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ChristsWords.com The original Greek words and sysmbols |
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Did Christ teach in Greek as well as Aramaic?The articles on this site discuss the differences between the Greek words used in the Bible to express Christ's words and the way these ideas are usually translated into English. This linguistic research is not speculative. I link to all my source material and invite readers to draw their own conclusions about how these words are usually translated outside of the Bible. This article, however, is different. It is highly speculative and based on a feeling coming from many years of studying Christ's words in the Greek. There are those who maintain, perhaps correctly, that Aramaic was the original language of the NT as well as Christ's words. (A lot of good research here.) While, much of this research is interesting and even persuasive, much of it is also difficult to accept. For example, more of the examples of examples citing in this research are taken from the Epistles, written to various Christian communities. Those communities almost all spoke Greek, not Aramaic. It is hard to believe that the those who clearly spoke Greek, such as Paul, would have written to them in Aramaic. Double Meanings and WordplayOne of the most persuasive arguments in terms of source, to me, comes form the discovery of double meanings and wordplay. We can see this in Aramaic translation. For example, in the parable of the mustard seed (Matt 13 31-32) has some great wordplay in Aramaic, "It is smaller ( zearoya, in Aramaic) than all the seeds (zeraona). But when it grows (rabbath) it is greater (rabba) than all the herbs." In Greek, there is no such wordplay: "It is smaller (mikros) than all the seeds (sperma). But when it grows (auxano) it is greater (meizon) than all the herbs." However, a great deal and perhaps the majority of Christ's words in the Gospel have double-meanings in Greek that are lost in English translation. While this could have arisen from the cleverness of the Gospel writers, it seems unlikely because I don't find any plays on words anywhere but in Christ's words in the Gospels, which are written in the most straight-forward style possible. (However, though I haven't studied it, I suspect there is a lot of wordplay in the various Epistles, especially in Paul's.) There are so many double meanings in Greek that are lost in English that my work here in general might be described as uncovering them, but to name a couple that stand out for me. In Mat 18:8 (discussed here), for example, Christ says something that sounds pretty harsh: that you should cut off your arm or leg if it offends you. While that is the literal meaning of the the statement, it is considerably softened in the Greek, where the word for "cutting off" (ekkoptô) also means "to bring to a stop." And the word used for "crippled" (kullos) with a slightly different accent also means "bitter" or "angry." So in Greek alone, we get a less grisly image, one with a double meaning. Instead of just lopping off limbs and becoming a cripple, Christ was also saying that is better to stop a part of your body and feel frustrated about it, than continue doing something that will destroy you. As somewhat simpler example is found in Mat 26:29 (discussed here), where, after he has consecrated the wine as his blood, Christ says that he will not drink "fruit of the vine" until he is in his Father's kingdom. In this verse, the give away to a double meaning is use of gennêma to mean fruit. almost everywhere else in the Gospels, the Greek word used for fruit is karpos. Gennêma means "offspring" rather than "fruit." So this brings in the double meaning "children of the vine" as well as "fruit of vine." These children of the vine are obviously his followers. The second meaning in Greek, that he will be with his followers again only in his Father's kingdom, is a lot more significant than the only meaning in English, which seems trivial that Christ won't be having any more spirits except in heaven. This type of wordplay and double meanings can happen by chance because there is a certain convergence in language. For example, using to the "cutting off" as "stop" example above, we see something similar in English when we ask someone to "cut it out" meaning to "stop it." However, as I said, so many of verses of Christ's words has a deeper and often a double meaning in Greek, it less likely an artifact of chance. As far as these double meanings in Aramaic, I am more impressed when wordplay comes from an existing text, that is, the Greek, than when comes from a translation, that is, the Aramaic. We have no original Aramaic historical sources. This is because wordplay can be constructed by translation. For example, we see all kinds of constructed wordplay in English, (Your kingdom come, you will be done) that does not exist in the original and, for sake of the wordplay changes the meaning slightly. As a translator, I am continuously tempted to create such wordplay, though usually only to capture the sense of play that I find in the original. Did Christ Teach in Greek?First, we must remember that Christ was not raised in Nazareth, Galilee, or Judea. He was raised in Egypt. Egypt was ruled by Greeks since its conquest by Alexander several centuries earlier. Greek was the language of the non-native people of Egypt at the time. More to the point, Alexandria in Egypt was the primary source of the greatest Greek influence on Jewish history and culture. If Christ grew up in Egypt during this period, he not only almost certainly knew Greek, but his boyhood study of Judaism would have been heavily influenced by the Greek language and ideas. This is not to say that the use of Greek by Jews was limited to Egypt. During the Roman era, Greek, not Aramaic and not Latin, was the cultural language of the Jewish people outside of Judea. According to this article by Jona Lendering, the breakdown of language among Jews in Rome was 76% percent Greek, 23% Latin, and only 5% Hebrew (Aramaic). In other words, most Jews in Rome spoke Greek, not