Did Jesus speak Aramaic and why does it matter?

[calmthesea]

You stated, “Jesus came for His disciples to go and make disciples of all nations. Greek would have been a very important tool. Aramaic would not”. My point is that your statement is false–Aramaic was indeed an important tool (and arguably an even more important tool than Greek) for disciple-making in the early church.

Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic.

David,

This is so off topic. I completely understand that Syriac is a dialect. It’s a red herring. Not one thing that I wrote is false. Your post is quite disrespectful of my position. “Arguably” is RIGHT! But, “arguably more important” doesn’t make my statement false.

I can also easily say “no David, my point is that your statement is false.” It’s ridiculous.

Where do I start:

1. The New testament was written in Greek
2. Romans occupied most of the middle east; where Christianity began (Greek)
3. The Church fathers of the Apostolic and Sub-Apostolic age wrote in Greek
4. Josephus wrote in Greek
5. This includes the 3rd in succession of the chair of Peter (Clement) wrote in Greek
6. You can easily find a list of a dozen, or more, Sub-Apostolic and Anti-Nicene Church Fathers who wrote in Greek
   7)There are a few Anti-Nicene fathers that wrote in Latin
7. Most Latin Church fathers were , should we say, post-Constantine.

Guess what David, there are NO anti-Nicene (Pre, let’s say 350 AD) that wrote in Aramaic, or Syriac. Hmm.

There is 1 Church father that wrote in Sryiac prior to the year 500 AD,…one.

The Romans quit persecuting the church and the chair of Peter was in Rome, so many of the Later Church Fathers began writing in Latin.

I have never said that Christians didn’t speak Aramaic, or Syriac.

No David, what I wrote was not false. No where near it. I said “Aramaic, not so much”

I don’t call your “500 years after Calvary” to be the early church. Maybe your Orthodox, but in any Christian religion making such an unsubstantiated claim would be sin.

Were there bishops in areas that spoke different dialects of Aramaic/Hebrew? Of Course. Were there bishops in areas that spoke other languages? of course
However, that certainly doesn’t make what I wrote false.

I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, but you’ve just tried to discredit my statements in- accurately.

Best, Patrick

 

[calmthesea]

Dear Pat, Perhaps you ought to look at a quote then before you quote it. I was responding to your response to me in which you include my original quote. No where do you say " in the original post of this thread" or in the “dictionary quote” you simply posted your words attached to my quote and used the direct term “you” ( had we been speaking in good old English you would have had the brilliant ability to use the indirect ‘one’ instead of the direct ‘you’ and I would have understood it was not a direct reference to my post and me in particular) so of course I was left with no other context in which to take your comment other than in reference to my own, which you quoted in full. I was left with no other option than to believe you were directly answering my comment . Forgive me for not being a mind reader. I am sure if you go back and read in full my post and your response to it you will see the reason for my last to you.
To make an analogy is fine if one somehow make a reference to what one is pointing to. In a thread like this where there are many posts and one can not hear tone or see people’s reactions or one does not know that people are all of the same mind set as ones’self it is necessary to be a little clearer and precise in one’s meaning. If you catch my drift , probably not but at least I get the big picture so thanks for explaining the reasons for your comments to my post

Maryann,

We are both Catholics. I haven’t meant to offend you. I don’t know why your seem so antagonistic. I haven’t tried to discredit Scott Hahn. I love the Catholic Church.

You seem to misunderstand everything I write. Maybe it’s because 70% of communication is non-verbal and we’re not in the same room.

I don’t even know how to respond to you. You misrepresent what I was saying. That’s called a “straw man”. It’s an attempt to discredit someone’s point of view by misrepresenting it. I’m not your enemy. Maybe we both need some more time before the Blessed Sacrament.

Best, Patrick

 

[KEYM]

Translations of scripture and understanding of Jewish idioms would be relevant in determining what language Jesus spoke. Translations do really have a significant impact on our understandings of scripture. The book of Jacob became the book of James. James is a Greek name not a Hebrew one. To say, “if your eye offends you, pluck it out” does not mean to mutilate one’s self. It is a Jewish idiom. It simply means , “don’t do that! Stop it!.”

So if would be helpful to know exactly which language Jesus and his disciples spoke and wrote. Ponticus Pilate wrote the inscription on Jesus’s cross, “Jesus, King of the Jews” in Greek, Hebrew and Latin. If all the Jews were speaking Aramaic then I think maybe one of the inscriptions would have been in Aramaic.

