Greek Speaking Jesus and His Disciples - An Answer to Bart Ehrman's popular "Aramaic" Premises

Greek was the lingua franca of the Eastern Mediterranean world, Galilee was significantly Hellenized, and Hellenized Jews were ubiquitous in early first century Palestine.

To me, it certainly seems in the realm of possibility that Jesus and some of this disciples could speak and write at least some Greek. The Gospels written in simple Koine Greek, so the authors weren't writing in sophisticated literary Greek.

I don't think the article is fair to Ehrman otherwise. Ehrman does not think the Gospels are utterly unreliable. What he thinks is that you have to work at it to mine the historically reliable information embedded in the scripture.



I'm reading a book by Ehrman now, and he believes these are genuine historical facts as supported by the evidence.

1) The Romans executed a Jewish rabbi named Jesus around 30 AD.

2) Many of Jesus' disciples came to believe they saw him after his execution (aka, the disciples were not lying or fabricating myths).
 
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EdwinA said:
Ehrman claims they were illiterate hicks and simpletons.
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Ehrman states that Jesus could read Hebrew, and he may have been able to communicate in Greek*.

He seems to believe Peter was illiterate.


* The Historical Jesus - 2000, Bart Ehrman.
 
Cypress said:
Ehrman states that Jesus could read Hebrew, and he may have been able to communicate in Greek*.

He seems to believe Peter was illiterate.


* The Historical Jesus - 2000, Bart Ehrman.
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Well, on his blog he says different.

Being multi-lingual in the ME would have been normal and a necessity, especially in Greek and Roman Palestine. Jesus and the writers of the NT are obviously not merely just Jewish but well educated Jewish scholars and very well versed in Jewish history, theology, and culture, something the average Jew at the time would not be if they were some hicks from the fringes.
 
EdwinA said:
Well, on his blog he says different.

Being multi-lingual in the ME would have been normal and a necessity, especially in Greek and Roman Palestine. Jesus and the writers of the NT are obviously not merely just Jewish but well educated Jewish scholars and very well versed in Jewish history, theology, and culture, something the average Jew at the time would not be if they were some hicks from the fringes.
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He either changed his opinion over the years, or he makes a distinction between his personal opinion and scholarly consensus.

A Blog is definitely a vehicle for personal opinion.
A course book is for a general audience, and typically presents the consensus of scholars.

In my book, he literally points to Luke 4:16-20 and Mark 12:10, 26 as evidence Jesus could read the scriptures in Hebrew. He says some scholars believe he communicated to Pontius Pilate in Greek, because it is highly unlikely Pontius Pilate would have bothered to learn Aramaic.
 
Cypress said:
He either changed his opinion over the years, or he makes a distinction between his personal opinion and scholarly consensus.

A Blog is definitely a vehicle for personal opinion.
A course book is for a general audience, and typically presents the consensus of scholars.

In my book, he literally points to Luke 4:16-20 and Mark 12:10, 26 as evidence Jesus could read the scriptures in Hebrew. He says some scholars believe he communicated to Pontius Pilate in Greek, because it is highly unlikely Pontius Pilate would have bothered to learn Aramaic.
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He changed a lot of his answers, after Darrell Bock handed him his ass several times. over both OT and NT history.
 
EdwinA said:
He changed a lot of his answers, after Darrell Bock handed him his ass several times. over both OT and NT history.
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It's hard to know how educated the apostles were.

Two of the four Gospel authors weren't even apostles, so we know next to nothing about them. Circumstantial evidence is that Matthew originally wrote sayings of Jesus in Hebrew, but it was later transcribed and enhanced into Greek.

The apostles were obviously deeply religious and knew Jewish tradition, the Torah, and the prophet tradition very well.

The King James Bible tends to mislead us about the literary skill of the NT authors. The English in King James Bible was intentionally translated into a beautiful, literary, decorative form of Elizabethean English.

The scholars who read Greek tend to say the original Greek gospel manuscripts are written in a simple plain Koine Greek.

