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Did Jesus Speak Greek?: The Emerging…
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Did Jesus Speak Greek?: The Emerging Evidence of Greek Dominance in First-Century Palestine (edició 2015)

de G. Scott Gleaves (Autor), Rodney Eugene Cloud (Pròleg)

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Did Jesus speak Greek? An affirmative answer to the question will no doubt challenge traditional presuppositions. The question relates directly to the historical preservation of Jesus's words and theology. Traditionally, the authenticity of Jesus's teaching has been linked to the recovery of the original Aramaic that presumably underlies the Gospels. The Aramaic Hypothesis infers that the Gospels represent theological expansions, religious propaganda, or blatant distortions of Jesus's teachings. Consequently, uncovering the original Aramaic of Jesus's teachings will separate the historical Jesus from the mythical personality. G. Scott Gleaves, in Did Jesus Speak Greek?, contends that the Aramaic Hypothesis is inadequate as an exclusive criterion of historical Jesus studies and does not aptly take into consideration the multilingual culture of first-century Palestine. Evidence from archaeological, literary, and biblical data demonstrates Greek linguistic dominance in Roman Palestine during the first century CE. Such preponderance of evidence leads not only to the conclusion that Jesus and his disciples spoke Greek but also to the recognition that the Greek New Testament generally and the Gospel of Matthew in particular were original compositions and not translations of underlying Aramaic sources.… (més)
Membre:cannonmad
Títol:Did Jesus Speak Greek?: The Emerging Evidence of Greek Dominance in First-Century Palestine
Autors:G. Scott Gleaves (Autor)
Altres autors:Rodney Eugene Cloud (Pròleg)
Informació:Pickwick Publications (2015), 240 pages
Col·leccions:La teva biblioteca, Llegint actualment
Valoració:
Etiquetes:Jesus, Greek, Aramaic, New Testament Background, Kindle

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Did Jesus Speak Greek?: The Emerging Evidence of Greek Dominance in First-Century Palestine de G. Scott Gleaves

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The New Testament, from beginning to end, was written in Koine Greek, yet by people who were profoundly influenced by Semitic languages, likely Aramaic and Hebrew. It has been commonly assumed Jesus primarily spoke in Aramaic.

In Did Jesus Speak Greek?: The Emerging Evidence of Greek Dominance in First-Century Palestine, G. Scott Gleaves sets forth the argument that Jesus, the Apostles, the Evangelists, and most Second Temple Jewish people primarily communicated in Greek, and the Greek Septuagint was the Bible used by Jesus and the Apostles.

Gleaves marshals all kinds of evidence, and much of it is quite persuasive. While Aramaic had been the lingua franca of the ancient Near Eastern world from the days of the Assyrians through the days of the Persians, Greek had mostly replaced it throughout the eastern Roman Empire by the first century CE. There is significant evidence of widespread penetration of Greek in the areas around Israel and even within first century Galilee and Judea. The New Testament was written in Greek by people who had a decent handle on the language. The vast majority of the quotations of the Old Testament in the New Testament come from the Greek Septuagint.

Thus, if you are looking for the maximal argument regarding the use of Koine Greek by Jesus and early Christians, Gleaves lays it all out.

It would be challenging to argue against him in terms of many of his premises. Yes, Koine Greek had spread throughout the eastern Roman world. It would be hard to imagine how Jesus and the Apostles would have been able to manage well in that environment without any knowledge of Greek. The New Testament was written in Greek; no “Aramaic originals” have ever been found or preserved, and early Christians only give testimony of one such book, the Gospel of Matthew, having even been written in Aramaic; the Syriac Peshitta gives evidence of having been translated from the Greek, not some kind of Aramaic original; and all of the books of the New Testament, including Matthew, do not present evidence of being translations of an Aramaic original, but as original Greek compositions. Saul of Tarsus shows every indication of having been well trained in Greek; the author of the Hebrews letter shows even greater Greek rhetorical refinement and polish. Thus it can be well sustained that Jesus, the Apostles, and the early Christians knew Greek. The Evangelists and other authors of the New Testament communicated and wrote in Greek. The Evangelists and other authors of the New Testament primarily consulted and used the Septuagint.

