Why was the New Testament written in Greek when Jesus spoke Aramaic?

Discussion in 'Linguistics' started by Medicine*Woman, May 8, 2007.

  1. PieAreSquared Woo is resistant to reason Registered Senior Member

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  3. FelixC Registered Senior Member

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    that is very derogatory against fishermen, carpenters, they may have a rustic lifestyle, but that hasn't stopped any through the ages of learning to read & write

    both Hebrews & Greeks had schools
    you may want to ask your Jewish friends how they prepare for their Bar/Bat Mitzvah
    amazingly they have to read Torah passages
    Jesus is noted as astounding elders at Jerusalem & reading a Bible passage at Nazareth's synagogue

    The Aramaic-speaking churches use the Peshitta Aramaic version
    a few links;
    http://www.peshitta.org/
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshitta
     
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  5. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Prior to Caesar Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus there were individual scripts books that were used by local churches...some consistent with what we know as the New Testament and some not. But it was not until Contantine I that the religion began codifying the religion and establishing the Christian principals that we are familar with today and Greek was the language used by the early church founders.

    The books of the New Testament were not written by first hand observers. The were written many years after the death of Christ.
     
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  7. Betrayer0fHope MY COHERENCE! IT'S GOING AWAYY Registered Senior Member

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    Where have I heard the bold before..? :\
     
  8. eddie23 information sponge Registered Senior Member

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    easy question to answer.
    Jesus never wrote anything.
    there is no proof he actualy even existed.
    All the stuff in the bible was written LOOOOONG after he was suposedly gone.
     
  9. River Ape Valued Senior Member

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    Pete and others are absolutely right. Greek was the language of educated discourse at the time. Whatever you think about the Gospel stories, etc, the fact that they were originally in Greek rather than Aramaic does not tell against them.

    “Why was the New Testament written at all?” Of course, it was “compiled” rather than “written” – and is a selection from among the multiple contradictory tracts that were around at the time. It was part of the competition that they had to be in Greek to be submitted to the editor for consideration!

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  10. StrangerInAStrangeLand SubQuantum Mechanic Valued Senior Member

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    It is not unfairly derogatory. A lower class lifestyle certainly has stopped many thru the ages from learning to read & write. More so in that time & place than presently in advanced countries.
    In Greece, schools were mainly for the upper class. I strongly suspect it was the same with the Jews.
    Asking present day Jews in advanced countries how they do it has little relation to 2000 years ago in the Middle East.
     
  11. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Literacy was extremely uncommon prior to the invention of the technology of printing, for the simple reason that there wasn't very much to read. Chinese, with its logograms, allows literacy to be an incremental process: to this day in remote regions tradesmen can learn to recognize (and even write) the words they need for their business, without being able to read a newspaper.

    The Jews were one of very few peoples prior to the modern era who promoted universal literacy (at least for boys) because they wanted everyone (at least boys) to be able to read the Torah and Talmud for themselves rather than taking someone else's word for their contents. This was one of several cultural attitudes that made them so suspiciously different from the Europeans among whom they lived.
     
  12. nirakar ( i ^ i ) Registered Senior Member

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    Aramaic was not a dialect of Hebrew. Aramaic was the language of Aram which was the people from near present Damascus Syria. The Assyrians based in northern Iraq adopted Aramaic as their language and Aramaic became the language of commerce and government throughout much of the Middle East as the Assyrian empire grew.

    Aramaic became just plain the language because languages spoken by large groups of people tend to replace languages spoken by small groups of people.

    Greek became the language of the Mediterranean region for much the same reasons why Aramaic became the language of the interior Middle East.

    Jesus was from the interior but Europe got it's Christianity from the Greek dominated cultures of the Mediterranean coasts. Note that there are people in Iraq and California who call themselves Assyrians, speak Aramaic at home and are Christians.
     
  13. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Let us not forget that Paul ushered in the hellenization of the religion and making the religion less Jewish and more seperate and distinct from the version originally practiced by Jesus (sabath, circumcision, etc).
     

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