There seems to be some archealogical evidence that first century synagogues had schools in them, so it wouldn't surprise me that some Galilean boys would be taught to read the Torah and attain some level of literacy.
 
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A cultural history of Aramaic is interesting to read. I think there are some papers at the academicu site worth reading, and a book at Amazon.
 
EdwinA said:
www.academia.edu

Greek Speaking Jesus and His Disciples - An Answer to Bart Ehrman's popular "Aramaic" Premises

Ehrman begins from the premise that the disciples were illiterate Aramaic speaking fishermen who therefore could not have authored the Gospels. He also avers that a memoir recollected after several decades cannot be treated as reliable. These notes
www.academia.edu

Pointing out the obvious again.
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Alexander the Great occupying West Asia brought a new way of thinking to the region. Anyone could become a demigod through knowledge.
 
goat said:
Alexander the Great occupying West Asia brought a new way of thinking to the region. Anyone could become a demigod through knowledge.
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Many Greeks thought Moses and the Jews inspired the ancient Greek language and culture. They were not incompatible cultures, except for the hard core racist Babylonian scam artist cults started by Ezra that later developed into the Pharisee and racist 'Rabbinical Judaism' cults. Most real Jews converted to the reformist Christian sect and left the fake Jews to snivel and whine and fake being all oppressed n stuff for the next 2,000 years. The average Baptist is more Jewish theologically than what passes for Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox cultists today.
 
EdwinA said:
At least he acknowledges Jesus actually existed as a real person; most of those who cite him don't know that about him, or they wouldn't cite him. lol
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True enough but claiming they were illiterate is meaningless if you cant show it to be true.
 
Yakuda said:
True enough but claiming they were illiterate is meaningless if you cant show it to be true.
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Yep, and clearly they weren't; their public speeches as well as his private words tell a different story. They were working mostly among other Jews, after all, and in the Temple as well.
 
Cypress said:
To me, it certainly seems in the realm of possibility that Jesus and some of this disciples could speak and write at least some Greek.
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"The realm of possibility" is the lowest bar you could have picked.

I know of no Biblical "scholar" who believes that the Jesus of the New Testament was literate, with all due respect to Christians who believe that Jesus was essentially omniscient. The Jesus of the New Testament didn't write anything. Why do you believe it plausible to assert that the Jesus of the New Testament spoke Greek?
 
IBDaMann said:
"The realm of possibility" is the lowest bar you could have picked.

I know of no Biblical "scholar" who believes that the Jesus of the New Testament was literate, with all due respect to Christians who believe that Jesus was essentially omniscient. The Jesus of the New Testament didn't write anything. Why do you believe it plausible to assert that the Jesus of the New Testament spoke Greek?
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Well, he was probably micro-chipping your ancestors' underwear and too busy to learn new stuff.

In other news, he knew the Torah very well, which meant he was indeed well educated and very familiar with logic. Just being a Jew alone wasn't enough to make one a rabbi, they had a definitive social order to abide by.

See this excellent social study of the times:

www.goodreads.com

Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus

s/t: An Investigation into Economic and Social Conditio…
www.goodreads.com www.goodreads.com

Uses only Jewish sources and is well footnoted and documented.
 
IBDaMann said:
"The realm of possibility" is the lowest bar you could have picked.
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When it comes to ancient history, circumstantial evidence is frequently all we can work with.
Despite what militant atheists think, we can't explain everything by doing a scientific experiment, pulling out our test tubes and beakers, or writing mathematical equations.
IBDaMann said:
Why do you believe it plausible to assert that the Jesus of the New Testament spoke Greek?
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I don't believe anything about it, one way or the other. I stated that Bart Ehrman reports that some scholars think Jesus may have been capable of some basic conversational Greek because first century Palestine had been thoroughly Hellenized for three centuries, Greek was the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean, and Jesus was interrogated by Pontius Pilate who would not be expected to be fluent in Aramaic.
 
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