What language was the Bible written in? New Testament GREEK or ARAMAIC?
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- Опубліковано 4 кві 2024
- What language was the Bible written in? Specifically, what was the original language of the New Testament? While the broad concensus is that it was Greek, some have hypthosized that Syriac/Aramaic was the language of the original text. What do the experts say?
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There is no such language as "Old English". It's called Anglo-Saxon because that's who spoke it the same way French is called French and Greek is called Greek. Your Leftist, historical revisionism is pathetic and utterly predictable. Grow up.
@@KarlKarsnark O, that charity would guide our thoughts and our words!
@@RMCricket103 What language are you typing in right now? "English". For whom is it named? The Angles and Saxon who spoke "Anglo-Saxon". Mind boggling, isn't it?
@KarlKarsnark So, why is there a stage of French known as "Old French"? Why don't they call it "Romano-Gallo-Frankish"? After all, they are the people who spoke it. In any case, Old English has been known as "Old English" for as long as I can remember! And anyway, Old English was not exactly the same as the original Anglo-Saxon germanic that was brought to England; it contained some elements of British Celtic, Latin, and Old Norse. Furthermore, there are other know-alls out there who claim that the Anglo-Saxons were never called the Anglo-Saxons at all!
Luke was a greek from Antioch did not speak hebrew or aramaic and wrote to a greek name person his book called Θεόφιλος
Most Luke Ranieri statement.
"I dont know Syriac, yet"
That can be arranged!
Emphasising the word YET!
The camel vs. rope controversy of Matthew 19:24 and Mark 10:25 could motivate/pull you into learning it.
It was written in God's own language, American English.
or king james' early modern english but *understood* as american english with no research, like 'thou' being honorific
@@aiocafea Well, 'you' being honorific and 'thou' being plain. Respectively cognates of the German 'Sie' and 'du', because we lost the informal pronoun it's use is archaic and archaisms have the feeling of being 'polite' or at least well educated
@@letusplay2296 That's the joke
@@letusplay2296ah yes, sorry i didn't make it clear, but i meant how people can sometimes misinterpret the bible by associating its old vocabulary with solemnity or just interpreting the words of the KJV in a very modern context
Rude. Everyone knows it was written in King James English. 🙄😂
I’m a Christian and I’ve been using the Vulgate to improve my Latin. It’s especially helpful because if you’re a Christian you’re already familiar with many of the passages, so even if you don’t understand every word in the Latin, your mind fills it in intuitively because you already know the story and context
I can attest to this. And if you're not really up to that - I myself got back into it just 6 months or so ago - I can recommend Epitome Historiae Sacrae by Charles Lhomond. Same concept in regards to reading stories you already know, only it's written in easier Latin. I do have a Vulgate Bible, but like I said, I just started a while back. My only exposure I had to Latin before that was in highschool, so I'm taking small steps.
I teach Latin and pray the Breviarium. Give a shout if you have questions;no charge, its a Christian service
@@user-sc5kr6od4u That’s such a kind offer. Right now I’m mainly having trouble finding reading materials that are suited to my level, perhaps you could give me some advice there?
I am using the Legentibus app by Latinitium, and really enjoying it. But sometimes the reading materials in the app seem to jump up a level in a way that is a bit too steep for me.
I started out with Familia Romana, and haven’t started the second book yet although what I can tell from trying the first couple of pages, that would be suited for my current level - just to give you some idea of where I am. I guess that would be considered an upper-beginner level, at least for reading comprehension.
@@sisterthesister4870I'm also using Legentibus. It's such a great app!
Most self-described Christians these days have never read a single passage of the Bible.
It appears to me that there is not yet a video of Luke Ranieri speaking Ancient Greek to modern Greeks, like you have with Ancient Latin to Italians.
I'd love to see that. Maybe in the future! It was quite interesting.
Yes!! Optima magister! Thank you so much for putting the Syriac language (and Aramaic language more broadly) on the map. This sort of exposure is so important for the future longevity of the language. Great job!
you are here dude i love you i just commented about you and told him to check your channel, can you make biblical aramaic and arabic video
Professor you here?
