Posted on 06/03/2008 7:55:15 AM PDT by NYer
LOL
That’s kinda cute, actually.
They knew...
Who? Indiana Iones?
I have that book as well as the sequel
Acts 26:14 And when we all had fallen to the ground, I heard a voice speaking to me and saying in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’
They all spoke Hebrew!
Luke 23:38 And an inscription also was written over Him in letters of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.
John 5:2 Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches.
John 19:17 And He, bearing His cross, went out to a place called the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha,
Acts 21:40 So when he had given him permission, Paul stood on the stairs and motioned with his hand to the people. And when there was a great silence, he spoke to them in the Hebrew language, saying,
Acts 22:2 And when they heard that he spoke to them in the Hebrew language, they kept all the more silent.Then he said:
BTW, there’s no such thing as a Greek, Latin or Aramaic Torah Scroll!
Wouldn’t the fact that these passage explicitly name Hebrew imply that He usually spoke a different language?
You may have missed the point of this article. It is very probable that our Lord understood and spoke Greek and even Latin; we know he could read Hebrew. What the author is saying is that in everyday parlance, Jesus, His Mother, adoptive father and His disciples all spoke Aramaic.
We see this even today. Arabic has been adopted as the 'official' language of many countries in the Middle East, including Lebanon, where it is taught in the schools. However, outside the school and in the marketplace, the common language spoken is Lebanese - not Arabic. And even amongst the nations that have adopted Arabic as their official language, the form spoken is so different that an Egyptian cannot understand the Arabic spoken by an Iraqi.
BTTT
Just like many of us cannot understand English as spoken in Texas :-)
If Jesus had spoken Aramaic as his everyday language then the inscription on the cross would have been in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek. However his everyday language was not Aramaic but Hebrew, therefore the inscription on the cross was in Hebrew, Latin and Greek.
This implies either that Jesus wrote the inscription on his cross, or that those who wrote it used his language for his convenience. I do not find either of these conclusions very likely.
The Romans who made the sign were that deferential to their subjects, eh?
LOL
You forgot the third conclusion.
Our western system of law descends from that of the Romans and part of that western system requires that a person charged with a crime should know just exactly what he is being accused of in a language that he can understand.
It was Roman custom for one charged with a crime to have their crime read to them in their own language, and if sentenced to death by cricifixion, then the crime they were convicted of was inscribed on the cross in their own language. Unless you are going to say that Jesus spoke to the people in Latin and Greek, then by virtue of the inscription on the cross, the Romans were acknowledging that the language he spoke was Hebrew -- not Aramaic.
The second language, if different from the first, was to be the language of the local people so that they also would know why that person was sentenced to death. That language in both cases here was Hebrew -- not Aramaic.
The Greek language was also used as it was the more universal language of the empire for foreigners and visitors to understand. And the Latin was for the Roman soldiers and government officials to understand.
The absence of Aramaic on the inscription speaks volumes. Jesus spoke Hebrew and the Jews with whom he spoke understood it. The inscription on the cross proves it.
It isn't often that I hear something new about Roman Culture here, sounds interesting. I am also wondering if it is possible that Aramaic was strictly a spoken language at that time and place (I know, this is very unlikely)?
Exactly so.
The inscription on the cross was presumably written in a language the people reading it would be able to read. This establishes that Hebrew literacy was widespread, not that Hebrew was the daily language of Judaea. In fact, Jesus’ “eli, eli, lama sabachthani!” and numerous other Aramaicisms encoded into the Greek of the New Testament suggests strongly that the normal language of day-to-day conversation was Aramaic.
Eli, Hebrews eli, “my God”, ( Matthew 27:46), an exclamation used by Christ on the cross.
Mark (15:34), as usual, gives the original Aramaic form of the word, Eloi.
Sorry, my mistake.
But the point remains.
Hebrew literacy was not widespread outside of the Jewish community, and the further one travelled from Jeruslaem the less Hebrew the Jewish community spoke and understood. But around Jerusalem and Judea Hebrew was the language of choice for the nationalistic Jewish community to whom Jesus was sent.
In fact, Jesus’ “eli, eli, lama sabachthani!” and numerous other Aramaicisms encoded into the Greek of the New Testament suggests strongly that the normal language of day-to-day conversation was Aramaic.
These few Aramaicisms were the exceptions not the rule. The fact that those few Aramaicisms were left untranslated in the Greek Gospels, ie transferred verbatim, is indicative that the language the Jews spoke everyday was not Aramaic. Otherwise why translate all the rest that Jesus and the people said to each other into the Greek but leave these few Aramaicisms untranslated???
The fact is that just because Jesus mixed some Aramaic into his Hebrew does not mean that He was now speaking Aramaic, anymore than those of us do today when we mix words from other languages into our everyday English. We are still speaking English.
Mark 5:41 Talita, kumi! “Little girl, get up!” in Aramaic. It is sometimes asked whether Yeshua spoke Hebrew or Aramaic. Though Aramaic and Greek were the international languages in use in the Middle East in the first century, Hebrew was a common household language among Jews at that time and continued to be spoken until the third century c.e. After that time it was used for prayer but rarely for daily communication. In the nineteenth century it was revived for secular literary purposes and consciously developed as a modern language by Eli‛ezer Ben-Yehuda and others after 1879. Most people in Yeshua’s day probably spoke all three languages in some degree. In the New Testament the Greek word “Ebraios” and its cognates can refer to either Aramaic or Hebrew.On this subject Professor David Flusser, an Orthodox Jewish scholar in Jerusalem, writes: “The spoken languages among the Jews of that period were Hebrew, Aramaic, and to an extent Greek. Until recently, it was believed by numerous scholars that the language spoken by Jesus’ disciples was Aramaic. It is possible that Jesus did, from time to time, make use of the Aramaic language. But during that period Hebrew was both the daily language and the language of study. The Gospel of Mark contains a few Aramaic words, and this was what misled scholars. Today, after the discovery of the Hebrew Ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus) [a book of the Apocrypha], of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and of the Bar Kokhba Letters, and in the light of more profound studies of the language of the Jewish Sages, it is accepted that most people were fluent in Hebrew. The Pentateuch was translated into Aramaic for the benefit of the lower strata of the population. The parables in the Rabbinic literature, on the other hand, were delivered in Hebrew in all periods. There is thus no ground for assuming that Jesus did not speak Hebrew; and when we are told (Acts 21:40) that Paul spoke Hebrew, we should take this piece of information at face value.” (Jewish Sources in Early Christianity, POB 7103, Tel Aviv 61070: MOD Books, 1989) See also Shmuel Safrai, “Spoken Languages in the Time of Jesus,” in Jerusalem Perspective 4:1 (January/February 1991), pp. 3–8, 13; and William Chomsky, Hebrew: The Eternal Language (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1957; 4th printing 1969), chapter 11, entitled “Did Hebrew Ever Die?” (his answer is: No).
Stern, D. H. (1996, c1992). Jewish New Testament Commentary : A companion volume to the Jewish New Testament (electronic ed.) (Mk 5:41). Clarksville: Jewish New Testament Publications.
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