 

[calmthesea]

Translations of scripture and understanding of Jewish idioms would be relevant in determining what language Jesus spoke. Translations do really have a significant impact on our understandings of scripture. The book of Jacob became the book of James. James is a Greek name not a Hebrew one. To say, “if your eye offends you, pluck it out” does not mean to mutilate one’s self. It is a Jewish idiom. It simply means , “don’t do that! Stop it!.”

So if would be helpful to know exactly which language Jesus and his disciples spoke and wrote. Ponticus Pilate wrote the inscription on Jesus’s cross, “Jesus, King of the Jews” in Greek, Hebrew and Latin. If all the Jews were speaking Aramaic then I think maybe one of the inscriptions would have been in Aramaic.

KEYM,

Amen…

Are you Jewish?

Best. Patrick

 

[KEYM]

KEYM,

Amen…

Are you Jewish?

Best. Patrick

No I’m not. Sadly my Ancestry.com DNA spit test confirmed this fact. I secretly dreamed of a DNA connection to one of the apostles. Ha ha. The more that I try to find the answer to the language question the more questions I have. After the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles, they could preach in many different languages. When Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes, the bible says that there were 5000 people there! So did everyone have a common official language and then speak their own clan dialect?

 

[Medawlinno]

The historical Jesus would have spoken the Galilean dialect of Aramaic as his native tongue. It’s really no more complicated than that. Hebrew was already a dead language at that time and was used almost exclusively as the liturgical language of Judaism (as well as some literature). People would have known how to read it (Hebrew), but it had long since given way to Aramaic as the spoken language.

The koine dialect of Greek was more or less what English is today. It was THE trade language of its day. Like English today, where one can travel just about anywhere on the planet and virtually everyone speaks it to some degree, in its heyday, koine Greek was spoken by most peoples of the Mediterranean area with varying degrees of fluency.

Most of the historical Jesus’s apostles were in the fishing industry and though one may be tempted to assume they would have dealt with various “buyers” from around the area and most likely would have had a better command of Greek than say, a local farmer, I suspect most “buyers” would have been local merchants and local people from around the area and the language of “business” in this case would have simply been Aramaic, not koine Greek. Most likely, Jesus and his apostles’ command of Greek was no more than the average person at the time. The culture was very Hellenized, but unlike the Egyptian language which was very heavily influenced by Greek as a result of Hellenization, what is today modern Israel, apparently was not nearly as heavily influenced as far as language goes.

That part of the world was also occupied at the time by a foreign entity; the Roman Empire. I think it’s fairly safe to say that one would have most likely also heard Latin here and there, but in all likelihood, Latin would have been confined to larger cities where the Roman population would have been more prevalent as opposed to a small town.

The average person on the street may have known a small handful of words in Latin If that), but probably not much more than that at best.

I suspect communication between the Jewish population and the Romans would have more likely have been in koine Greek, rather than Latin – a language by which both parties would have been more or less on equal ground.

The average person on the street was most likely bi-lingual to some degree (Aramaic and koine Greek) so we can assume the historical Jesus would have also known Greek to some degree, but would not have used it on a daily basis; again, Galilean Aramaic would have been the local norm.

As an aside, a form of Aramaic survives to this day in the guise of Syriac (a liturgical language but also a spoken one in a few surviving communities). The orthography is not the same as Hebrew (it’s more akin to Arabic), but the language is “modern Aramaic”.

Aramaic and Hebrew, by the way, are not all that hugely different from each other; had Hebrew survived, the two would have been fairly mutually inteligible (something like say Czech vs Slovak or Russian vs Belorussian - not really a huge difference between the two).

 

[Maryann_C]

Maryann,

We are both Catholics. I haven’t meant to offend you. I don’t know why your seem so antagonistic. I haven’t tried to discredit Scott Hahn. I love the Catholic Church.

You seem to misunderstand everything I write. Maybe it’s because 70% of communication is non-verbal and we’re not in the same room.

I don’t even know how to respond to you. You misrepresent what I was saying. That’s called a “straw man”. It’s an attempt to discredit someone’s point of view by misrepresenting it. I’m not your enemy. Maybe we both need some more time before the Blessed Sacrament.