@@abhinavchauhan7864 Salve!
@@ProfessorMichaelWingert 𒊭𒀠𒈠𒆪 𒋗𒇻𒌝𒅗 𒋗𒌒𒊏𒄠
Jesus and 12 apostles never knew Greek and their preach was in Aramaic as the historian agreed. This shows the bible(new testament) was written one to two century after Jesus and the 12 apostles
One question when you ask what the "original language" was is what you mean by "original". The written text of the New Testament was originally in Greek, but much of the text of the Gospels records conversations, sermons, etc. that were almost certainly in Aramaic. The grammar of Mark and Revelation reveals that, whatever language they were written in, the thoughts of the authors were in Aramaic. But for a thought, or a conversation to be written down, it first has to be thought, or spoken. So arguably the original language was Aramaic, even if it was never written down.
“Records conversations” is, at a minimum, overstating the case. Assuming that the authors didn’t make it all up (a big assumption) they were just recalling the general gist of the conversation (probably as reported to them by a third party) and putting the ideas into their own words.
I came here to make the same point. These stories were oral before they were written, and they were communicated in Aramaic before they were communicated in Greek. It also seems likely to me that they circulated orally in Greek before they were written down in Greek, since Paul was active in Greece and Asia Minor and his letters are generally considered to be older than the earliest attested written forms of the gospels. So it's a complicated situation.
@@kenx8176 How do we know they were oral, in any language?
@@robinharwood5044 - Bunkum of the highest order😅( or is that BS😅). It's overstating nothing (not "huge assumption" ; that's a clear display of your own huge prejudice) Overwhelmingly the evidence, as accepted by most scholars regardless of religious belief, is that these were NOT made up later but recorded by witnesses.
@@josephodoherty7864 1. Most scholars I know of have grave doubts about how much was recorded by witnesses.
2. What is the evidence for this?
3. Early Christian writings include a mass of fantasy and forgery. They show that there was little interest in intellectual honesty or truthful reporting. Do we have any reason to suppose that the Gospeleers were any different? (Origen said that the Gospel of John was "spiritual truth" rather than literal truth. In other words, made up.)
Και πάλι η εκπομπή σου είναι εξόχως διαφωτιστική. Ευχαριστώ Λουκά.
Ευχαριστώ!
My native language is Dutch. I studied Sanskrit. There is little material from my language to learn Sanskrit. I have used German textbooks. The New Testament has been translated into good classical Sanskrit. I therefore compared the Dutch Bible with the Sanskrit translation. I learned a lot from that and can now read classical Sanskrit literature in the original language.
Leer ook Arabisch en lees de Koran. Moge Allah je leiden, ameen
@@watluktwel6767Thinking that reading the Qur'an alone will make you a Muslim is pretty naive. My mother has read the Qur'an front to back, and she was shocked. She cannot understand how any sane person can believe in it, and she will never become a Muslim BECAUSE she has read the Qur'an.
Same with any holy book. You need guidance by the believers. Try it yourself: If you read the Bible front to back, the tons of violence will put you off. This is to be a loving God? You won't get it if the believers don't explain it. I've read the Bhagavadgita front to back, but the hostility to the body and the casteism put me off. I, too, lacked a good commentary.
Awesome!
@@watluktwel6767 Read it ironically, making fun of it, because it's a really badly written fairy tale.
Great example for utilizing multilingual versions of the same text. I've always wanted to learn Sanskrit.
Admirable work, Ranieri!
13:00 I've been using the Bible to improve my Chinese for a while now, to great effect! In January, I finally decided to order a physical copy of the Catholic translation from Hong Kong but it still hasn't arrived :(
A few months ago I also started saying the Liturgy of the Hours in Chinese, which has been a great opportunity to polish pronunciation and intonation. And it's all online for free! Christian language learners are really missing out if they don't make use of these resources.
