PhilosopherJay

Hi stephan huller,

We can agree, it is quite probable that there are Aramaisms and Hebraisms in the New Testament. However, figuring out when they were put there is the problem. It is not easy figuring out where or when things become popular.

Take the word "groovy." It had two periods of popularity, from the mid 20's to the mid 40's and the mid 60's to the early 70's. It had slightly different meanings in each of its periods of popularity. From Wikipedia, "Groovy":

Words are polysemous and pick up and drop meanings through time. So do rituals.

For example, pie throwing is associated with slapstick movies and silent film comedy. My personal research shows that it was originally associated with divorce. Newspapers in the late 1890's and early 1900's routinely carried stories of a man or woman suing for divorce because their spouse had thrown a pie in their face. although it was used in at least half a dozen films as a gag between 1907 and 1913, it was not associated with films until late 1913 or early 1914 when it was used to describe a film with rough and rude slap stick comedy. In 1914, Charlie Chaplin became the most popular comedian in the world. Some critics thought he was a great artist, but others dismissed him as a pie-throwing comedian. In fact, in 1914, in his first 35 films, Chaplin had only thrown 3 pies among his 1,000 or so gags. In 1915, the term became associated with Mack Sennett and the Keystone Company that he ran. (Chaplin had started with Keystone in 1914.) Sennett apparently thought it was a funny gag and willingly took credit for it, although it was probably used in his films no more than in several other film company's comic films in 1913 and 1914. Because the term was now associated with the type of successful slapstick humor of Keystone, the gag continued to be used, albeit less often. The coming of sound did nothing to stop its popularity with comedians like Laurel and Hardy and the Three Stooges. While after 1915, it has been associated only with the heavily physical slapstick humor of Sennett and Keystone, starting from the mid-30's it started to be associated with all silent film comedy. In fact, less than 1% of silent film comedies actually used pie-throwing (under 100 out of 10,000 would be my guess).

Trying to trace the history of terms and rituals from the 20th century is surprising and difficult. Trying to trace such terms and rituals in the First century is fantastically more difficult.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Steven Carr

One difficulty is involved in claiming that if a (presumably) Aramaic-speaking writer like Mark included Aramaisms, then these Aramaisms must come from Jesus, because Jesus spoke Aramaic.

outhouse

Is there anything credible that states the unknown author or scribe of Gmark was "aramaic speaking" and not just copying a previous source such as oral tradition from aramaic sources?