Some evidence that Christ spoke the language does exist in the New Testament. Jesus utilized at least two Grecian words for love in his well-known post-resurrection conversation with Peter regarding how much he loved him. He used the word agape , which is a deep love and phileo , which is brotherly love toward someone we like see John 15 - These words have no exact corresponding word either in Old Testament Hebrew or in Aramaic.
Jesus' play on words for "stone" and "rock," while talking with Peter in Matthew , also uses Grecian words that cannot be replicated in another language. Mark 7 records the story of a Gentile woman who requested Jesus heal her young daughter. After being initially rebuffed, she persisted with her request. Jesus responded that he was sent to save and serve Israelites and that, "It isn't right to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs" Mark There may even have been times when he and his father worked in this rapidly grow- ing metropolitan city, which served as the capital city of Herod Antipas until A.
Stein, InterVarsity Press,, , p. Stein further tells us that the existence of "Hellenists" in the early Church Acts implies that from the beginning of the Church, there were Greek speaking Jewish Christians in the Church. The term "Hellenists" suggests their language was Greek, rather than their cultural or philosophical outlook. Remember, these were Jewish Christians whose primary language was Greek -- they were not Greek philosophers or their followers, but followers of Christ Jesus.
In addition, there are several incidents in Jesus' ministry when he spoke to people who knew neither Aramaic nor Hebrew. Thus unless a translator was present though none is ever mentioned , their conversations probably took place in the Greek language. Probably Jesus spoke Greek during the following occasions: the visit to Tyre, Sidon and the Decapolis Mark ff , the conversation with the Syro-Phoenician woman Mark ; compare especially 7? The fact that Jesus Christ and the disciples all knew and spoke Greek, as a "third language," in addition to Aramaic and Hebrew, is also indicated and supported by the fact that all the gospels and epistles of the New Testament are written and preserved in the Greek language.
Stop and think! It is very significant that no early Christian documents are extant in Aramaic! Papias, a second-century bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor stated that Matthew had put together the "sayings" of Jesus in the Hebrew dialect, Aramaic.
But no one has ever seen them. Strange, isn't it, that not one manuscript in Aramaic or Hebrew predates the Greek? Scholars have long denied the veracity of the New Testament Scriptures, claiming that the earliest gospels were not eye-witness accounts of Christ and His life, but were written some one hundred years afterward, or about the middle of the second century, and were based on hearsay, myth, fable, and oral stories which had been passed down.
Thus many scholars have regarded the very words of Christ, as recorded in the gospels, as "suspect. Astonishing as it may seem, however, bits of papyrus in an Oxford University library puts the lie to the cherished theories of unbelieving, skeptical scholars!
Three scraps of text of the gospel of Matthew, inscribed in Greek, have traditionally been believed to have been written in the late second century. The London Times reported that the evidence on an early form of writing paper was a potentially "important breakthrough in biblical scholarship, on a level with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in " Los Angeles Times , Dec. Some scholars have questioned the accuracy of the New Testament as historical, believing that the earliest texts were written long after the actual events described.
However, careful new analysis by Professor Thiede has dated the fragments to the middle of the first century, thereby indicating that they are evidence that the Matthew Gospel was written only a generation after the crucifixion, or even earlier!
Says William Tuohy of the Los Angeles Times , "Parts of the New Testament may have been written by men who actually knew Christ, rather than authors recounting a 2nd-Century version of an oral tradition.
The Magdalen fragments have been at the Oxford college since Little work has been done on them since when they were last edited by biblical scholars.
But earlier this year, Thiede visited Oxford and inspected the papyrus. He concluded,. Even a hesitant approach to questions of dating would therefore seem to justify a date in the 1st Century, about years earlier than previously thought. The lines on the fragments are from Matthew 26 and include the oldest written reference to Mary Magdalene and the betrayal of Christ by Judas.
This fragment, written soon after the death of Christ, in the first century, is written in the Greek language, putting in the trash compacter once and for all the notion that the apostles did not speak or write Greek! This new discovery by Professor Carsten Thiede, a papyrus expert, will provoke controversy among scholars, if not even dismay and consternation on the part of disbelievers and skeptics. His discovery is strong evidence that the gospel accounts regarding the life of Jesus Christ are accurate, and reliable historical documents.
The Magdalene fragment from the Gospel of Matthew has been identified as coming from a document dated to the middle of the first century A.
This fragment is written in GREEK, and could even be a fragment from an original monograph written by the apostle Matthew himself! This amazing new discovery is powerful evidence, obviously, that the writer, evidently the apostle Matthew, was very familiar with the Greek language and was capable of writing intelligently in it.