学中文的朋友，你很努力啊！加油！
我所学中文的朋友好。用圣经来学习真好聪明啊！我之前用了圣经来学习怎么读繁体字。
Hen2 hao3
Hm, while I certainly trust the expert consensus here that the texts were originally Greek, I didn't find Mr. Polymathy's supporting argument that a Greek-speaking translator wouldn't produce "errors" in Greek very persuasive. It depends what kinds of errors we're talking about, but there definitely is a phenomenon of texts in translation retaining some grammatical features of the original that don't work, or don't work as well, in the target language. Especially with a text considered sacred, the translator might do things like deliberately preserving the word order from the original even though it's awkward or confusing in the target language, using the same word to translate the same word each time it occurs in the original text even when that isn't the best choice for the context, etc. You can see that all over the place in translations of the Bible itself, for instance the Vulgate and KJV, which preserve various idioms from the Greek and Hebrew into Latin and English that could clue us into the fact that these are translations if we didn't already know. In fact, the phrase "New Testament" itself is an example of this; it's supposed to mean "new covenant" (as in, the Hebrew Bible recorded God's original covenant with the people of Israel, whereas these texts present God's new covenant based on Christ's sacrifice), but "testament" in English and "testamentum" in Latin instead mean "will," as in your "last will and testament." This error occurred because the Greek word διαθήκη can mean either "covenant" or "will," and the Latin "testamentum" was chosen to translate it (wrongly, in that context).
“Wrath, Goddess sing…” is a good example.
Magnificent! Thank you so much Luke.
Χάριτας ῡ̔μῖν οἶδα!
Very interesting! May I ask, will we ever get a video on Medieval Greek? Sadly, there is not a single video on UA-cam about it.
maybe try change the keyword to byzantine greek
@@axellfonzie9067 It's the same thing.
There are some like ua-cam.com/video/K6wvMtS8jPU/v-deo.htmlsi=CQ4nonchbWOpTtiw
But you’re right, it is sparse
I don't give much credence to the Aramaic primacy concept. The poorness of the Greek in Mark is overstated. The poorness of the Greek in Revelation is understated. But even if neither author had "good" Greek, that doesn't mean there was a translation. It just means they were not strong in their Greek, and their native tongues may have influenced how they wrote Greek. I am confident my English influences how I write Ancient Greek (though not as much as my Latin does, oddly enough). But I am fairly well convinced that Jesus and the Apostles not only would have known some Greek simply because of its importance, but that they would have been more familiar with the Septuagint than a Hebrew text. (People will say, oh, Jesus wasn't educated, Peter was a fisherman, etc., but they would still have learned Greek to some extent just like Spanish-speaking manual laborers in modern America learn English.)
But Spanish-speaking manual laborers in modern America live in a country where English is the majority language. Jesus and his followers lived in an area where Aramaic was the majority language - *not* Greek. What you describe applies to the (many!) Jews living _outside_ of Judea ... who are thought to be the ones writing all of the NT.
I'm no bible scholar, but what I've learned listening to them is that you can often look at the language and determine what the original language was by what it says. For example, there is a Jesus quote about the role of the Sabbath, and if you look closely (and know the languages), it would make perfect sense in Aramaic, but it doesn't in Greek because they translated the same word two different ways and then it no longer made sense. On the other hand, there are phrases that only make sense based on the existing Greek (in this case, mis-)translation of the Septuagint, and Jesus would presumably have known that passage in the original (Hebrew or Aramaic). Or there are passages that only made sense in one language or the other, for example, because it includes a play on words that only works in one of them. Based on that, they can be pretty certain that the original language was, indeed, Greek, but some of the quotes assigned to Jesus were indeed translated from Aramaic - and some clearly weren't and thus, presumably, not really quotes from Jesus.
@@KaiHenningsen Or.... Jesus knew some Greek as well but primarily spoke Aramaic. There were Greek speaking parts of Palestine at the time. Jesus had a job that would have brought him into contact with people that likely knew and used Greek.
