Deus Ex

My irony meter just broke.

You pin your hopes on the fallible men who wrote your errant bible.

schriverja

(I realize that you have both the self-delusion gene as well as the gene that prevents any admission of self-error, but what the heck, I'll respond anyway).

What language did Jesus use when he said is last words on the cross, as recorded in the 'Gospel of Matthew'? I'll give you a hint, it wasn't Greek or Hebrew. I have provided examples of Jesus using Aramaic, Mary using Aramaic, and Paul using Aramaic. That's according to the Bible, which you claim to be infallible. I have not assumed anything. Do you have any examples where any of the twelve disciples or Jesus spoke Greek, or are you just assuming? You have not explained why Paul would speak to the 'whole city' of Jerusalem in Acts 21-22 using Aramaic. Would you agree that the most reasonable explanation (ie, the one that requires the least assumption) for him to use Aramaic is because that was a language he knew that the mostly Jewish crowd would understand?

archaeologist

You would be wrong. I place it in the infallible God who wrote the inerrent Bible.

Still does not mean everyone spoke Aramaic. Jodie Foster spoke french at her graduation, does that mean everyone in the american city spoke french?

Deus Ex

That is an untestable assertion. I can just as easily posit that evil Ahriman inspired the writing of a human bible to lead 'orthodox' believers into damnation.

Statements of faith mean nothing; evidence is all that matters.

schriverja

You have yet to give any counter evidence or examples to support your claim that everyone spoke Greek. Sure it is possible that Aramaic was not the number one language, but it was Greek as you stated. It's also possible that everyone spoke Klingon. I have provided examples where people, under extreme stress, like Jesus dying, Mary seeing the risen Jesus, and Paul nearly being lynched by the whole city of Jerusalem, these people as were recorded in the Bible as using Aramaic. If was not their first language that would be very unusual. I can speak some spanish and some german, but if I were on my death bed or if I was otherwise stressed it would be very odd for me to use those languages instead of my first language of English.

DCHindley

I think what "archaeologist" is overlooking is that there is a difference between the "common" language of the cultured elite class and that of the peasant (farmer) class.

Many Greek style cities were established in Asia, Egypt, Syria and Palestine since 300 BCE due to the settlement of retired veteran soldiers by the armies of Alexander and the Macedonian/Greek rulers of these regions who succeeded them. Each city was granted wide areas of farmland to support it. These were divided into plots which were leased to peasant/farmers.

The soldiers and their descendants became the elite class, and of course they (and their retainer administrators, artisans and slaves) would have spoken Greek, and many of the retainers would be able to read and write it. In the Jewish tetrarchies, the Herodian princes relied a great deal on Greeks and Hellenized Jews, and even though the metropolitan areas like Sepphoris or Tiberias may not have been formally constituted Greek cities, their military organizations were organized along the Greek model and they likely used Greek for administrative purposes as well. Jews living in the cities of these areas had a Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures to fall back on. They didn't know Hebrew.

The local peasant farmers would continue to speak their native languages, which in Asia Minor and Syria to Judea would be Aramaic. In Egypt this was dialects of Coptic. In time the peasants may pick up enough Greek to sell their excess grain or produce in the city market, or understand the key terms of their leases, but probably not well enough to read or write it. For most, village scribes were their links with their Greek landlords and public administrators.

Sub-classes of scribes and the more successful peasants may take up an interest in preserving the ancestral culture, and hence you have these able to read and write Hebrew, and interpret their ancestral traditions for the common peasants. Hence R. Judah the Prince can edit the Mishna in Hebrew around 200 CE. But the Talmud's Gemara commentary is in Aramaic well into the 4th century and later, both in the Babylonian and Palestinian versions. The commentary portion of the Talmud is full of Greek and Latin loan words (off the top of my head I'm not sure about the Mishna), but not to suggest it was the writer's primary language.

Based on this, Jesus may be expected to know some Greek (for work in the larger towns and Greek cities, assuming he was an artisan like his father), but in the villages such as Bethlehem or Nazareth he almost certainly was speaking Aramaic.

By trying to make Jesus fluent in both Hebrew AND Greek, I think Archaeologist is trying to keep Jesus entirely within the safety cocoon of the Hebrew OT and the Greek NT, so as not to contaminate him with Aramaic influences such as the books of Enoch, etc. Unfortunately, other pseudepigrapha such as Jubilees were written in Hebrew, and some of the others like 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra may have Greek originals, if Archeologist is even aware of these books.

DCH

archaeologist

I am simply pointing out that a few examples does not mean the whole population spoke the language. Someone could report that I said 'carumba' and someone would translate that as 'in spanish it means...' it is not indicative nor proof that i and thousands of other people spoke the language.

It just means that someone recorded the words used at that time. We do not have any more evidence to the contrary.

Even if they spoke Aramaic, that does not provide evidence that they were influenced by the book of Enoch.

Minimalist

Arch, remember what I told you on the other board about you making a fool out of yourself.

The above is Exhibit "A."

Kapyong

Gday,

Once again, you change the subject to avoid the facts - we DO have DOZENS of early Christian books - NONE of them claim to have met Jesus or anyone who knew him.

And they WOULD have, if he existed.


But they are examples of something ELSE!
You won't address the facts.


I'm not American.
You can't even read.



Archeologist agree -
exodus, conquest, Jerocho - all myths.
They never happened.



Yes, they do.
We HAVE found remains of other people in that place.
There are NO volcanos, few earthquakes, wind and storms do not destroy everything.

We DO find remains of small groups of people in that area.
But we DON'T find anything of the HUGE alleged exodus, when we WOULD if it happened.

This is strong evidence it did NOT happen.


So are the myths of Hercules.
So what?



Hahahaha....
They MAY have found the alter[sic] of Joshua?
Really?
Where is the evidence?



What evidence?
You haven't presented any that I have seen.

Where is the evidence for the exodus, hmm?

Where is the evidence for Joshua's alter[sic], hmm?



K.

archaeologist

it is NOT changing the subject, it is using an example. Do they teach you all the uses of the english language in perth? No they are not examples of something else, it is an example to prove the point. gee, westerners have really been dumbed down.

sorry about that, so you now have added australians to the theory. If i couldn't read you would not be getting responses, enough with the insults.

First off, being general like that means you have no point. Second, not all archaeologists agree onthat point. Third, their opinion doesn't change the truth. They are just fallible men looking at partial evidence then drawing a conclusion acording to their religious beliefs or lack of them.

#1. They do not find all the toilets. #2 Mt. Sinai is a volcano and you would be surprised at what they do destroy. #3 So partial evidenc ei suncovered, doesn'tmean the exodus did not happen, it means they haven't dug in the right spot or the Israelites used pre-existing toilet areas. #4 We donot know how much they crapped.
#5 That is not strong evidence because it is simply your word. You have not linked to one legitimate, credible study or archaeological paper to show it is so. Hearsay is not evidence.

There has been a lot written about it. when you provide the links for the above i will provide the links for it.

I can say the same for you, you have yet to produce one legitimate link to credible evidence.