Are you going to really argue that if God decided to speak in Arabic then turn to another and speak in Niponese that he couldn't? I wouldn't make that argument in a million years. I don't proffer it as proof though, merely as another option or viewpoint to show the absurdity of the claim. And, yes, it is absurd. That one can say we don't have Jesus' true words because they were translated to another language. By that measure, not a single soul in all of Catholicism for hundreds of years had the words of Jesus because they were spoken in Latin, not Jesus' native tongue - whatever it may have been.

And in absence of quotations from nonexistant texts, are we to now believe that you are mad because I hold you to what you guys have claimed to be the basis of your scholarship? Another claim that doesn't align with reality..

[RobbyS]

This literal interpertaion stuff makes sense when the Muslims use it, because they believe that Arabic--the language of the Koran--is literally the language of revelation. That's why for many years they required believers to learn Arabic rather than translating the Koran into other languages.(It also gave the Arab elite an advantage over other Muslims, and I am told, it is great literature in its own right) But when we use the Bible we are several removes from the language that Jesus actually spoke, and those Catholics who read and wrote Latin --and there were hundreds of thousands of them--were no further removed than we English-speakers. When Luther wrote in Latin, his thoughts were immediately available to every educated man in Europe.