@@KaiHenningsenExamples or references to scholarly work would really help a lot here
@@andrelegeant88one time he went to the decapolis to preach
Jesus spoke with Pikate most likely in Greek.
There were many gentile areas in Galilee where a carpenter would have to interact with his clients in Greek.
The discussion with Nicodemus seems to have been in Greek as some word plays only work in Greek and even the Nicodemus name seems to be of a Hellenized Jew.
The New Testament in Coptic (both Bohairic and Sahidic) really helped me become fluent at reading the language, especially when combined with speaking aloud. Somehow it has a nice mix of repeating itself in some ways and having enough variety to push your ability.
What else did you use for learning Coptic and which pronunciation do you use?,
@@polyglossia3671
Hi,
I used Lambdin's "Introduction to Sahidic Coptic", Allen's "Coptic: A Grammar of its six major dialects" and the Polis Institute's "Ⲟⲩⲁⲓ, Ⲥ̀ⲛⲁⲩ, Ϣⲟⲙⲧ!", which Luke reads on his other channel. The 2nd edition of Ⲟⲩⲁⲓ, Ⲥ̀ⲛⲁⲩ, Ϣⲟⲙⲧ! is a good bit better than the first in my opinion.
For pronunciation I've a good handle on Sahidic and Bohairic, but I default to Sahidic. There are some subtle questions around the phonology, so I'd be willing to update my pronunciation in light of more knowledge.
I'd recommend the intro of Allen's dialect book and his "Egyptian Phonology" for a detailed look at the phonology. The latter is very good for all stages of Egyptian actually.
It is also helpful if you can find a Coptc language liturgy to attend (most tend to be in Arabic and English these days), as the hymns make memorizing the language easier.
@@DarranUaM I'd really like to become conversational in Coptic and when I asked ALI about it, they said they plan on adding it, but it'll almost certainly be after they've added Syriac. Is there more advise/resources you can give on becoming conversational in Coptic?
At seminary (now 30 years past) I learned Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, with a "drive-by" attempt at Aramaic. I already knew English and German, plus some of my grandmother's Norwegian dialect. I have worked with people who knows Syriac. What you presented was the consensus that I learned. The early date of P52 and other papyri fragments, which are in Greek, attests to the earliness of the Greek NT. The Peshitta is older as an OT translation, but by at most 300 years. So it looks like the activity of translating the biblical sources into Syriac was ongoing, since the Syriac NT started to be translated in the second century AD through the 5th, and P52 appears in the third. John tends to refer to the Lord in the nominative case because there was a bias among Aramaic speakers not to manipulate the divine name. So what I learned agrees with what you said. Also, in producing maps for The Lutheran Study Bible and The Apocrypha: The Lutheran Edition with Notes, I learned about the intrinsic role of Jewish trade routes in early Christian mission. So it would appear that the common language of trade was a primary decision to be as well-positioned as possible when using the trade routes to spread the Gospel.
This is a very intelligent and well conveyed perspective on this; I appreciate it.
This hypothesis gets beat up pretty bad by some academic articles. Mark also has some latin idioms too. But these texts are written for greeks (many who are Hellenized Jews) living in Asia Minor, Egypt, etc. The explosion of Christianity in the late 1st/early 2nd century happens in greek cities and rejected by hebrew/aramaic speaking jews who begin a new rabbinic form of Judaism. Christianity is heavily influenced by Middle Platonist philosophy and the places that Paul and John are writing to are all greek speaking cities. Even the early Syrian Christians like Simon Magus, are writing in greek, and we know his native toungue was aramaic, so that could show that these people are eastern but still writing for greek audience. For this to be true, we would need to see more aramaic speaking cities dominating the early Christian scene.
Well for the most part, it was written in Greek. However, all of our 2nd century sources that talk about the gospels and where they come from say some part of the gospel of Matthew was written in the “tongue/dialect/language of the hebrews,” and later translated to Greek (which is where the similar parts from Mark would come from). But other than that, the only language it’s ever been is Greek.
