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To: CpnHook; ealgeone
Debating what language Jesus spoke is rather a waste of time. There is no dispute about what language Jesus probably spoke on a daily basis. His every day language may have been Aramaic or Hebrew. At the age of 12 He was in the Temple teaching and we can be assured that was in Hebrew. He read from the scriptures which assuredly was in Hebrew. Had He spoken in Aramaic in the Temple we can be assured He would not have been treated with respect but simply expelled as the Temple language was for sure Hebrew and nothing else.

Street language would likely have been Aramaic, Hebrew, or Greek depending on the group of people He was with. We do know that all three were used at the time including Latin although less common. We also know however that Greek was the predominate language of the entire area. Alexander had conquered that region over 300 years before the birth of Jesus. We know that Koine Greek was the common street language of Rome, Alexandria, Athens, and Jerusalem from 330BC to 330AD. It was surely the language of commerce. G.L. Archer wrote this: "Greek was the most ideally adapted linguistic medium for the World-Wide communication of the Gospel in the entire region of the eastern Mediterranean, Egypt and the Near East. Accurate in expression, beautiful in sound, and capable of great rhetorical force, it furnished an ideal vehicle for the proclamation of God’s message to man, transcending Semitic barriers and reaching out to all the Gentile races. [Archer, Gleason L. 1975. Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible. Vol. 3. Merrill C. Tenney, ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.]

Given all that the fact still remains that the Holy Spirit inspired the New Testament to be written and preserved in the Greek language. It is the meaning of the words in the Greek language that we need to do our best to understand the meaning of. The Holy Spirit didn't have to guess as to what Jesus meant when He spoke. Whether Jesus was speaking in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, or even Latin is immaterial to this discussion. It is the Greek language that the Holy Spirit had those words recorded in for all time. It is the Greek that we need to understand. Injecting the Aramaic is second guessing what the Holy Spirit had written.

240 posted on 02/14/2015 5:43:31 AM PST by CynicalBear (For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus)
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To: CynicalBear; EagleOne
Debating what language Jesus spoke is rather a waste of time.

In general, I agree. It's just that in this case we have the Scriptural cross-references ("Cephas") that very much takes this out of the realm of speculation as to the underlying Aramaic.

261 posted on 02/14/2015 1:04:30 PM PST by CpnHook
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