Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Harold R. Holmyard III" <hholmyard AT ont.com>]

Dear Peter,

>Are you sure? As I understood it, in the first century CE even in ROME
>the lingua franca was Greek, not Latin, and that Latin was dying out
>until it was revived under the Flavians. (That explains why Paul wrote
>his letter to the Romans in Greek.) I suppose that Latin was used by the
>Romans for official administrative purposes, but that Romans in
>Palestine would have spoken mostly Greek among one another, The language
>spoken in the army may have varied from regiment to regiment, and some
>of the regiment names are recorded, e.g. in Acts 10:1, Cornelius was
>from the Italian regiment, and so is more likely to have been a Latin
>speaker - although he probably conversed with Peter in Greek.

HH: I did not know that, but there seem to be other opinions. This author
claims that the language of Rome at the time of Paul was Latin. Only the
last sentence is relevant:
http://www.latin-mass-society.org/latinlegionaries.htm

The earliest Jewish Christians in Palestine must have celebrated the
Eucharist in Aramaic. The Hebrew in which most of the books of the Old
Testament were written had already ceased to be a spoken language, and
translations from Hebrew into Aramaic for use in the synagogues had
probably already begun to be made. But Aramaic was no more than a
relatively insignificant language spoken in a backwater of the Roman
Empire, and the liturgy celebrated by St Paul's converts was unquestionably
Greek. For scriptural readings, the new communities used the Greek version
of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. St Paul's letters to these
communities, which were carefully preserved by them and became part of
their corpus of standard liturgical readings, were in Greek, and so were
the Gospels when they eventually came to be written. And although the
language of Rome itself was Latin, the first Christian community in the
imperial city also celebrated its liturgy in Greek.

HH: Here is one opinion from the Jesus Institute, although I am not
familiar with it:
http://www.jesus-institute.org/historical-jesus/jesus-firstcenturycontext.shtml

Language: The common language in the Roman Empire was Greek. However, at
the time it was common for Jews to also use Hebrew, Aramaic, and Latin.
Jesus' every day language was Aramaic.

HH: Here is an interesting comment on Latin in Palestine from Alan Millard,
who was Professor of Hebrew and Ancient Semitic Languages at the University
of Liverpool in 1996:

It has long been known that Palestine had a very mixed population, using
Aramaic and Greek in daily life, with Hebrew spoken in religious circles
and Latin used by the Roman administration.

A great variety of written documents is now available from the area, many
of them recovered only in the past thirty years, beside the famous Dead Sea
Scrolls. These documents illuminate the use of the languages, revealing,
for example, that wine jars and other containers in Herod's palace were
labelled in Latin, so his kitchen staff had to know a little Latin, or risk
the wrath of a king served with the wrong vintage! The documents also
disclosed a wide and ready use of writing, ranging from the religious books
of the Jewish sect living by the Dead Sea to names in tombs and scribbles
on potsherds, the ancient scrap-paper.

HH: Here is the opinion of the Encyclopedia of the Roman Provinces, which
feels that Romans used Latin in Palestine as their native language
http://www.usd.edu/erp/Palestine/people&p.htm

A number of Romans, finally, sojourned in Palestine, usually in consequence
of their official duties.  These people included thousands of soldiers and
scores of governors, commanders, administrators, and their staffs.  They
originated from all over the Mediterranean but especially Egypt, Asia
Minor, Greece, and Syria.  They spoke Latin and whatever native languages
they came to Palestine with; educated Romans, of course, commanded Greek as
well.  But Latin gradually went out of use in Palestine--as throughout the
eastern empire--during the third century, and Greek replaced it as the
language of government.

>however another Roman officer's surprise that Paul could speak Greek,
>Acts 21:37, which suggests that most of the Jerusalem crowds could not.

HH: Here is an opinion about the use of Greek from over a decade ago,
filtered through Rod Decker in 1994:

Joseph Fitzmyer, "The Languages of Palestine in the First Century AD,"
In _The Language of the New Testament: Classic Essays._ JSNT supp.
series # 60. Edited by Stanley E. Porter. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991.

    Fitzmyer disagrees with the view that a passage in Josephus argues
against a widespread use of Greek among the Jews of first century Palestine
(137-38).  His reasons are: 1) the abundance of Greek inscriptions in the
temple area, buildings, and in cemeteries (but how does this indicate that
Greek was widely used among "common" people?); 2) grain deals, marriage
contracts, Greek shorthand notes, and Bar Cochba (?) letters found in the
caves of Murabba`at were written in Greek (some of which is not very good
Greek, 143)<1> the likelihood that Jesus spoke to Roman officials, such as
Pilate, in Greek (145).<2> By the third and fourth centuries it is possible
that Palestinian Jews spoke Greek more widely and frequently than Aramaic.

HH: Here's an opinion from the Encyclopedia of the Roman Provinces about
the use of Greek in Palestine
http://www.usd.edu/erp/Palestine/people&p.htm

All varieties of Judaism had more or less Hellenized by the Roman
period--that is, Jews adopted the standard material culture of the
Greco-Roman world and--with some variation--ate, dressed, and built like
Gentiles.  Hebrew had fallen out of everyday use, and the Jews spoke the
prevailing languages of the area: Aramaic and Greek (the picture shows a
piece of a Jewish tombstone from late antique Caesarea, written in Greek
but carrying Jewish names, symbols, and title: priest).  In the hands of
some philosophers, such as Philo, even the theology and interpretation of
the Bible had Hellenized.  Some purists--Essenes, for example, and the
amorphous groups known as Zealots and sicarii (some of whom seem more like
bandits or politically motivated terrorists than like religious
puritans)--decried the extent of Hellenization within Judaism and tried to
preserve or restore the True Israel by withdrawal into the desert, by
militancy, or by both.  From them emerged the violent Messianism that in
times of political distress erupted into popular rebellion against Roman
rule, especially during the two great revolts of 66-73/74 and 132-35.

                                        Yours,
                                        Harold Holmyard