It is possible that many Greek terms preserved in the New Testament may be there because they were originally uttered in Greek. One such word is "Sanhedron," which comes from the Greek synedrion. It is of Greek, not Hebrew, derivation, and was the common term used for the Jewish high court. A word often used by Jesus, "hypocrite," in describing the Pharisees and Sadducees, comes from the Greek word hypokrites, a compound word with the Greek preposition hypo for "under" and krites, meaning "judgment.
The word hypokrites basically means, "one who answers" i. From this it came to mean "pretender," "dissembler. What difference does it make, anyway, what language Jesus and His disciples spoke? The answer becomes clear when we realize that there are churches, sects and cults today which make a great issue over the subject of "holy names. According to them, the word "Adonai" is a name for Baal the sun-god, and so "Lord" is a title for Baal, the sun-god!
It does not seem to matter to them that the Scriptures themselves use this very word repeatedly in reference to the True God of Israel!
They condemn the use of such words, including any and all translations from them, such as "God," "Most High God," etc. Any titles used for pagan gods they forbid to be used of the True God! Of course, the fact that God preserved the entirely of the New Testament in the Greek language seems to give these people "fits. They claim that a vast, overriding "conspiracy" in the first century destroyed all the "missing" Hebrew original documents, and that the New Testament we have today is essentially a forgery -- at least where the names of God are involved!
Proof or evidence of this conspiracy? There is none. Does God Almighty have the power to preserve His name in whatever language He chooses? Of course He does! The fact that Jesus and the apostles all spoke Greek is another nail in the coffin of these "language-worshippers" and conspiracy addicts. We need not worry about ancient conspiracies to destroy the word, or "name" of God. Peter wrote that the word of God "liveth and abideth for ever" I Pet. The word of God, which He inspired to be preserved, is in all essential and crucial respects, inspired and correctly preserved, to all generations.
Wouldn't it seem awfully strange that if God only intended all mankind to use only the Hebrew names of God and the Messiah, that He Himself divided all mankind into many language groups at the tower of Babel? Wouldn't it also seem strange that this same God, who created mankind, and later gave him different languages Gen.
What kind of God would that be? Generations of man have come and gone, and even the Jews say today that they have forgotten exactly how to pronounce the YHVH or Tetragrammaton of the Old Testament name of God!
Others claim "Yahuveh" is more accurate. And on and on the argument goes -- where it will stop, nobody knows! The important thing in God's sight is not whether we pronounce the syllables and consonants of His name in some precise manner directed by heaven.
But rather, whether we love Him with all our heart, mind and soul, and love our neighbor as ourselves. As Jesus Christ said: "For this is the whole law and the prophets. If you would like to study this subject further, then write for our article, A New Look at the Divine Name. And, furthermore, they claim that the names for God in the various languages around the world are all pagan and idolatrous!
To them, only the original Hebrew name is right! What is the truth? Is the name "Jesus" -- Iesou in the Greek language -- derived from the name of the pagan god "Zeus"? Is the Greek name for God -- Theos -- merely another name for "Baal" and pagan in origin?
Is it wrong to use the Greek names for God? These questions cut to the very heart of the controversy over the "divine names" sects and churches who insist that the names of God in all other languages are pagan in origin and blasphemous to use.
Such sects claim that the New Testament itself was originally written in the Hebrew language, and that the Greek manuscripts are frauds -- deliberate attempts by apostates to corrupt the names of God and change the teachings of Christ. Is there any evidence to back up such sensational claims? The choice to use Koine Greek was probably motivated by the desire to spread Christianity in a common and well understood language.
There is also some argument about whether the entire New Testament was written in Greek, as some evidence suggests that portions may have been written in Aramaic or Hebrew and translated later. Many translations have been produced, with scholars referring both to the original Koine Greek text and later translations and commentaries.
The translation of the Bible has not been without controversy. Some people believe that translation changes the meaning of the text, and that true believers should read the Bible in its original language. This is because by as early as AD 50 the vast majority of Christians were Greek-speaking, not Aramaic-speaking.
If one of these books had been written in AD 40, then it is likely that they may have had an original Aramaic version, but this is not the case. It has been argued by scholars that the earliest written book of the New Testament is either Galatians or 1 Thessalonians, around AD Both of these books were definitely written to primarily Greek speakers, so naturally they were in Greek.
Mark may have been written in the 40s, but more likely it was in the 50s, so it is not at all surprising that it was written in Greek. I am not sure what you are looking for with regard to writings when Jesus was alive.
What would you hope to have written? What would you hope for? The spread of the church was sustained by oral tradition for nearly a generation, but as the church spread and grew, the apostles felt some need to write things down. Very likely some people wrote down some things about Jesus during his life, but we have lost more than Two thousand years from now, it is not likely that any of the letters you or I wrote during our lifetimes will still be around.
There is no reason to expect that we would have a contemporary record of what Jesus was doing because this was happening on a relatively small scale in a relatively obscure part of the Roman Empire.
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