Best, Patrick

Dear Patrick , You are right I WAS offended because that 'straw man ’ you talk about , well that is what you did to me when you replied to my first post. After your explanation however I realized you had misquoted me and had not read my post correctly because you attributed to me something I did not say. You said that I was quoting a dictionary reference of Scott Hahn - that was not me it was someone else , the only reason I mentioned Scott Hahn was in response to what YOU said in your post to which I was responding . Since you were not very clear and precise in what you were referring to when you responded to me the first time, I had no way of discerning that you were mistaken so naturally I was frustrated . When you explained better, I understood better what happened - hence the last line of my last post . If you go back to read the comment I first responded to and (honestly, word for word not what you THINK is written) read them in sequence like that ,hopefully you will see what I did finally and why I thanked you for explaining. It happens on line but is why it is important to be very precise when quoting people in reply to their posts. This is a lesson for me too.

There is a tool here ( that I seem inept at mastering) that allows a person to ‘chop up’ someone’s post so that one can respond line by line and that always makes things clearer wish I could figure that tool out. Anyway I am over it please forgive me for frustrating you. It happens here and is one of the reasons I left for a year. I am English and although I have lived in the US for over 20 years the way I word things is just in my blood and try as I might to make myself understood by Americans sometimes I just fail . I have never been able to figure out what exactly it is.

 

[Maryann_C]

I am just struck with a comment I made in my last post that was in reply to Patrick ( we had a little misunderstanding - but those ruffled feathers are smoothed now ). This pertains to this whole argument of ‘what language’ . I am English and even though I have lived & worked in America for over 20 years, am married to an American and have kids who have gone through American schools there are many times when I simply can not get Americans to understand me. WHY? It is not just because we both use a different form of the English language with some words that mean something different. For example; when my husband first asked me if I wanted some ‘biscuits and gravy’ I had a picture in my mind of a pile of cookies with gravy on top!!! Or when he told me that it was a family tradition to ‘ride the trolley’ at Christmas time to see the lights down town , I had an image in my mind of me squished in a shopping cart with him pushing me through the streets …you can imagine my quizzical looks at him . :whacky::whacky::whacky: It is different because there is an English understanding of terminology by sentence structure and phraseology etc that only a born and raised English person understands. Essentially it is in ‘the blood’ as it were. This is why many of my American friends simply ‘don’t get’ some of the more subtle English humor which may have me rolling on the floor gasping for breath because I can’t laugh any more.

My point ,as it pertains to this whole question from the OP, is that I think you trying to think through this intellectually rather than remembering that Jesus is GOD and there fore He would have spoken German if that was what was needed to make Himself perfectly clear to his disciples . If Jesus’ mission was to very CLEARLY teach His Apostles what He wanted them to pass on as the Gospel and If that needed Him to speak Aramaic because that was their ‘mother tongue’ then He would have spoken Aramaic. THAT is WHY it matters- for the clarity of the full meaning of truth to be able to be passed on- even then the Holy Spirit was needed.
This leads me to my second thought ; since Jesus is God and therefore ONE with the Holy Trinity the ‘gift of tongues’ is part of Jesus so it is quite reasonable to believe that when Jesus spoke the people around Him that were called to Him by the Father were also able to understand Him in their own dialect or preferred language by the Holy Spirit that was in Him.

My thanks to Pat for helping me see this.

Jesus IS God - ergo Jesus speaks all languages. End of story.

 

[Maryann_C]

The historical Jesus would have spoken the Galilean dialect of Aramaic as his native tongue. It’s really no more complicated than that. Hebrew was already a dead language at that time and was used almost exclusively as the liturgical language of Judaism (as well as some literature). People would have known how to read it (Hebrew), but it had long since given way to Aramaic as the spoken language.
…
The average person on the street may have known a small handful of words in Latin If that), but probably not much more than that at best.
QUOTE]

Dear Medawlinno, Welcome to CAF. I like your opening paragraph. Jesus , however , is not your “average person” and the OP’s question (that many seem to have ignored) is " WHY does it matter" .