But there are challenges with any kind of maximal argument: they tend to want to minimize any arguments against the premise. And Gleaves’ presentation does minimize evidence regarding Aramaic, and is quite telling in terms of what is emphasized and what is comparatively neglected.

The most obvious critique involves the Gospel of Matthew. Gleaves even quotes, at length, the patristic evidence regarding the existence of an Aramaic version of the Gospel of Matthew which was believed to have been composed by Matthew himself. Gleaves wishes to dismiss this evidence because there is a theory that Matthew was translating aspects of Jesus’ message from Aramaic, and thus there is only the Greek version of Matthew, and that the evidence is too messy. And yet Jerome, in the quote Gleaves provides, says he himself saw a copy of the Aramaic of Matthew in Caesarea. A better argument would have been regarding the fact Matthew in the Syriac Peshitta is translated from the Greek and not an ostensible Aramaic original, and was translated before the days of Jerome. Yet even then it would not be surprising if the Aramaic Matthew was seen as “tainted” by its emphasis among the Ebionites (Jewish Christians who retained great zeal for the customs of Moses), and thus decided to translate Matthew from the Greek. Thus Gleaves proves too dismissive of evidence regarding an Aramaic original of the Gospel of Matthew which has since been lost. It would not have hurt his thesis in the least to be more accommodating to this prospect, and would have given his overall argument greater integrity and validity.

Gleaves makes much of the widespread nature of Hellenism by the first century CE. And there is a lot of evidence for the the spread of Hellenism, and even Hellenistic influence in Second Temple Judaism. But what Gleaves neglects is how there was also significant opposition to Hellenism within Second Temple Judaism, and therefore active resistance and an insistence on preserving many of the customs of Moses and the people of God in the face of Hellenistic pressures.

In light of the Maccabean revolt, Pharisaic resistance to the Hasmoneans, the presence of the Essenes in the wilderness, and the resistance which would culminate in the First and Second Jewish Wars, this omission is quite glaring.

What is the open question - one which none of us can well answer with the amount of evidence at our disposal - is how much linguistic differentiation was prized among Jewish people of the Second Temple Period.

The argument Gleaves would make would suggest the use of Koine Greek was not unlike the use of Greek forms of logic or reasoning: things just part of the air which were absorbed and became part of Second Temple Jewish life without a lot of fanfare.

But one could make a compelling counter-argument to the contrary: it would not be hard to appeal to Nehemiah 13:23-28 and consider Koine Greek like the “language of Ashdod.” Shared language is critical to maintaining culture. Can it really be so easily believed that Koine Greek was thus so easily absorbed that it not only was the language which would be used with authorities and outsiders but also commonly and frequently among Second Temple Jewish people?

The possibility certainly exists. Gleaves might be more right than wrong. But there remains one significant weakness in his thesis which he confesses but not in terms of its implications: he grants that the Koine Greek of the New Testament is a “Palestinian” Greek, one full of “Semitisms.”

We all have a primary language in which we do the majority of our thinking, if not also communicating. Even when we become multilingual, there will be times when our use of another language will yet be “tinged” with our original language.

It is not as if the world of Second Temple Judaism did not see some Greek terms enter the Aramaic lexicon: Gleaves points to sanhedrin and synagogue. But the fact that the Greek presented in the New Testament is highly inflected with Semitisms is fairly compelling evidence that the Apostles and the Evangelists, even if they did know how to communicate in Greek, and write decently to even well in Greek, were still strongly shaped by Semitic languages, notably, Aramaic and Hebrew.

Can we so easily conclude Jesus spoke Greek among His disciples, and the Septuagint was His Bible? Without a doubt the story is presented in Greek and using the Septuagint. But I have a hard time imagining the Septuagint being the version of the Scriptures actually read in the synagogue of Nazareth, or in any non-diaspora synagogue in the Holy Land. Just like we quote Jesus as speaking in the specific version of the Scriptures we use, and in no way believe it delegitimizes Jesus’ words, so it would not be surprising for the Evangelists to have done the same with the Septuagint, even if Jesus did not originally use the Septuagint.

