Re: Passion of the Christ, languages

From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 10/07/04 

Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2004 12:23:23 GMT

Yves Euld?de wrote:
>
> Yusuf B Gursey <ybg@TheWorld.com> wrote
> > in the film jews conversed in Aramaic, the Romans in Latin, and Jesus
> > and Pilate conversed in Latin which would quite off since such a
> > conversation would have been in (Koine) Greek which was not depicted
> > at all.
> >
> > I am told the aramaic was based on syriac, not Jewish Palestinian
> > Aramaic. and the latin was quite italian accented.
> >
> > : Is the placement of the three languages agreed upon by linguists and
> > :historians?
> >
> > AFAIK some debate the extent of everyday hebrew usage in 1st. cent.
> > palestine. the Romans normally transacted everyday bussiness in greek
> > in the eastern partof the empire, but occassionally latin is attested.
>
> What is "koine" greek ?

The language spoken by the people, as opposed to the Classical Greek
written by Plato and Aristotle etc.

Koine is the language of the New Testament, and until the discovery in
Egypt 100 or so years ago of everyday Greek papyri using the same
dialect, it was thought to be a special Early Christian form; it wasn't.

> And do you have some bibliographic reference of history books dealing
> with the languages question in 1rst century Palestine ?
> Thanks.

History books aren't the place to look. For a general discussion, you
could check Bible dictionaries under "Languages" or "Greek" and
"Aramaic" (the Anchor Bible Dictionary is currently the major standard
one in English); the standard reference is an article by Joseph Fitzmyer
published in *Catholic Biblical Quarterly* in 1970, which was reprinted
in two of his volumes of collected essays and also I think in various
anthologies. 

-- 
Peter T. Daniels                       grammatim@att.net

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