 

[calmthesea]

I am just struck with a comment I made in my last post that was in reply to Patrick ( we had a little misunderstanding - but those ruffled feathers are smoothed now ). This pertains to this whole argument of ‘what language’ . I am English and even though I have lived & worked in America for over 20 years, am married to an American and have kids who have gone through American schools there are many times when I simply can not get Americans to understand me. WHY? It is not just because we both use a different form of the English language with some words that mean something different. For example; when my husband first asked me if I wanted some ‘biscuits and gravy’ I had a picture in my mind of a pile of cookies with gravy on top!!! Or when he told me that it was a family tradition to ‘ride the trolley’ at Christmas time to see the lights down town , I had an image in my mind of me squished in a shopping cart with him pushing me through the streets …you can imagine my quizzical looks at him . :whacky::whacky::whacky: It is different because there is an English understanding of terminology by sentence structure and phraseology etc that only a born and raised English person understands. Essentially it is in ‘the blood’ as it were. This is why many of my American friends simply ‘don’t get’ some of the more subtle English humor which may have me rolling on the floor gasping for breath because I can’t laugh any more.

My point ,as it pertains to this whole question from the OP, is that I think you trying to think through this intellectually rather than remembering that Jesus is GOD and there fore He would have spoken German if that was what was needed to make Himself perfectly clear to his disciples . If Jesus’ mission was to very CLEARLY teach His Apostles what He wanted them to pass on as the Gospel and If that needed Him to speak Aramaic because that was their ‘mother tongue’ then He would have spoken Aramaic. THAT is WHY it matters- for the clarity of the full meaning of truth to be able to be passed on- even then the Holy Spirit was needed.
This leads me to my second thought ; since Jesus is God and therefore ONE with the Holy Trinity the ‘gift of tongues’ is part of Jesus so it is quite reasonable to believe that when Jesus spoke the people around Him that were called to Him by the Father were also able to understand Him in their own dialect or preferred language by the Holy Spirit that was in Him.

My thanks to Pat for helping me see this.

Jesus IS God - ergo Jesus speaks all languages. End of story.

Amen, sister. I have people call me Padric because of their ethnicity, but it’s not my name. Where I live, they may call my brother Pedro, but that’s not his name. (Well, it is in spanish) They’ll use idioms and cliche’s that are in their native tongue when they are talking to you.

I say gratis amigo all the time. (Thank you amigo) I hear manana all the time (tomorrow) I use it myself.

Best, Patrick

 

[calmthesea]

The historical Jesus would have spoken the Galilean dialect of Aramaic as his native tongue. It’s really no more complicated than that. Hebrew was already a dead language at that time and was used almost exclusively as the liturgical language of Judaism (as well as some literature). People would have known how to read it (Hebrew), but it had long since given way to Aramaic as the spoken language.

The koine dialect of Greek was more or less what English is today. It was THE trade language of its day. Like English today, where one can travel just about anywhere on the planet and virtually everyone speaks it to some degree, in its heyday, koine Greek was spoken by most peoples of the Mediterranean area with varying degrees of fluency.

Most of the historical Jesus’s apostles were in the fishing industry and though one may be tempted to assume they would have dealt with various “buyers” from around the area and most likely would have had a better command of Greek than say, a local farmer, I suspect most “buyers” would have been local merchants and local people from around the area and the language of “business” in this case would have simply been Aramaic, not koine Greek. Most likely, Jesus and his apostles’ command of Greek was no more than the average person at the time. The culture was very Hellenized, but unlike the Egyptian language which was very heavily influenced by Greek as a result of Hellenization, what is today modern Israel, apparently was not nearly as heavily influenced as far as language goes.

That part of the world was also occupied at the time by a foreign entity; the Roman Empire. I think it’s fairly safe to say that one would have most likely also heard Latin here and there, but in all likelihood, Latin would have been confined to larger cities where the Roman population would have been more prevalent as opposed to a small town.

The average person on the street may have known a small handful of words in Latin If that), but probably not much more than that at best.

I suspect communication between the Jewish population and the Romans would have more likely have been in koine Greek, rather than Latin – a language by which both parties would have been more or less on equal ground.

The average person on the street was most likely bi-lingual to some degree (Aramaic and koine Greek) so we can assume the historical Jesus would have also known Greek to some degree, but would not have used it on a daily basis; again, Galilean Aramaic would have been the local norm.

As an aside, a form of Aramaic survives to this day in the guise of Syriac (a liturgical language but also a spoken one in a few surviving communities). The orthography is not the same as Hebrew (it’s more akin to Arabic), but the language is “modern Aramaic”.

Aramaic and Hebrew, by the way, are not all that hugely different from each other; had Hebrew survived, the two would have been fairly mutually inteligible (something like say Czech vs Slovak or Russian vs Belorussian - not really a huge difference between the two).

Medawlinno,

I really respect you well thought out post. You draw a conclusion that I would not draw. You suspect that local buyers would have spoken Aramaic. And, that’s a reasoned deduction. It would be a standard American Bible college train of thought.

