Posted by Jonathan on March 03, 1998 at 15:22:50:
In Reply to: Re: Why Muslims are wrong in their beliefs. posted by Mohamed Ghounem on March 03, 1998 at 03:16:14:
: Christian writers try to cover this Grave Defect by saying that in the times of Jesus the language in general use was Greek as you do. This is impossible for more reasons than one.
: Nations do not easily give up their language. It is for them as valuable an inheritance as any property or other possession. In Eastern Europe, there are people who for three or four hundred years have lived under Russian rule, but their languages remain intact to this day.
Fair enough, but don't you acknowledge that many people speak English today alongside their mother tongue because it is the trade language of our day?
: France and Spain have ruled over Morocco and Algeria for a long time. Yet the language of these former subjected people is still Arabic. Two thousand years have passed since the time of Jesus. Yet the Jews have not forgotten their language.
True, but many of the people in both countries speak French and Spanish in addition to Arabic, which is what we claim about Greek in the time of Jesus.
: Even today, in parts of Europe and America, Jews speak "Yiddish", a corrupt form of ancient Hebrew. If this long lapse of time spent amongst other peoples has not destroyed the Jewish language, then Roman rule in Palestine which had begun only about 50 years before the advent of Jesus was not long enough for a people to forget their language.
They had ot forgotten their language, that is not what we say, rather they also may have spoken Greek since that was the common language of commerce.
: But there are other important considerations also to be kept in view:
: 1. Nations which attain to any importance in history do not give up their language, and the Jews were a very important people indeed.
See my point above.
: 2. The religion of the Jews was recorded in Hebrew and for this reason particularly it was impossible for them to give up their language.
We don't say they did, we say they also spoke in Greek for purposes of commerce with Gentiles.
: 3. In the scale of civilization and refinement, the Jews did not regard themselves as inferior to the Romans, rather they felt Superior and this must have made them proud of their language and reluctant to give it up.
Surely you're proud of Arabic, but you still speak english.
: 4. The Jews entertained hopes for the return of their political power; nations which fear the future become pessimistic and therefore tend to lose pride in their language. But the Jews in the time of Jesus were awaiting the advent of their King who was to re-establish Jewish rule. Looking forward to such a future, they could not have been so negligent in protecting their language.
Your arguments don't hit the mark.
: 5. Jewish authors of that time wrote in their own language or in some corrupt form of it. If their language had changed, we should have had books of the time written in a language other than Hebrew.
The authors of the gospels wanted them to be read by the widest cross section of the population. The common language was Greek, since it was spoken by both educated Jews and Gentiles.
: 6. The oldest manuscripts of the New Testament are in Greek. But in the time of Jesus, the Roman Empire had not become divided into two halves. The center of the Empire was still Rome. The Roman and Greek languages are very difficult. If Roman influence had at all penetrated Jewish life, it should have resulted in the assimilation of Latin (and not Greek) words into the Hebrew language. Yet the oldest manuscripts of the Gospels are all in Greek. This proves that the Gospels were written down at a time when the Roman Empire had become divided and its eastern possession had become part of the Greek Empire, so that the Greek language had begun to exert its influence on Christianity and its literature.
You need to read a history book. The Romans spoke to each other in Greek just like the English court used to speak Frech because it was seen as fashionable. The Romans adopted a lot of Greek culture in an attempt to benefit from their civilisation.
There was no Greek empire after the split of the Roman Empire. You're facts are totally wrong.
God bless,
Jonathan