Johann_Kaspar

Oui, oui, bien sûr. Deux auteurs ont clairement montré ce qu'il en était. Faudrait se renseigner.

French Prometheus

Je pense être très bien renseigné sur le sujet. Ca m'étonnerait énormément que les Evangiles aient été initialement écrits en hébreu. Je ne sais pas d'où vient cette idée mais ça m'a l'air d'être un beau tas de conneries.

De plus, le Nouveau Testament ne se limite pas aux Evangiles. Et je vois mal Paul, un Juif hellénisé s'adressant aux Gentils, écrire ses Epîtres en hébreu.

Chris Weimer

D'accord, Prometheus_fr. Hebrew is definitely out of the question.

Diogenes the Cynic

Um..can we keep it in English please?

JK, i don't know if you're kidding or not but there is no chance the NT was translated from Hebrew. There is most definitely no chance that the sayings of Jesus were originally Hebrew because Hebrew was no longer being spoken in Palestine at the time.

French Prometheus

Si, Señor moderador, podemos continuar en inglés :Cheeky:

Hebrew was indeed a dead language in the 1st century.

Chris Weimer

Eh? Dead Language? Not so. The Talmud and the Dead Sea Scrolls should have abolished that arguement. True that Aramaic was much more prevalent, and Greek, Hebrew wasn't entirely dead. (On that note, Latin is not dead either)

French Prometheus

Well, it depends on the definition of a dead language. I call a language dead when it ceases to be anyone's mother tongue. But you're right that Hebrew remained a liturgical and literary language just as Classical Latin did in Europe (well, Medieval Latin isn't exactly Classical Latin but that's another issue).

Likewise, Sumerian remained a literary and administrative language in Mesopotamia until Imperial Aramaic eventually replaced it. But it died circa 2000 BCE when the last native Sumerian speaker died. Ethnic Sumerians probably still existed but their mother tongue was Akkadian.

Diogenes the Cynic

That's true, but my point was that the sayings of Jesus - when they were spoken - would have been spoken in Aramaic.* Hebrew wasn't extinct but it was a language of scripture and liturgy, not something that the average peasant would have understood. Actually, the average 1st century Palestinian Jewish peasant probably would have known more Greek than Hebrew.



*Assuming there WAS a Jesus, of course.

Chris Weimer

If there was a Jesus, and assuming that the Gospel account of him being a Rabbi is true, than he probably would have known Hebrew. Of course, a ministry would probably reflect Aramaic then...

Diogenes the Cynic

Did "rabbi" mean the same thing in a clerical sense then as it does now? It's my impression that it just meant "teacher" and was fairly generic in its application.