However, I spent many years studying the Old Testament thru Jewish scholarship.I also spent considerable time studying thru the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Through Archeology, there is significant findings that you may find startling. Discoveries show that “Galilee of the Gentiles” is called that for a reason.

In a 1992 Journal called “Biblical Archaeological Review”, Professor emeritis Pieter W. Van Der Horst wrote, " One of the most surprising facts of about funerary inscriptions[extant from ancient Palestine dating from 300BC to 500AD] is that most of them are in Greek- approximately 70%; about 12% are Latin; and only 18% are Hebrew.or Aramaic" he

During Jesus ministry, a whopping 40% were of burial sites were in Greek in the Jerusalem area itself.

There is a sufficiently large amount of scholarship and archeaological discoveries that point to a larger amount Greek language in Galilee during Christs youth. I will be glad to pull them up for you, but it may take me awhile. (I you want them)

I understand that you were taught a different narrative.

Best, Patrick

 

[calmthesea]

No I’m not. Sadly my Ancestry.com DNA spit test confirmed this fact. I secretly dreamed of a DNA connection to one of the apostles. Ha ha. The more that I try to find the answer to the language question the more questions I have. After the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles, they could preach in many different languages. When Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes, the bible says that there were 5000 people there! So did everyone have a common official language and then speak their own clan dialect?

KEYM,

To answer your question, Hellenization was probably more extensive, and Greek more prevalent. I posted a quote from an Archaeological Journal article that I had from 1992. Of all the burial dig sites in the Judean province, or Palestine, dating from 300BC to 500AD, the funerary inscriptions are 70% Greek and only 18% Hebrew or Aramaic. That’s lopsided!

Best, Patrick

 

[Medawlinno]

@calmthesea…

Interesting! I honestly did not know that the Galilee was Hellanized to that extent.

It’s interesting that Aramaic was not really infulenced by Greek (syntax and grammatical constructions) nor did it absorb (at least as far as I know) any large amount of Greek loans.

I’m thinking here of the Hellenization of Egypt in terms of the Greek language on Egyptian -it was a bit like the Norman Conquest was to Anglo Saxon In addition to a heavy infulence on grammar and even syntax (word order), tons of loans were introduced into the language and, of course, the entire writing system of Egyptian was changed.

But…it’s possible that this change may have been a welcomed one in Egypt (at least with Egyptian orthography!). The rest of it may have happened just out of natural due course of the two languages intermingling.

Aramaic seems to have been much more resiliant, but that may be simply because Greek culture did not take as strong a hold on what is now Israel - that’s just a guess; I’m not too up on history in that part of the world.

BTW - I’m not at all familiar with the American Bible college.

@ Maryann C and OP - maybe I’m not understanding the question but, not really sure it does matter WHY he spoke Aramaic; it was simply the language he was born into. If he was a Jew born and living in Egypt at the time, he would have spoke Coptic (and some Greek). Not really sure his native tongue is really relevent.

 

[Missian_Alyssa]

In my humble opinion it does not really matter if Jesus spoke Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin or Mishnah Hebrew in Matthew 16. One needs only study through the book of Acts to see how church government among the apostles worked.

 

[Maryann_C]

Ponticus Pilate wrote the inscription on Jesus’s cross, “Jesus, King of the Jews” in Greek, Hebrew and Latin. If all the Jews were speaking Aramaic then I think maybe one of the inscriptions would have been in Aramaic.

This is an excellent point UNLESS it was a deliberate omission as a slight to those who spoke the language , after all that was his intent with the inscription in the first place- to insult .
You just joined CAF and jumped in on quite an energetic thread . Welcome you will need to let a lot of water run of your back here. We try to be Christian and civil ,but it can be tough sometimes since non of us can actually see each other so this has all the pitfalls and potential misunderstandings of this kind of communication.

