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To: AnAmericanMother

So, you assert that Jesus spoke Greek? Usually people assert that he read Hebrew, and spoke Aramaic.


72 posted on 03/12/2006 4:07:39 PM PST by Donald Meaker (You don't drive a car looking through the rear view mirror, but you do practice politics that way.)
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To: Donald Meaker
No, most Jews in the Middle East at that time no longer spoke Hebrew fluently. It was a liturgical language primarily. You might analogize the situation to pre VCII Catholicism - the best educated, especially the priests, deacons, and choir, spoke Latin pretty well, but your average parishioner just knew the prayers and the most common chants.

While Jews spoke Aramaic among themselves, the lingua franca of the Mediterranean region was koine Greek. So many people spoke it that the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek by the Jews of Alexandria, the text is usually called the Septuagint or LXX because traditionally the translation was done by seventy elders. The Septuagint is the version that Jesus probably used for teaching (just as in the Catholic Church the Bible was read in English while Latin was still used for the Mass itself.) When in the New Testament Jesus quotes the Old Testament, it's usually from the Septuagint -- I can't say 100 percent of the time, but several passages are word for word.

I'm sure that Jesus spoke Greek, on that account. Since he was a learned man and a rabbi, I'm sure he also knew Hebrew, but probably didn't use it in daily life.

There's a scene in The Passion where Pontius Pilate is questioning Jesus. He speaks to Jesus in Aramaic - but Jesus replies to him in the most elegant and polished Latin and Pilate does the mother of all double-takes. (Of course God would speak Latin, wouldn't He?)

76 posted on 03/12/2006 5:34:54 PM PST by AnAmericanMother (Ministrix of Ye Chase, TTGC Ladies' Auxiliary (recess appointment))
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