Incorrect. Only Pappias says this, and it quite unclear what he means in context. Some, myself included, only take him to mean that Matthew wrote in the Hebrew *style*, i.e. he emphasized the Hebrew aspects of the gospel story.
@@philagon Irenaeus also mentions it. “Matthew issued a written gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect” (Adversus Haereses, 3:1).
The tiny Papias quote about Matthew says that he either transcribed (συνεγράψατο) or according to other manuscripts compiled (συνετάξατο) oracles/sayings (τα λόγια) in Hebrew dialect (εβραΐδη διάλεκτο). That sounds like the "Q" material which Matthew added to Mark; "transcribed" would imply that he copied the original Aramaic, but "compiled" admits the possibility that the Aramaic text was just his source. [EDIT: The quotation does continue with a comment that others interpreted what Matthew wrote, but it seems to mean interpreted in the hermeneutic sense (given that the actual word used is ἡρμήνευσε) rather than the translation sense]
@@philagon By that standard I could equally say that Edward Gibbon wrote in Latin. It's just not what the words mean.
Either Papias was simply wrong, or Matthew wrote in Hebrew (or Aramaic). How much Matthew's writings have to do with the Gospel of Matthew that we have is a reasonable question.
@@philagonPappias doesn't questions that John gospel was written in Greek nor he put any doubt! Even if two John were two persons with name: John.
So, you try to prove what?
After all, Markos is not a Jewish name..
Lukas the same!
Only Mathew has some Jewish parfum!😁
Even Paul had Greek education abd spoke in Greek when he came in Greece!!
You try to prove that the whole Planet is Jewish??
IT ISN'T😁
The style of the KJV was actually archaizing even for its day.
And intentionally so.
The "-eth" ending on verbs was going out of use in the normal language of the day, for example but the KJV held on to it as an archaism.
Much of the translation was also older than the KJV. It was reused from an earlier translation.
Indeed. It was partly because English was undergoing many changes, so the translators. I'll give some examples:
- "Ye" (subject form of "you") was already going out of fashion
- "Thou" was kept, always being singular, to make specific if someone was talking to one or many people
- "Its" was avoided. The King James used "thereof" or even "his"
Perhaps the translators wanted not to favor any variety of English, as many of the new changes weren't countrywide.
I have read the NT in the original Greek almost 5 times, and I just started reading through the whole Septuagint. And I got to thinking: outside of the Byzantine Suda (which is an encyclopedia) is there any other surviving body of literature that is larger in size than the Septuagint? I know Josephus' antiquities is large but I still think the Septuagint is a bit larger. That would be cool to say that you have read the largest body of ancient Greek literature.
As far as I've been told, the Bible was orignally transmitted in AASL.
AASL as in Ancient Albanian Sign Language? That is a good one! 😂
👏 🦅 👏👏🦅👏🦅👏🦅👏👏🦅 🦅🦅👏👏🦅👏👏👏🦅👏👏👏👏👏🦅🦅👏👏👏🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅
I'm pretty sure it was in Finnish Braille for the blind men Jesus didn't heal in time
Yeah, lol. But AASL was mainly used in the kingdom of Albania between 1272 and 1368. But still funny.
Great film. Thank you.
I recently heard a claim that when attempting to "back-translate" the Synoptic Gospels into Hebrew, Luke was most amenable, while Mark was actually least easily translated, with Matthew being a patchwork.
This is interesting, as some early Church sources claim that Matthew was originally written in Hebrew (which is sometimes used as a referent to Aramaïc).
There is literally no chance that Luke/Acts was written in something other than Greek.
@@jimfoye1055that is true only of the prologue . See Carmignac’s research if you can find it in a library system (French scholar out of print in English)
Before beginning a masters in Syriac, I was told to read the Gospels or Psalms and use the King James to help if I ran into trouble. Much more practical than pulling out a large Syriac-English dictionary on the trains. Considering the extant Syriac literature, this method was good for vocab and grammar.
