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Languages of the Bible and their speakers | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5619 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes  Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 1 of 53 12 March 2010 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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[please feel free to move this if it's in the wrong room]
--------------------------------------------------------- Inspired by a thread about Hebrew: What languages were spoken by the key people in the Bible? (If you think the Bible is nonsense or boring, then don't respond!) For example Jesus -- I remember hearing something about "Aramaic" being his mother tongue. Does anyone know, and if so, what's the status of this language today? Early apostles we know; They happily wrote in Greek and... erm.... some other language, but which? Latin, or did that come later? The Old Testament / Jewish Bible is completely in Hebrew, but it was not actually the native language of those Jews, was it? For example, did Moses speak Hebrew or something else? The figures before that are very sketchy and once you get back to Job and Noah a few people begin to question what was really myth or reality (let's not debate that here...) But has anything been said about what their language might have been? What about the Book of Revelation - was that in Greek too? And the story of the Tower of Babylon, what was all that about? How important is it to know Greek, Hebrew etc to really understand the Bible? What about Latin? I know that many seminaries teach these languages, but really, to what degree can you master an ancient and very different language after only 2-3 years of study (not sure how long they study for...) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5162 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 2 of 53 12 March 2010 at 9:46pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
The very existence of Jesus has never been proven, never mind the language he spoke. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5234 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 3 of 53 12 March 2010 at 10:07pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I thought that the existence of Jesus was in fact generally agreed on, but not necessarily that he was the son of God, a prophet or turned water into wine. 17 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5234 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 4 of 53 12 March 2010 at 10:13pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I don't think knowing Latin can be very important in order to understand the Bible, a book written in Hebrew and Greek. It is probably useful if you want to study Christianity and the role the Bible has played in Europe. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5619 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 5 of 53 12 March 2010 at 10:33pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6484 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 53 12 March 2010 at 11:03pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Some parts of the Bible were written in Old Aramaic - "Daniel, Ezra and a few other places in the Hebrew Bible" according to Wikipedia. And later the Bible was translated into a later version of Aramaic. I have been to a Syrian village called Maallula, where I heard the priester speak in Aramaic, but it is gravely endangered.
However the main original language of the Old Testament was Hebrew. This Jewish Bible was translated into Koine Greek by seventy scholars [Septuaginto], and later Hieronymus translated this material with some addition in Greek into Latin (Vulgata), and he added the New Testament which was originally written in Greek, even though some scholars think that the known versions of some parts were based on lost texts in either Hebrew or Aramaic. Edited by Iversen on 12 March 2010 at 11:26pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5705 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 7 of 53 12 March 2010 at 11:04pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I don't think anyone knows what language(s) were spoken by any Biblical characters before Abraham, I think he may have spoken Chaldaic or Sumerian. I think that the main languages of the Bible may have been Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. I thought I heard somewhere that after the Babylonian captivity, the Jews spoke more Aramaic than Hebrew and that by the time of Jesus Aramaic had replaced Hebrew as the language spoken everyday but I'm not certain.
As for studying those languages there may be one advantage; since no one knows how they were pronounced there could less time spent on learning pronunciation and more focus on reading and translation. Edited by mick33 on 23 March 2010 at 6:54pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6484 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 53 12 March 2010 at 11:23pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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If you really want to hear some really old human speech then Africa would be a better place to search than the Middle East, - the Khoisan languages (those with the clicks) are sometimes assumed to be extremely old.
The tale about the tower of Babel may have some historical background in the Ziggurats, which were originally built by the Sumerians, but the idea was later taken up by Akkadians and Babylonians. But there is absolutely no historical foundation for the idea that all people were all speaking one single language in historical times - not even in in present-day Iraq where these civilisations appeared. Even the Sumerians must have known that their neighbours had their own languages, and if they didn't then they would have learnt it when they were concquered by the Akkadians. I can to some degree understand why people want to learn the old Biblical languages (including Gothic) - at least they have some interesting texts to study, whereas those who are interested in other old languages may have to do with scattered fragments. But it must be just as fascinating to study Pali or Sanskrit which also have a large literature. Or Ancient Chinese. Edited by Iversen on 13 March 2010 at 7:32pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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