http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2641720/What-language-DID-Jesus-speak-Benjamin-Netanyahu-Popes-disagreement-opens-debate-spoke-Hebrew-Aramaic.html
The debate is on... // Lennart On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 4:29 PM, Chris Hahn <[email protected]> wrote: > My guess: Aramaic was his mother tongue, but that he also spoke Hebrew. > > > > *From:* [email protected] [mailto: > [email protected]] > *Sent:* Friday, May 30, 2014 2:29 PM > *To:* [email protected] > *Cc:* [email protected] > *Subject:* [RC] What language did Jesus speak? > > > > > > > > > > *Your Holiness, Bibi was right – Jesus spoke Hebrew!* > > R. Steven Notley | Ops & Blogs | The Times of Israel > <http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/bibi-was-right-jesus-spoke-hebrew/#ixzz33EUdTeiJ> > > > > > > May 28, 2014, > > The recent tête-à-tête > <http://www.timesofisrael.com/pope-wraps-up-delicate-mideast-pilgrimage/> > between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Pope Francis has set the > blogosphere atwitter. While their exchange was amicable, the prime > minister’s correction of the holy father ushered into public discourse a > subject more at home in the arcane halls of scholarly deliberation. > > What language did Jesus speak? > > Their differences of opinion reflect changes taking place among scholars, > but which have yet to make their way fully to mainstream, popular > understanding. Beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century a mistaken > notion took hold that has by-and-large continued to dominate both scholarly > and popular opinion. > > Today many still assume that by the first century C.E. Hebrew was a dead > language, or existed only among sparse pockets of the highly educated – not > dissimilar to Medieval Latin. > > As a consequence, it is commonly thought that Jesus only knew Aramaic. > > Yet, the results of a century of archaeological evidence have challenged > this assumption and brought a sea change of understanding regarding the > linguistic environment of first-century Judaea. > > The inscriptional and literary evidence reflects a reality not unlike what > we find with the Dead Sea Scrolls. Of the 700 non-biblical texts from the > Qumran library, 120 are in Aramaic and 28 in Greek, while 550 scrolls were > written in Hebrew. > > Jesus lived in a trilingual land in which Hebrew and Aramaic were widely > in use. A relative latecomer, Greek was introduced in the 4th century > B.C.E. with the arrival of Alexander the Great and his Hellenistic > successors. > > By the first century C.E. Aramaic served as the lingua franca of the Near > East, and there is little question that Jesus knew and spoke Aramaic. > Hebrew, on the other hand, was in more limited use as the language of > discourse among the Jewish people. > > The New Testament presents Jesus knowledgeable of both written and spoken > Hebrew. > > He is portrayed reading and teaching from the Bible, and there are clear > indications in these accounts that he used the Hebrew Scriptures. In this > he was not alone. We have not a single example of a Jewish teacher of the > first century in the land of Israel teaching from any other version of the > scriptures than Hebrew. > > In addition, Jesus is often described speaking in parables. These were > delivered orally in popular, non-scholarly settings. They were also in > Hebrew. Outside of the Gospels, story-parables of the type associated with > Jesus are to be found only in rabbinic literature, and without exception > they are all in Hebrew. We have not a single parable in Aramaic, so it > seems that according to Jewish custom one did not tell parables in Aramaic. > To suggest that Jesus told his parables in Aramaic is to ignore > overwhelming evidence to the contrary. > > Old ideas die hard, and it appears this also to be the case concerning the > languages of Jesus. Why scholars and others continue to believe Hebrew was > not Jesus’ mother tongue is another question, but it is not for lack of > evidence. > -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
