Ulan wrote:
There's also the (fiercely debated) question whether most Jews around the beginning of the Common Era could actually speak Hebrew or Aramaic..
What is debated depends on which Jews.
If I had a doctorate, it would be in eliminating the word "jew" before the first century because it is about meaningless. A description should be used.
There is a huge difference between an Aramaic Galilean Jew say in Nazareth, and a Koine speaking "jew" is Sepphoris a mere 4 miles from Nazareth.
The said debate hinges on the socioeconomic difference (fiercely debated) but one thing is a fact, there were Koine jews oppressing Israelite AramaicJews.
Peter Kirby wrote:
In that case, I call your horse crap and raise you.
I understand the influence of Hellenism
The influence of Greek thought on Jewish cultural and religious life
My context was that this does not even apply to Israelite origins or monotheism. Since OP led off with 1500 BC I thought the origins should be addressed.
The early influence was minor compared to the Hellenistic periods. If we were dealing in context to the gospel only periods he may have had a point.
I can understand your take on it, but I didn't read it that way (as saying that the mysteries had sway in Israel in the second millenium BC). I think that bit of context is just to address the claim of chronological posteriority - to the Christian religion.
It's certainly a multi-dimensional topic (that of Hellenistic influence), but that's exactly why your post seemed so wrong. The post you quoted might not even be very good (don't know, don't care), but we can fill whole books regarding Hellenistic influence on early Christianity. It's not "horse crap."
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
MrMacSon wrote:My understanding is that Hebrew developed from Aramaic, largely b/c Hebrew was used to record and transmit the Jewish texts.
This depends on whether you speak of the language or the script. The Hebrew language is a Canaanite language, very close to Phoenician, another Canaanite language. Aramaic is a different branch of the Northwest Semitic languages, the lingua franca of the Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian and Persian empires, with native areas in Syria and around. Samaritan or Nabatean are examples of classical Aramaic.
Hebrew was originally written in the paleo-Hebrew script, a close variant of the Phoenician script. The Samaritans still use this. At the beginning of the common era, Jewish religious texts were written in a close variant of Aramaic script, derived from the common script in the Persian Empire. Or in other words, today's square script is derived from Aramaic script.
MrMacSon wrote:I also understand that Hebrew was common in and around Jerusalem, but Aramaic persisted more in places like Galilee.
Probably.
Last edited by Ulan on Mon Sep 26, 2016 1:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
Ulan wrote:
There's also the (fiercely debated) question whether most Jews around the beginning of the Common Era could actually speak Hebrew or Aramaic..
What is debated depends on which Jews.
If I had a doctorate, it would be in eliminating the word "jew" before the first century because it is about meaningless. A description should be used.
There is a huge difference between an Aramaic Galilean Jew say in Nazareth, and a Koine speaking "jew" is Sepphoris a mere 4 miles from Nazareth.
The said debate hinges on the socioeconomic difference (fiercely debated) but one thing is a fact, there were Koine jews oppressing Israelite AramaicJews.
I was referring to Jews as followers of the Jewish religion, not as people from Judea. As Second Temple Judaism was a proselytizing religion, Jews in this sense had a rather widespread ethnic and language background. The largest "Jewish" city of the time was Alexandria, with more than three times the Jewish population of what Jerusalem had as total population. The Jewish quarter had its own laws and government, so speaking of a "Jewish" city is not completely out there in this regard. The scholars are still split over the question what kind of language these people actually spoke: Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek. This is the environment the LXX allegedly sprung from.
Influences from this side are usually denied in most of modern scholarship, mostly because these places don't play a role (or only a very cursory one) in the NT. This may be correct for development of later Rabbinical Judaism, but I'm not sure about Christianity.
Ulan wrote:
. The scholars are still split over the question what kind of language these people actually spoke: Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek. This is the environment the LXX allegedly sprung from.
.
There is a good reason it was written in Greek. It lets you know what they considered primacy.
This may be correct for development of later Rabbinical Judaism, but I'm not sure about Christianity.
Christians were for the most part all Hellenist. In Judaism the jesus character was a failed messiah upon his death.
Most people don't understand how popular Judaism light actually was in Hellenism and how popular monotheism became in the Empire.