Roman. This was likely true of all the Jewish communities of the Roman empire, where Christianity first arose. This is one of the reasons it is unlikely that the letters sent to the Christian communities would have been written in anything except Greek and why the New Testament itself was likely originally written in Greek. From its beginning, Greek was the language of Christianity because it was what the Jews outside of Judea all spoke. So, Jesus almost certainly spoke Greek. Did he teach in it? This has more to do with the makeup of Judea in the time of Christ and who his audiences were. The Bible specifically mentions people coming to him from Decapolis (Mat 4:25) and Christ teaching on the shores of Galilee in Decapolis (Mar 7:31). The Decapolis was the Greek area of Judea. It was a federation of ten Greek cities and the center of Greek/Roman culture as opposed to Semitic culture during this time. The people of this area, like the Jews outside of Judea, spoke Greek. Nazareth is of particular interest. The town called Nazareth today is a small, primarily Arab town, but in Christ's time Nazareth seems to have been the location of an important Roman bathhouse and garrison. As a mason, Joseph and Jesus probably both worked in the nearby palace of Sephori, which had a Greek theater. This may have been one of the reasons that Joseph and Mary, originally from Nazareth, chose to flee Bethlehem to the Greek-speaking Jewish people of Egypt rather than to other Jewish enclaves in the area. The Decapolis of Galilee and the Jews of Alexandria were culturally more Greek than other Jewish communities in the region. So, if Christ was raised learning Greek, lived in a Greek speaking area, and the Bible says that people from Greek cities came to hear him teach, what are the chances that he didn't teach, at least some of the time, in Greek? We might also factor in the fact that Christ was God. As God, he had foreknowledge that the Gospels would be spread in Greek. Knowing this, why wouldn't he speak in Greek, at least some of the time, to make certain that his words were capture in the New Testament accurately. Of course, he could have put the job onto the Holy Spirit to make sure that the Gospel writers did a good job of translation (more of that later), but as the "word' himself, he may well have taken a personal interest the language used. Why else was he put where he was and given the childhood exposure to Greek that he was? This is not to say that he didn't also teach in Aramaic. We know for certain that he did because many of the words in the Gospels such as "satan" and "skandalizo" come from Aramaic, not Greek, sources. They do not appear in Greek until after Christ. The Consistency of the Greek of Christ's WordsThere is final issue here. Christ's Greek words in the Gospels are surprisingly consistent. Ancient Greek has a large vocabulary and flexible structure. Even Koine, or the "common" Greek of the Gospels has a rich vocabulary. It seems likely that, if the Gospel writers were individually translating from the Aramaic, Christ's words would come to us in a variety of flavors. However, they don't. Of course, there is a strong similarity in language in all the Synoptic Gospels, even outside of quoting Christ's words. However, Christ's words, as expressed in Greek, are surprisingly consistent throughout the Gospels, even in John, which is so different from the other three Gospels in most respects. When a verse of Christ's words appears in more than one Gospels, it almost always has the same words and same vocabulary. A verse of Christ's words appears in John and one of the other Gospels more rarely, but when it does, the Greek is essentially the same. There are differences, but surprisingly little for texts that have a completely different histories. Of course, the usually explanation for the similarities among the Synoptic Gospels is that there is a single source for them, either Mark alone or Mark plus the Q document. Interestingly enough, one of the reasons Mark is seen as the source is because he more often quotes Aramaic, which is presumed to be the original language. There is also the idea that there was a separate lost "sayings gospel." Fragments of such a sayings gospel have been found going back to 200 B.C. and may or may not have been the source for the non-biblical Gospel of Thomas. Personally, I prefer the older view of the Augustinian Hypothesis, that is, that Matthew was the original source, but with a twist. When it comes to information, I generally believe those nearer in time and space have better information than those further away. The modern preference for more recent theories comes both from our desire for novelty and our desire to think we are smarter than our forbearers. My twist is I think it is possible that Matthew wrote a "sayings gospel" before writing his Gospel. I have no evidence for this except my study of Christ's words. Matthew was a tax collector. As such, he would have been trained to keep records, much more so than any of the other apostles. Unlike the other apostles, and most people of the time, he would have had ready access to a supply of paper for keeping records. As a tax collector, he would have had to know Greek because that was the language of the local government. Likely all his writing was done in Greek. So even if Christ didn't teach in Greek, he could have done the translation at the time. Though there could have been others in a position to write down Christ's words, Matthew is the only one we know who had both the opportunity, the resources, and, we assume, the motivation. We can add to this the fact that Christ's words have a peculiar "financial" flavor in the original Greek. The secondary meaning of many of the words is financial. For example, the most common word used for "fruit" also means "profit." However, as a trade language, Koine would have a preference for financial meanings. And any Jews who worked with Greek-speakers would share that vocabulary as well. This would less likely for fishermen like Peter and more likely for builder like Jesus. |
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