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

[Sammy Jankis]

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).

you're a fucking idiot.

 

[Sammy Jankis]

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.

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.

that means it hearsay and mostly bullshit.

but the Bible doesn't have to be literally true for morality to have value, organized religion masonic anti-human dumbass.

 

[gmark77]

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.

But isn't textual analysis and linguistics a form of "science"?

It sounds like science to me. To take the data, analyze it, test against controls (other written sources etc.), infer based on the data and draw conclusions.

Very little science involves "test tubes" and "beakers". Science is so much more than that.

 

[Cypress]

But isn't textual analysis and linguistics a form of "science"?

Textual analysis and historical analysis existed long before experimental science.

Obviously, rational human beings have been weighing evidence and critically evaluating information thousands of years before western experimental science even began. Thousands of years before the word "science" even existed.

Trying to cram, shoehorn, and squeeze any and all forms of human logic, reasoning, and inference under the umbrella term "science" defies the any acceptable understanding of human intellectual history.

 

[IBDaMann]

In other news, he knew the Torah very well,

... as did everyone at the time.

which meant he was indeed well educated

Nope.

and very familiar with logic.

Nope.

Just being a Jew alone wasn't enough to make one a rabbi,

Anyone with the mind to do so could become a preacher. The same is true today.

they had a definitive social order to abide by.

Irrelevant.

 

[IBDaMann]

Trying to cram, shoehorn, and squeeze any and all forms of human logic, reasoning, and inference under the umbrella term "science" defies the any acceptable understanding of human intellectual history.

Human logic, reasoning and inference is not crammed under the umbrella "science." You might want to learn what science is.

 

[EdwinA]

... as did everyone at the time.

Nope. Most Jews weren't that educated. Torah study was limited to on eon one oral transmissions from priests, and they mostly chose students from their own castes and families. You know noting about Jewish history.

Nope.

Yep,

Nope.

Yep.

Anyone with the mind to do so could become a preacher. The same is true today.

lol few could become priests; you're just an ignorant idiot.

Irrelevant.

lol no, it's very relevant. Social status and family ancestory was everything. You're clueless. Good thing they micro-chipped your underwear and keep an eyery on you.

 

[IBDaMann]

Nope. Most Jews weren't that educated.

Irrelevant. All Jews were aware of their social norms.

Torah study was limited to on eon one oral transmissions from priests,

Nobody needed to study the Torah to be completely aware of social norms. You know nothing about Jewish history.

 

[EdwinA]

Irrelevant. All Jews were aware of their social norms.

Keep shifting around, it's pretty funny.

Nobody needed to study the Torah to be completely aware of social norms. You know nothing about Jewish history.

Nobody said otherwise. keep shifting topics while failing to address any of them. Many of the priesthoods were hereditary, which was why there was so much unrest during the Christian era, with several factions vying for survival and reform. Jesus and the Apostles were clearly well educated and able to hold their own with the Temple sects and Pharisees, something they couldn't do if they were illiterate hicks. Nothing you can babble will ever prove otherwise.

 

[IBDaMann]

Keep shifting around, it's pretty funny.

Keep denying the obvious; it's hilarious.

Nobody said otherwise.

You implied otherwise.

which was why there was so much unrest during the Christian era, with several factions vying for survival and reform.

The splintering off to form a new religion always causes division and unrest.

Jesus and the Apostles were clearly well educated

Jesus was clearly charismatic and illiterate. All the prominent literates of the time have writings to show for it.

and able to hold their own with the Temple sects and Pharisees,

Yes, they had muscle. Jesus formed a cord and beat the shit out of many moneychangers and drove them, and their doves, out of the temple. That's not education; that's MMA. You can't clear a den of thieves with "education."

something they couldn't do if they were illiterate hicks.

Bouncers have the job they have not because they are well educated.

 

[gmark77]

Textual analysis and historical analysis existed long before experimental science.

Obviously, rational human beings have been weighing evidence and critically evaluating information thousands of years before western experimental science even began. Thousands of years before the word "science" even existed.

Trying to cram, shoehorn, and squeeze any and all forms of human logic, reasoning, and inference under the umbrella term "science" defies the any acceptable understanding of human intellectual history.

I don't know, this just seems pretty scientific these days to me. I'm sure it started out non-scientific, just as chemistry started as Alchemy, but it actually sounds like it's a pretty solid scientific endeavor.

Mastering Textual Criticism in Historical Research

Learn the essential techniques and methodologies of textual criticism to enhance the validity of your historical writing and research.

www.numberanalytics.com

Why is it important for it NOT to be science?

 

[Cypress]

I don't know, this just seems pretty scientific these days to me. I'm sure it started out non-scientific, just as chemistry started as Alchemy, but it actually sounds like it's a pretty solid scientific endeavor.

