Johann_Kaspar

spin,

Forget it!
The best jokes are the shortest.
This one has lasted too long.
Unfortunately sometimes it is too late to educate some people.

This xian only showed very clearly now who he is, how wide is his ignorance of the Hebrew world and plain correctness, and everybody will understand that he is suffering of some kind of inferiority complex.

:thumbs:

cass256

I was referring to the post, that may not have been yours, but that suggested Christians were trying to claim Hebrew was not spoken. I, myself, do not understand where that claim came from, or what the point would be for Christians to hide that Hebrew was spoken. Am I the only one who has ever been clueless to that question? For the most part, my position is that "John" wrote words that may have been Aramaic in origen, and I don't see what the huge problem is, other than who wins a point. It would obviously have been easier to prove if no current dictionaries showed the words in Aramaic. Better yet, if the gospel was not written in Greek.

My question would be why we are even reading from greek. If John was actually a follower of Yeshua, who was eye witness, then we should have an Aamaic text, that then says a pool with five porches that means Bethesda in Hebrew. and the same for any other word he wanted to say was Hebrew. I haven't translated enough text to know if the phrase "Hebrew tongue" was always or very often used, in stead of just saying Hebrew.

I know, "all we have is the Greek, so go from there". I can't. How do we even know the writer was john a follower? and why do Yeshua's last words not follow the same path in 4 stories?
If I just believed everything written in Greek in the New Testament i'd probably be a Christian in the end.

cass256

As long as this it tied to Hebrew meaning Aramaic, i do not come from that position. I only meant the words that say Aramaic in a dictionary bring those words into question. I'm not saying Josephus did not speak Hebrew.
My curiosity there was after reading a couple short bios on josephus. There seems to be some very cloudy info there.

Do you have a suggestion as to where I could get scholarly and unbiased biography on Josephus? I can't take for granted everything he says is true until I find out more about him,
since it is said that somone tried to doctor Jesus into some of what he wrote.

Pilate

edit
Matthew here was explaining the name Golgothas. He was not making a grammatical comment. Advice: edit must take some classes in Greek. He could not say these things in a Greek class in college.

edit
If you don't know the difference between a Greek noun and a hole in the ground what makes you think you can give brownie points. edit
The audience is tired listening to your rehashing of old points. Say something new, so we can learn from your blunders and have a good time.

Pilate, you are running out of warnings. Knock it off with the personal attacks. Now!

DtC, moderator, BC&H

Toto

Josephus and the New Testament by Steve Mason is a good place to start.

Amaleq13

I won't speak for all readers but I'm certainly tired of your failure to directly respond to questions posed and rebuttal points offered.

I am entirely willing to believe that you have greater knowledge of Greek than spin but your posts have not demonstrated it. Take away all the taunting and there is little left except your assertion of greater knowledge. OTOH, if we take away the personal comments from his posts, we are still left with what appear to be relevant questions and comments about the text in question.

If spin is wrong, please explain exactly how he is wrong by addressing those questions and comments.

cass256

Great reviews. Thanks Toto!

Pilate

(I like to help. I will try to give some quick answers. I cannot expand.)
There is no motive for Christians to make such a claim. What are they going to gain?
I don't know who has the clue. But a lot of presumptious statements have arisen on this web site. Such statements arise usually, from the dislike of the "Freethinkers" towards Christians.

truly this discussion is not about anyone here winning a point.
Here is the point: The Jewish Christians did not use the Septuagint, and they used the Hebrew Old Testament and their gospel probably had quotations from the Hebrew bible. The Jewish Christians did not write the New Testament (it was writen for a non-Palestianian, non Aramaic speaking audience). The Aramaisms in the gospels are one of several indications that the Jewish Christians spoke Aramaic.
Whereas the Hellenist Jews, the first Hellenist Christians, primarily spoke Greek and they wrote at least part of the New Testament (Gentile Christians, the later Hellenist Christians, wrote the rest). This is important in understaning the evolution of Christianity.

Because Christianity is essentially a Greek religion.
1. Christianity was written in Greek, because it was the religion of those who spoke Greek.
2. Judaism was written in Hebrew, because, at the time it was originally written, it was the religion of those who spoke Hebrew
3. Zoroastrianism (was not written for a long time down, for religious reasons) but it was the religion of those who spoke the Avestan language.
4. Islam was written in Arabic, because it is the religion of the Arabs.
5. Buddhism originated in India and its original language is some type of Hindu. Originally was the religion of certain ancient people of India who spoke that language.

The Gospel of John was written for Greek audience, outside Palestine, for this reason the author made certain clrifications.
The writter(s) of the gospel of John, was not a disciple of Jesus, or a Jewish Christian. If he was, he would have written in Aramaic. (John, the disciple, was uneducated, anyway.) The writer of John, spoke fluent Greek, studied the works of Philo of Alexandria, the earliest fragments of John were found in Egypt, the earliest users of this gospel were the Gnostics. The "religion" of this gospel is distinct form the religion of the synoptics. I contains the doctrine of reincarnation, and the pre-existence of Jesus (an afe other dogmas). Joh's religion is a higher plateu of Christianity, compared to the Synoptic gospels.

The KJV translated correctly "Hebrew tongue" but did not give a footnote explaining which was that tongue. The editors of NIV ans NIRV made their translations to include the explanation: Aramaic. They could have put a footnote, but they prefer to "spoonfeed" their readers.

Briefly:For the greatest part, the exact words of Jesus are anyone's guess. The manuscripts of the gospels have been copied and edited in every generation of manuscripts. The manuscripts we have today may be a third or four generation. Who knows? The authorites don't know.
Just because everything written inf the New Testament is not true, that does not render the whole book as a lie. Everything in the Odessy and Illiad is not true. But historians and archaeologists (Shliman) base on those writings have found relics (such as Troy) and other things.
Liers do not lie all the time. They lie intermitently.
Detectives in murder trials do not throw out everything a suspect says as a lie. They use corroborative evidence, make cross referreces, and comparisons to extract the truth.
There value of doing the investigative work (many in the Jesus Seminar have done so- and I recommend all of you to look into their findinds) is of tremendous benefit to the world.

spin

That's what we've got.

You cannot go from an unprovenanced text and create the characters in it and its internal literary.

The Greek term means language of the Hebrews/the Hebrew language -- that which is spoken by the Hebrews, tongue is a translator's word. As I have pointed out earlier Josephus uses it to mean Hebrew as we know the term, in contrast to suristi the ancient word for Aramaic.

We don't. That's why we have to go with the literary artefact.

Yeshua? The Greek text has Ihsous, which has already been transmogrified into Jesus, which is really a good Latin transliteration of the Greek. Shame English has lost the one-letter-one-sound orthography mostly employed in writing systems based on the alphabetic tradition.

Naaa. Texts are texts. Treat this like one and you'll be safe.


spin

spin

But would you say he didn't know that the term "Hebrew" meant when he distinguishes it from Syrian (=Aramaic)?

You can judge some of what he didn't write when you consider 1) he claimed to be a devout Jew and proud of his Jewish heritage, 2) did not use "christos" in any of the places found in the LXX and 3) if he believed in the notion current in Palestine, he wouldn't have used the term "christos" unexplained regarding a walk on part in his histories.


spin