The same is true with Jesus’ teaching and words in general. Sure, He would have known Greek. There may have been aspects of His instruction which He would have offered in Greek. But it would make more sense for Jesus to be primarily communicating to the people in the language they understood, which would have been Aramaic. All the evidence about the use of Greek in inscriptions, etc. in Galilee and Judea do not provide attestation for the language which would have been used by the poor Jewish people in those areas. And even if they could speak some Greek, they would have been more at home in Aramaic.

Gleaves noted, but then quickly passed over, how Paul addressed the Jewish crowd at the Temple in Aramaic in Acts 22:2. Perhaps the very fact Luke drew attention to Paul using Aramaic is evidence that most communication was actually done in Greek. On the other hand, Paul is in the Jewish homeland near the center of Jewish life, and he did not dare speak in Greek at that moment. He spoke to the people in Aramaic.

So if Paul felt compelled to speak in Aramaic in the Temple, are we really to believe Jesus Himself was speaking in Greek to a similar people almost thirty years earlier?

I appreciate what Gleaves has written for what it is: a maximal argument regarding the use of Koine Greek by Jesus, the Evangelists, and the other authors of the New Testament. Many of his arguments are persuasive. Yet they also go too far. We can never be quite sure whether Jesus spoke primarily in Aramaic or Greek. That the Evangelists have composed the narrative in Greek need not demand Jesus having actually spoken in Greek; do any of us consider Luke’s record of Paul’s preaching before the Jewish people at the Temple in Acts 22:1-21 as somehow less legitimate because Luke presents the message in Greek? By no means; we trust Luke has well rendered what Paul said in Aramaic into Koine Greek. We may recognize how the Apostles, Evangelists, and the like used the Greek Septuagint, and while there is compelling evidence for James the Lord’s brother relying on a uniquely Seputagintal rendering of Amos 9:11-12 in Acts 15:15-18, what quotations from Jesus’ lips require a uniquely Septuagintal origin to explain the argument or instruction Jesus was making?

Gleaves has done a good service in challenging Aramaic hegemony and to give reason for Bible students and scholars to hold more lightly onto any insistence any given statement of Jesus or anyone else was originally spoken in Aramaic. Yet Gleaves would do well to maintain the same in terms of Jesus: to become dogmatic that He almost certainly communicated in Greek has even less to commend it than expecting Him to communicate in Aramaic. When we consider the world of Acts and the letters of the New Testament, we can maintain great confidence those involved were speaking a similar Greek to what has been written save when otherwise noted. But when it comes to Jesus, we should be open to Jesus actually speaking in Aramaic or Greek, and be careful about being overly dogmatic about anything presented in the Gospels as Jesus’ speech or instruction in terms of Greek grammar or specific lexicography. Likewise, we should not become dogmatic about reconstructions of Jesus’ “original Aramaic” would have been like.

We don’t know nearly as much as we would like to know about Second Temple Judaism. No amount of additional evidence will change this condition. Thus a little intellectual humility in any such matter goes a long way. ( )
  deusvitae | Dec 27, 2023 |
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Did Jesus speak Greek? An affirmative answer to the question will no doubt challenge traditional presuppositions. The question relates directly to the historical preservation of Jesus's words and theology. Traditionally, the authenticity of Jesus's teaching has been linked to the recovery of the original Aramaic that presumably underlies the Gospels. The Aramaic Hypothesis infers that the Gospels represent theological expansions, religious propaganda, or blatant distortions of Jesus's teachings. Consequently, uncovering the original Aramaic of Jesus's teachings will separate the historical Jesus from the mythical personality. G. Scott Gleaves, in Did Jesus Speak Greek?, contends that the Aramaic Hypothesis is inadequate as an exclusive criterion of historical Jesus studies and does not aptly take into consideration the multilingual culture of first-century Palestine. Evidence from archaeological, literary, and biblical data demonstrates Greek linguistic dominance in Roman Palestine during the first century CE. Such preponderance of evidence leads not only to the conclusion that Jesus and his disciples spoke Greek but also to the recognition that the Greek New Testament generally and the Gospel of Matthew in particular were original compositions and not translations of underlying Aramaic sources.

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