Mastering Textual Criticism in Historical Research

Learn the essential techniques and methodologies of textual criticism to enhance the validity of your historical writing and research.

www.numberanalytics.com

Why is it important for it NOT to be science?

If you go to a college campus looking for the history or literature professors, you immediately and instinctively start walking to the humanities building, not to the science quad.

So your mind already instinctively knows history and literary studies are humanities, not sciences.

 

[Cypress]

Human logic, reasoning and inference is not crammed under the umbrella "science." You might want to learn what science is.

I'm not the one making the claim that all manner and forms of human logic, human reasoning, human inference need to be cramed and shoehorned under the umbrella term 'science'.

 

[gmark77]

If you go to a college campus looking for the history or literature professors, you immediately and instinctively start walking to the humanities building, not to the science quad.

So your mind already instinctively knows history and literary studies are humanities, not sciences.

I tend not to define science as "that which is done with test tubes in the science building" but rather as a larger epistemology.

And, in fact, in text analytics there's a TON of heavy duty math available if you want to dig into some really intense stuff (text clustering, lexical distance measurements, etc.) The historical criticism stuff I'm more than willing to admit live in the "humanities" moreso than the science departments, but the overall concept of an organized data-driven, inferential analysis sounds more like science.

Just like you often go to the Humanities building for Anthropology but it's still a science.

Textual analysis requires data and inference. I can't see the point of splitting it off from science just because a university puts it in another building.

Here's a few examples of modern text analytics (science) as applied to historical attribution analyses:

Who Wrote This? Textual Modeling with Authorship Attribution in Big Data

By representing large corpora with concise and meaningful elements, topic-based generative models aim to reduce the dimension and understand the content of documents. Those techniques originally analyze on words in the documents, but their extensions currently accommodate meta-data such as...

ieeexplore.ieee.org

Computational authorship analysis of the homeric poems - International Journal of Digital Humanities

Natural language modeling is used to predict or generate the next word or character of modern languages. Furthermore, statistical character-based language models have been found useful in authorship attribution analyses by studying the linguistic proximity of excerpts unknown to the model. In...

link.springer.com

Critical biblical studies via word frequency analysis: Unveiling text authorship

The Bible is the product of a complex process of oral and written transmissions that stretched across centuries and traditions. This implies ongoing revision of the “original” or oldest textual layers over the course of hundreds of years. Although critical scholarship recognizes this fact...

journals.plos.org

I'm still curious why it is important that textual analyses NOT be considered science.

 

[IBDaMann]

I'm not the one making the claim that all manner and forms of human logic, human reasoning, human inference need to be cramed and shoehorned under the umbrella term 'science'.

You are the one claiming that others do this ... when they don't. You wouldn't make such stupid claims as this if you would only learn what science is.

 

[IBDaMann]

I tend not to define science as "that which is done with test tubes in the science building" but rather as a larger epistemology.

This is good on you. For one thing, science is not "done." Science is simply a specific body of falsifiable models that forms an open functional system. There is no mystery to it.

And, in fact, in text analytics there's a TON of heavy duty math available if you want to dig into some really intense stuff

You are on the right track. Just remember that math is math; math is not science.

... but the overall concept of an organized data-driven, inferential analysis sounds more like science.

Nope. It's still just math. The same kind of analysis is performed by casinos on all of the games they offer so they can understand the odds and the overall "big picture" of each game. It isn't science; it's just math.

Textual analysis requires data and inference. I can't see the point of splitting it off from science just because a university puts it in another building.

It's not science. You are describing research. Research is research, not science. Any math that is used in the research is just math, not science.

 

[Ross Dolan]

True enough but claiming they were illiterate is meaningless if you cant show it to be true.

Claiming there are gods (or is a GOD) is, for the same reason, just as meaningless.

Nothing wrong with making that blind guess, though...just as there is nothing wrong with making the blind guess that there are no gods.

 

[Hume]

Claiming there are gods (or is a GOD) is, for the same reason, just as meaningless.

Nothing wrong with making that blind guess, though...just as there is nothing wrong with making the blind guess that there are no gods.

All of your posts are blind guesses. You randomly write words.

 

[Sammy Jankis]

Textual analysis and historical analysis existed long before experimental science.

Obviously, rational human beings have been weighing evidence and critically evaluating information thousands of years before western experimental science even began. Thousands of years before the word "science" even existed.

Trying to cram, shoehorn, and squeeze any and all forms of human logic, reasoning, and inference under the umbrella term "science" defies the any acceptable understanding of human intellectual history.

no.

wrong.
these basic rational thought forms and proofs form the basis of rational thought, which is required for science.

this mental orientation is the basis of science.

of course, you masonic theocracy purveyors hate rationality because it's ultimately your enemy.

you are a sophist, the natural enemy of the philosopher, or "scientist".