 

[Maryann_C]

“In a 1992 Journal called “Biblical Archaeological Review”, Professor emeritis Pieter W. Van Der Horst wrote, " One of the most surprising facts of about funerary inscriptions[extant from ancient Palestine dating from 300BC to 500AD] is that most of them are in Greek- approximately 70%; about 12% are Latin; and only 18% are Hebrew.or Aramaic” he

During Jesus ministry, a whopping 40% were of burial sites were in Greek in the Jerusalem area itself. "

Best, Patrick

Dear Patrick, This is a very good point. It made me think about all the old cemeteries I have been to here in the US - being a military family we have moved a lot , and we often go to cemeteries to see what the ethnic history of the place was. I am struck by the fact now that pretty much 99% of all the head stones we look at a written in English - even from the earliest immigrants - and we generally can tell what the person’s original nationality was from the last name. Yet we know for a fact by the preservation of ‘original’ languages from Europe and other anthropological sources , and what we see today with first generation immigrants - that most of these people probably spoke exclusively in their native tongue at home but did business and ‘formal’ stuff - like writing on head stones - in the official language of the ‘state’ they lived in.
Where I grew up in a farming town in England I would have to walk though our town cemetery to get to school ( 3 miles each ways and up hill both ways - yes this is possible ) and various other places. In Europe the cemetery is always adjoined to the parish Church. Ours was a C of E converted Church but , since it was built in something like the 1100s or even earlier , it was a) originally a Catholic and b) built around the time of the Norman Conquest . The oldest headstones ( about 1000 years old) were often just leaning up against the church 's red stone walls because by that point the grave site has probably had a new occupant. I never remember being struck by the fact that any of the head stones were written in French ( Norman) , or even Galic ( which one would have expected since we were only 20 mins from the Welsh boarder) . Naturally all of these were written using the Latin - the ‘official’ language. So I am afraid that I disagree with the learned historians that one can not deduce the common language spoken in a particular period by what language was written on a tombstone.

 

[Maryann_C]

You may have missed my thought on this , here it is again - Since Jesus was commissioning the 12 to go forth and spread the Good News He needed them relate to Him more as one of them rather than to think of Him as someone like a Scribe . Yes they called Him Rabbi and clearly the Holy Spirit was involved and would be involved after Jesus had risen and Jesus knew this BUT remember we all have free will so in a sense FIRST Jesus needed to convert the 12 and the other disciples because they had to engage their free will- just like Mary had to in order for the Holy Spirit to be able to overshadow her and for Jesus to be supernaturally conceived in her womb. So "what language’ in that sense DOES matter because it helps us understand that a) Jesus really was fully human, born into the lowliest of situations and ‘one of us’ and b) That the apostles were fully engaged with the free will that this wasn’t just the Holy Spirit ‘possessing’ them at Pentecost - other wise why did Jesus bother spending 3 years preaching?

 

[Dave_Noonan]

David,

This is so off topic. I completely understand that Syriac is a dialect. It’s a red herring. Not one thing that I wrote is false. Your post is quite disrespectful of my position. “Arguably” is RIGHT! But, “arguably more important” doesn’t make my statement false.

I can also easily say “no David, my point is that your statement is false.” It’s ridiculous.

Where do I start:

1. The New testament was written in Greek
2. Romans occupied most of the middle east; where Christianity began (Greek)
3. The Church fathers of the Apostolic and Sub-Apostolic age wrote in Greek
4. Josephus wrote in Greek
5. This includes the 3rd in succession of the chair of Peter (Clement) wrote in Greek
6. You can easily find a list of a dozen, or more, Sub-Apostolic and Anti-Nicene Church Fathers who wrote in Greek
   7)There are a few Anti-Nicene fathers that wrote in Latin
7. Most Latin Church fathers were , should we say, post-Constantine.

Guess what David, there are NO anti-Nicene (Pre, let’s say 350 AD) that wrote in Aramaic, or Syriac. Hmm.

There is 1 Church father that wrote in Sryiac prior to the year 500 AD,…one.

The Romans quit persecuting the church and the chair of Peter was in Rome, so many of the Later Church Fathers began writing in Latin.

I have never said that Christians didn’t speak Aramaic, or Syriac.

No David, what I wrote was not false. No where near it. I said “Aramaic, not so much”

I don’t call your “500 years after Calvary” to be the early church. Maybe your Orthodox, but in any Christian religion making such an unsubstantiated claim would be sin.

Were there bishops in areas that spoke different dialects of Aramaic/Hebrew? Of Course. Were there bishops in areas that spoke other languages? of course
However, that certainly doesn’t make what I wrote false.

I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, but you’ve just tried to discredit my statements in- accurately.

Best, Patrick

I realize the idea of churches that trace their origins back to the apostles that were also not part of the Greco-Roman world/culture (and thus were not Greek or Latin speaking) can be extremely upsetting to Catholic apologists. I obviously struck a nerve.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are the best representatives we have of what languages were prevalent in Palestine at the time of Jesus. Among the scrolls there are only a few tiny fragments of Greek texts.

