Foundations of Faith

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FOUNDATIONS OF FAITH IN JESUS M. M. NINAN THE NEW TESTAMENT LANGUAGE Greek remained the dominant language in the eastern Mediterranean and the principal language of commerce throughout the Roman world. Following the conquests of Alexander the Great, throughout the east, Greek was the official language, the language of communication between those of different races, - the lingua franca - and the language of settlers in the Greek cities. Palestine was multilingual in the first century - Greek, various Aramaic dialects, Hebrew, and some Latin — Greek was clearly the language of choice in order to disseminate a message as widely as possible in all different nations. Greek in those days may be considered as similar to English today which is understood all over the world. The Jews of the NewTestament times spoke Aramaic at home and in communal conversations. Aramaic was a derivation from Hebrew and Arabic. In business life and official writings they used the common Koine Greek while the Roman rulers used Latin and Greek. This is shown in the statement of John 19:19-20: "Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: JESUS OF NAZARETH, The King of the Jews. Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek." Aramaic is a group of languages belonging to the Afroasiatic language phylum. The name of the language is based on the name of Aram, an ancient region in central Syria. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic family, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic subfamily, which also includes Canaanite languages such as Hebrew and Phoenician. During its 3,000-year written history, Aramaic has served variously as a language of administration of empires and as a language of divine worship. It was the day-to-day language of Israel in the Second Temple period (539 BCE – 70 CE), it was the language spoken by Jesus, and it is the language of large sections of the biblical books of Daniel and Ezra and is the main language of the Talmud. Aramaic had been liturgical language by Eastern Christian churches, in the form of Syriac. Latin was used only by the Romans for matters of army administration. 26
FOUNDATIONS OF FAITH IN JESUS M. M. NINAN Civil administration was conducted entirely in Greek, and inscriptions written by non-Jews that have been found in Israel are all in Greek. Greek was the dominant language is indicated in the fact that even among the funerary inscriptions in Judea archaeologists have found that 2/3 of these are in the Greek language, in the period from 300 BC to 500 AD. Even if Jesus spoke and taught in Aramaic and therefore Q was in Aramaic most of the New Testament was written in Greek. Luke was a Gentile doctor. Theophilus certainly did not understand any Aramaic and therefore both the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts of Apostle were written in Greek. Paul was the Apostle to the Gentiles so he must have written in Greek obviously. After reading the Scriptures, Jesus could have taught in either Aramaic or Hebrew. However, He probably taught in the synagogue in Hebrew. Beyond that, Greek was well understood in "Galilee of the Gentiles," the region where Jesus was raised. There is no doubt, therefore, that Jesus and the original apostles all spoke Greek -- commonly, as a second language. "Apparently for a great part of the Jewish population, the daily language was Greek, even in Palestine. This is impressive testimony to the impact of Hellenistic culture on Jews in their mother country, to say nothing of the Diaspora. "In Jerusalem itself about 40 percent of the Jewish inscriptions from the first century period (before 70 C.E.) are in Greek. We may assume that most Jewish Jerusalemites who saw the inscriptions in situ were able to read them" ("Jewish Funerary Inscriptions -- Most Are in Greek," Pieter W. Van Der Horst, Biblical Archaeological Review, Sept.-Oct.1992, p.48). What about Jesus Christ, and the apostles? Did they, too, commonly speak Greek as a "second language"? The answer is almost certainly yes. He certainly spoke with Pilot in Greek and with the centurion. But did he teach in Greek? Probably. After all he lived within three or four miles from the thriving Greek city of Sepphoris. 27
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the Pharisees during the (first) tw
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Prof. Madathilparampil Mammen Ninan
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The Development Of Mariolatory Theo
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