Your videos surely bring a lot of joy to a viewer like me :) Multas gratias ago!
Et tibi referō grātiās!
A number of years ago I began reading the Bible in Chinese in order to improve my reading ability in Chinese. Given that I have read the Bible in my native English since I was fairly young, I reasoned that my familiarity with the text in English would help in me in trying to read it in Chinese. And it worked! Consequently, I would strongly agree with Luke that this is one of the best ways to improve one's reading ability in a second language. Incidentally, I started trying to read the New Testament in the original Greek about a year ago, and although my progress has been sometimes a little slow, I do believe I am making some progress. I started off with short books with relatively uncomplicated vocabulary, like the Epistles of 2 John and 3 John, and found that helped.
Hello . I'm English.
I read the bible in Italian, and it has improved my pronunciation and fluency immensely.
i was really happy when i heard you mention using bible translations to help with language learning bc that's usually exactly what i do when i learn a new language. i have the first chapter or so of mark almost memorized, and so once i get a basic handle of the grammar i usually just try to start there and see how far i get. i find it works really well for me, and it gives me some insight into which areas of the language i should give more intense focus to. i am a christian personally, but i agree that you don't need to be religious for it to be useful, especially if you come from a background where the basic stories and some quotations are familiar to you.
What a beautiful voice!!! ❤
Thanks for the video!
Yes, indeed, my favorite approach has been to use Sacred Scripture or a missal in my target language to improve. My Swahili missal from Kenya is my constant companion on Sundays. One key benefit is that is forces me to slow down when reading otherwise familiar passages, and this promotes a certain devotional focus. The other benefit is that is presents familiar truths in a fresh, and often moving, way for this believer. A highly recommended practice.
The priest at my parish gifted me a Missal in Latin / French. I just started using it last Easter. I'm intermediate level in French.
Eugene E Nida has written a wonderful book "Towards a science of translating" which thoroughly addresses the topic of bible translation out of the original language. He addresses the fact that since the conception of the letters of the new testament, there has been great debate in the church on whether or not to translate from one language to another more syntactically or more 'meaningfully'. Many earlier Latin translations of the NT were criticized for not following the Greek as closely as possible in regards to things such as word order and idioms even if it wouldn't make total sense in the final translation. Throughout the times it seems that the populous/the church seems to favor one over the other. Many newer English translations of the bible still fall on this very polarizing scale, with some like the NLT trying to preserve the meaning while still writing in casual, somewhat colloquial English, and others like the NASB designed specifically to adhere as close as possible to the original Greek and Hebrew. There is a lot of debate on whether or not John the apostle wrote Revelation or not with a large part of the argument lying in the contrasting styles. In my opinion, it would make a great deal of sense for Revelation to be written by John the Apostle in Aramaic to then be translated in a very literal manner into Greek by a scribe or member of the church.
Great discussion, thank you!
The history of the bible’s translations can be a deep dive. Its what even got me into learning about translation itself-literal vs dynamic and all that: People struggling over the years to preserve both meaning and structure in not only the bible but all kinds of literature
It was written in Uzbek, of course
Just like the meme: "Write google the mightiest nation. There will be Uzbek."
Greek, at least the version that we recognize today as the Bible.
Hi Luke, would you ever do a video on the Mediterranean Lingua France aka Sabir? There are very few videos on youtube that discuss it, and I think it would be a great topic to cover with your expertise
There's a prof at my college who believes in Matthaean priority, and that Matthew wrote in Hebrew. He connects this on a really interesting analysis of Matthew which shows parallels with the Hexateuch (Pentateuch plus Joshua)
That's definitely a minority opinion among scholars....
It definitely was not Hebrew. There was a Jewish-Christian "Gospel of the Nazoraeans" used by a sect in Syria that followed the Law of Moses (thus, not Catholic), that is described by ancient writers as having been written in "Hebrew letters" meaning it was in Aramaic but written in square letters and not in the Syriac alphabet.
