mrsonic

BART EHRMAN

The most recent through studies of Gentiles in Galilee have been undertaken by the American scholar Mark Chancey. Chancey has studied every archaeological find from Galilee from around the time of the first century, has read every single piece of writing from the period of any relevance, and draws a decisive conclusion: the Gentiles in Galilee were almost exclusively located in the two major cities, Sepphoris and Tiberias. All the rest of Galilee was predominantly Jewish. And since most of Galilee was rural, not urban, the vast majority of Jews had no encounters with Gentiles.

Moreover, Greek was not widely known, let alone normally, spoken. The vast majority of Jews spoke Aramaic and had no facility in Greek.

Forged (or via: amazon.co.uk)
page 73-74

question for linguists

what difficulties are there in translating aramaic into greek?

Toto

Ehrman discusses the prevalence of Greek in Galilee to argue that 1 Peter could not have been written by Peter. His argument assumes that Peter was an illiterate Aramaic speaking fisherman as described in the gospels. He notes that 1 Peter does not read like a translation and contains Greek rhetorical flourishes.

It is possible to translate Aramaic into Greek, but it is unlikely to read like 1 Peter.

aeebee50

Interesting, Aramaic was before Greek.

avi

In 334 BCE, Alexander's army crossed the Bosporus headed Southeast towards Egypt. They reached Antioch, about 500 miles southeast of the Bosporus, near the Syrian border, and then marched another 200 miles towards Lake Galilee, the largest body of freshwater in 1000 miles, north or south from Tyre.

What are the odds, that Alexander the beneficient, would have left zero soldiers to guard this body of fresh water?

In my opinion, the contrary was the case, and the region would have been littered with corpses of those who dared oppose Alexander. His trusted accomplices and subordinates, and a few hundred settlers would have set up communities around this most important landmark, and the region, within two generations would have been entirely Greek speaking.

I wonder if one can observe a parallel situation in Croatia/Serbia/Herzegovina, where Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, and Muslims have been in a three way war for at least a thousand years....

avi

Roger Pearse

A similar argument would prove that Josephus did not write the "Jewish War", perhaps.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Toto

I assume you are objecting to the idea that an Aramaic original would not translate into something like 1 Peter, with its Greek rhetoric. I don't know the detailed basis for Ehrman's conclusion to that effect. And, of course, if the historical Peter was not an illiterate fisherman, the argument loses its force.

But the situation with JW seems very different. Josephus was not an illiterate fisherman, but a highly educated Jewish official who became part of the Roman elite, and appears to have become bilingual. His Koine Greek Jewish War is described as an adaptation, rather than a translation, of his original Aramaic version.

From here

Toto

It's a lake, not a Sea. Who would these soldiers be guarding it from?
Whatever you think would have happened, there is evidence that Aramaic continued to be spoken.

Where do you come up with this stuff? There have only been Muslims in the area of former Yugoslavia since the Ottoman invasion in the 15th century, and all three religious factions still speak Slavic languages (formerly known as Serbo-Croatian.) None of them learned Turkish during their period of subjugation under the Ottomans, even those Bogomils who converted to Islam.

avi

The Persians.

An army, an invading army, contesting a traditional opponent, an opponent with whom one has been in conflict for literally hundreds of years, must be aware of its supply chain. The retreating Persian army would have fled leaving "scorched earth", destroying all crops, livestock, and poisoning the wells. The only other fresh water between Damascus and Baghdad, the Euphrates, was too deep in enemy territory to be a reliable supply base, as we saw, five hundred years later, when Dura Europos was easily overrun.

Alexander was a general, and he knew that an army depends upon fresh water to survive. He would have been aware of the Persian domination of the whole of Palestine/Syria/Jordan/Egypt, for several hundred years, and would have injected a sizeable contingent loyal to him, into the Galilean region, especially including the huge fresh water lake with its bountiful supply of fish, to ensure both a source of protein transported east, (dried and salted) and a safe haven for retreat, as he moved forward into Persia and the great unknown.

Did the same not happen in Roman colonies, for example, Paris, London, Cologne (Koln)? (same = Latin influence, lasting generations after departure of the original army)

There may well be evidence, but I don't accept the Aramaic/Syriac versions of the gospels as evidence supporting the notion that most of the inhabitants of Galilee did not speak Greek, as their native language, by the time of the Roman conquest. Do the children of the North African former French colonies, living for two generations, now, in France, speak French as their native language? Is there a reason why Philo and many other Jews in Alexandria wrote, fluently in Greek, not Coptic? I think Aramaic became the proper lingua franca of the Galilean region (again) after the third Roman Jewish war, when the whole city of Jerusalem was destroyed, and the population dispersed to the countryside. At that point, Latin, not Greek, would have been the language of the conquering army, so, yes, I can readily imagine a large Aramaic population, ignorant of Greek, by the middle of the second century.

With respect to the positions expressed here, regarding Josephus, it has always perplexed me, why folks assume that this religious Jew, who acknowledged having a mediocre grasp of Greek, should be living in Rome, writing in Rome, conversing in Rome, using Aramaic?

The Romans spoke, read, and wrote in Latin, not Greek, and certainly not Aramaic. Yes, there were many officials who were bilingual in Latin and Greek, and many scholars who knew both languages, but where's the evidence that Josephus knew Latin?

avi

Toto

From my personal experience, I only know one such North African. He spoke French, but also a mixture of Arabic and Berber with his friends. But this is a modern phenomenon. He went to school in French and was exposed to French radio and TV

The language one learns as a child is the most stable feature of culture.

The Roman elite seems to have spoke, read, and written in Greek. Who said that Josephus knew Latin?

Horatio Parker

Info doesn't seem readily available on the web, but AFAICT Galilee was not part of Israel from the time of the Assyrian conquest of 721 BCE until the Hasmoneans conquered it a century before Jesus' time and forcibly converted the people to Judaism. After the destruction of Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin moved to Galilee. FWIW.