a better question Why was the New Testament written at all 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okd3hLlvvLw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okd3hLlvvLw
Why was the New Testament written in Greek when Jesus spoke Aramaic?
- Thread starter Medicine*Woman
- Start date
that is very derogatory against fishermen, carpenters, they may have a rustic lifestyle, but that hasn't stopped any through the ages of learning to read & write
both Hebrews & Greeks had schools
you may want to ask your Jewish friends how they prepare for their Bar/Bat Mitzvah
amazingly they have to read Torah passages
Jesus is noted as astounding elders at Jerusalem & reading a Bible passage at Nazareth's synagogue
The Aramaic-speaking churches use the Peshitta Aramaic version
a few links;
http://www.peshitta.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshitta
Prior to Caesar Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus there were individual scripts books that were used by local churches...some consistent with what we know as the New Testament and some not. But it was not until Contantine I that the religion began codifying the religion and establishing the Christian principals that we are familar with today and Greek was the language used by the early church founders.
The books of the New Testament were not written by first hand observers. The were written many years after the death of Christ.
The books of the New Testament were not written by first hand observers. The were written many years after the death of Christ.
M*W:
There had been Aramaic Gospels, but they got lost and only the translations remained. There is not any trace left of those Gospels, and not a single proof of their existence, but you have to trust the word of those guys who wrote the Greek ones because they did not write them on their own but they were filled with the Holy Ghost
I wish he fill me sometime, Sandy, if you read this please pray for me to get filled with the Holy Ghost, I want to know what he feels like...
Where have I heard the bold before..? :\
Pete and others are absolutely right. Greek was the language of educated discourse at the time. Whatever you think about the Gospel stories, etc, the fact that they were originally in Greek rather than Aramaic does not tell against them.
“Why was the New Testament written at all?” Of course, it was “compiled” rather than “written” – and is a selection from among the multiple contradictory tracts that were around at the time. It was part of the competition that they had to be in Greek to be submitted to the editor for consideration!
“Why was the New Testament written at all?” Of course, it was “compiled” rather than “written” – and is a selection from among the multiple contradictory tracts that were around at the time. It was part of the competition that they had to be in Greek to be submitted to the editor for consideration!
It is not unfairly derogatory. A lower class lifestyle certainly has stopped many thru the ages from learning to read & write. More so in that time & place than presently in advanced countries.
In Greece, schools were mainly for the upper class. I strongly suspect it was the same with the Jews.
Asking present day Jews in advanced countries how they do it has little relation to 2000 years ago in the Middle East.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Literacy was extremely uncommon prior to the invention of the technology of printing, for the simple reason that there wasn't very much to read. Chinese, with its logograms, allows literacy to be an incremental process: to this day in remote regions tradesmen can learn to recognize (and even write) the words they need for their business, without being able to read a newspaper.
The Jews were one of very few peoples prior to the modern era who promoted universal literacy (at least for boys) because they wanted everyone (at least boys) to be able to read the Torah and Talmud for themselves rather than taking someone else's word for their contents. This was one of several cultural attitudes that made them so suspiciously different from the Europeans among whom they lived.
Aramaic was not a dialect of Hebrew. Aramaic was the language of Aram which was the people from near present Damascus Syria. The Assyrians based in northern Iraq adopted Aramaic as their language and Aramaic became the language of commerce and government throughout much of the Middle East as the Assyrian empire grew.
Aramaic became just plain the language because languages spoken by large groups of people tend to replace languages spoken by small groups of people.
Greek became the language of the Mediterranean region for much the same reasons why Aramaic became the language of the interior Middle East.
Jesus was from the interior but Europe got it's Christianity from the Greek dominated cultures of the Mediterranean coasts. Note that there are people in Iraq and California who call themselves Assyrians, speak Aramaic at home and are Christians.
Let us not forget that Paul ushered in the hellenization of the religion and making the religion less Jewish and more seperate and distinct from the version originally practiced by Jesus (sabath, circumcision, etc).