Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Ian Hutchesson <mc2499 AT mclink.it>]

Dear Peter,

You wrote:

>While looking at Josephus in answer to the other division of this 
>thread, I came across the following in Josephus AJ book 20 chapter 11 
>section 2:
>
>"our nation does not encourage those that learn the languages of many 
>nations, and so adorn their discourses with the smoothness of their 
>periods; because they look upon this sort of accomplishment as common, 
>not only to all sorts of free-men, but to as many of the servants as 
>please to learn them."
>
>Thus Josephus is saying that some knowledge of Greek was common among 
>the Jews of his period, 

On the contrary he says that such learning is scorned upon, ie common. He
doesn't say such knowledge is widespread. There were however Jewish Greek
speaking communities. Herod was a great proponent of Greek culture and
founded a number of Greek cities.

>in fact more so among the common people than 
>among the intellectual elite. Clear evidence for bilingualism, with a 
>rather interesting slant to it.

Not at all, though there were clearly monolingual speakers of Greek as the
Babatha library implies: these are mainly personal letters.

In the end I think the hypothesis of bilingualism is unverifiable,
therefore functionally meaningless. (This is not to say that I totally
negate the possibility of bilingualism in a multi-language society.)


Cheers,


Ian

(I notice the subject which interests me, ie Ezra/Josephus/1 Esdras has
been put on the backburner.)