Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>
> I don't see how he can claim that Jesus didn't speak Aramaic, when we have
> several transliterated Aramaic words and phrases in the New Testament.
> Ephphatha, talitha cumi and the cry on the cross come immediately to mind,
so
> that in itself should give you some idea of how "scholarly" this person's
> work really is.
>
I think enough has been said about Herrell's book. Before this topic gets
too far from Hebrew: since the only evidence that we have for what Jesus
said or didn't say is what the Gospels claim that he said, all we really
know is that the authors of the literary sources that the Gospels used
sources spoke Aramaic and immagined Jesus doing the same. Aramaic certainly
was the common language of Jews and "Syrians" in places like Syria and
Egypt. On the other hand, the relationship between the OT quotations in
Matthew and the Septuagint are well known. Certainly the LXX was the favored
text of that group of Greek-speaking Jews and Gentiles who became the early
Church. However, I have a feeling that Jesus, as a first-century Galilean
Jew, might actually have spoken as much Hebrew as Aramaic. And one would
assume, that growing up in a village like Nazereth, only a few kilometers
from the urban center at Sepphoris, would have had to know some Greek as
well.

Yigal