Aramaic speakers were clearly important to the mission of the early church that was outside of the Roman Empire; the Peshitta and the influence of the Targumim are important testimonies to that fact. If you’re interested in the topic, a good book to start with is Philip Jenkins’s (a Catholic by the way) The Lost History of Christianity. You might also consider the writings of church fathers such as Aphrahat (270-345), Ephrem (306-373).

BTW, BAR has always been considered sort of the “National Enquirer” of Biblical Studies because of their sensationalistic articles, and especially so after the James Ossuary debacle. If you use BAR as a source, people aren’t going to take your points seriously.

 

[rinnie]

First, I find it necessary to state that I believe that I’m 100% Catholic. But, the portrayal of Jesus as having spoken Aramaic, and only Aramaic, has troubled me for quite some time. Years in fact. I have attempted to avoid the issue. I know its comforting to state that Jesus spoke Aramaic, so He would have said “Cephas” in Matthew 16.

Someone help me see it, I don’t. I think its a rather weak argument. I don’t see that the Church teaches that and I know some Apologists do. I see Apologetics as defending our ‘faith’ in the Truth, and not some sort of spiritual pride, and ‘got ya’ mentality over those erring Protestants. I have found that I recognize when I do that in conversation, and it’s usually counter productive. When I found the book “The seven deadly sins of Apologetics” by Mark Brumley, I saw that someone else felt the same way.

We hate ambiguity, and want to be ‘victorious’, but teaching the ‘Aramaic hence Cephas’ theory is a bridge too far. I believe that it is exactly one of the things Mark wrote about. Again, I have not seen any Church teaching on it, and I would love to. I don’t believe that I am ignorant on the subject, but I easily could have missed something. I am open to see it.

Mark talked about too much reasoning and I agree to a point. Its when reasoning is presented as truth; that truth is sometimes followed by an indignant attitude. I know, I’ve been on both sides of that discussion. But, we lose people.

I would love to discuss the 'if this, then that" leaps that arrive at our need to say Jesus spoke Aramaic, and Matthew was written in Hebrew etc.

Best, Patrick

I believe he spoke Arabic to the Apostles, this is important because of the words he used and the meaning of them to understand scripture.

 

[calmthesea]

I realize the idea of churches that trace their origins back to the apostles that were also not part of the Greco-Roman world/culture (and thus were not Greek or Latin speaking) can be extremely upsetting to Catholic apologists. I obviously struck a nerve.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are the best representatives we have of what languages were prevalent in Palestine at the time of Jesus. Among the scrolls there are only a few tiny fragments of Greek texts.

Aramaic speakers were clearly important to the mission of the early church that was outside of the Roman Empire; the Peshitta and the influence of the Targumim are important testimonies to that fact. If you’re interested in the topic, a good book to start with is Philip Jenkins’s (a Catholic by the way) The Lost History of Christianity. You might also consider the writings of church fathers such as Aphrahat (270-345), Ephrem (306-373).

BTW, BAR has always been considered sort of the “National Enquirer” of Biblical Studies because of their sensationalistic articles, and especially so after the James Ossuary debacle. If you use BAR as a source, people aren’t going to take your points seriously.

David,
First, I’m not a Catholic Apologist. Second, You present your ideas as fact, and they are not. They are your opinions. You fill your “truths” with qualifiers like “arguably” or “probably”.

The problem with many Christians today is, they all think they know the truth. They practice what I call “religious deconstructionism”. They support anything that agrees with their belief, and they deconstruct (falsely) other points of view. It is most certainly not the work of the Holy Spirit. It is not the “Lords” work.

Rather than learn, you obviously believe you have arrived. Then, it’s condescending in your posts. There is a self-righteousness to your posts, that’s what I defend.

You suggest an obscure book that supposedly has some new revelations (that I am most certainly not interested in) and then call once again create a “straw man” in BAR in an attempt to discredit them.

Professor Van Der Horst was the important figure and not BAR, he wrote the article that was quoted. Your opinion of BAR is another red herring. It means nothing. The Professor had relationships with the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs; in conjunction with Jewish American Professors Daniel Elezar, and Stephen Cohen.

I am certain that the Eastern Church has their Hero’s, and you can promote them. But, not at the expense of reality.

Best, Patrick