Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Dewayne Dulaney <dewayne.dulaney AT gmail.com>]

Dear Fred,

I've been following the above discussion with great interest. If the
moderators haven't closed this thread by now, I'd like to put in my
two shekels/denarii/drachmas worth... :)

You wrote earlier:

>The gospels were written to convince and witness to the hebrews first, that
>their promised Savior had arrived and would deliver them from the roman and
>greek chains.

>The idea that their sacred gospels could have been or were written in the
>language of one of their historic enemies ( latin or greek or syrian ((
>aramaic )) or egyptian) is simply not credible on the record of the n.t.,
>itself.

1. Acts 2:1-12: twice in this context it is stated that the visitors
to Jerusalem heard the apostles preaching about Jesus in the visitors'
native languages. From the listing of countries, at least four or five
included Greek-speaking areas; Rome, both Greek and Latin-speaking, is
included; Egypt and Mesopotamia are included. Since the native
languages of these areas did not include Hebrew, obviously these
people, despite being Jews, learned the language of some of their
"traditional enemies".

2. You admit the LXX was produced in Greek. Perhaps you are not aware
that the LXX was produced by Jewish scholars, originally for a Jewish
audience. As synagogues were also open to Gentiles who were
God-fearers, they also came to be part of the audience for the LXX.

3. Other ancient translations of the Old Testament in Greek were also
produced by Jewish scholars in the 2nd century A.D.: those of Aquila,
Theodotion, and Symmachus.

Given these facts, I fail to see how producing the Gospels in Greek
would have been anathema to the Jews. Not to mention the fact that
Matthew and John were Galileans, and Galilee was a bilingual area.
Mark obviously learned Greek at some point, and Luke, a Gentile,
undoubtedly spoke Greek as a native.

Shalom,
Dewayne Dulaney



-- 
"From the world you will have trouble. But, be brave! I have defeated
the world!"—John 16:33, DDV (Dewayne Dulaney Version)

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