There are multiple church fathers, who reference the existence of a Hebrew version of Matthew and Jerome went as far as to state he has seen it, so I like to believe that Matthew wrote one to two versions, the first one in Hebrew, then translate in Greek, or a Hebrew version and a Greek version
@@justsomeguywithoutamustach3rdIt’s just as possible for it to have gone the other way around as well, a Greek text being given an early translation for a Hebrew audience.
@@ghost-user559 it would make less sense, however, because Matthew’s gospel is the most Jewish of the gospels, and was specifically written for Jews as a warning to Jews, specifically before the destruction of the second temple, so having the Greek first would make less sense, in the context of the audience for Matthew’s gospels.
Hello Luke from one of your former students near Yokota Air Base. You look good.
Greek, no doubt in my mind. That said, it is fascinating to see the stylistic differences between the apostolic writings, as a result of their influences, linguistic or otherwise. Luke is a great example: in his prologue (Luke 1:1-4) he writes in a very classical style, but the rest of his Gospel is much more indebted to the style of the Septuagint translation. His is the most difficult of the four Gospels to read, for that and other reasons. Thanks for the video.
P. S. I was wondering why I hadn't seen any videos from either of your channels lately, but I checked today and it seems that many of them evaded my notifications. I have it set to "All", so I don't know what would cause this. Perhaps others have had the same problem.
@polyMATHY_Luke when will u make a video about old greek letters such as digamma koppa san or sampi?
Great video as always Luke, but I do have to quibble with one point: I think many people misunderstand (and perhaps misinterpret) Revelations because it has a very strong lyrical quality, as many ancient writings happen to have. (Consider Shakespeare, Chaucer or Beowulf in English.) Now all of the New Testament has some lyrical quality, and I feel most translators ignore this, yet Revelations is perhaps the most poetic. Interesting that you mention the Gospel of John being very good Greek but remember the same writer composes Revelations. (btw I do agree that Mark, on the other hand, struggles with his Greek.)
The Greek of Revelation is terrible, but the thing is, it's not terrible in a way that looks like the author doesn't know Greek. It's not simplistic. It's done that way to bring the reader into the supernatural, mystical, and unreal nature of the text.
John (whether he is the same person as the apostle or not) is an exceptional writer.
Interesting video Mr Ranieri! It sparks a question: What clues can help you tell the difference between a later translation of a text, and a text that is simply put down in a second language the first time? (Ευχαριστώ and keep up the nice videos, I like your stuff ☕)
BTW have you done a video on Elvish and Finnish??
Hmm, i cant wait to try out one (probably two) of these ALI courses. But i have to wait untill probably next spring or maybe winter season.
Excellent video! I'd like to add that we have an extremely good idea how the Syriac gospel developed, and that the Aramaic tradition has a tendency to avoid literal Translations in favor of what "flows best" in the language. The oldest Aramaic gospel text we have any evidence of (and the oldest to see widespread use at any rate) is the Diatessaron of Tatian, a Harmonic gospel written in Mesopotamia in the early second century if memory serves, when St Ephraim wrote his commentary on the gospel this was the text he used. A little later separate Translations of the individual gospels begin appearing but they still deliberately emulate the style of the Diatessaron over the Greek. Then there's an ongoing process of actively revising the text to be as close to the Greek as possible while flowing naturally in the language which culminates in the Mapaqta Peshitta, which we have attestation of thanks to the Sinai and Cureton manuscripts. There is the other issue that Syriac was if memory serves not yet a major prestige dialect at the time of Christ (I believe that it's status as the single literary standard isn't cemented until the second century but feel free to correct me) and there's no reason it'd be written in that over some form of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic or Greek, with Greek being the most likely candidate because it's a fairly widespread and standardized literary form.
I don't know nearly as much Gutiska as I'd like, but being able to compare that version to English versions helps.
I don't think that some parts of the language of the New Testament is 'bad' Greek; Koine is just an early form of Modern Common Greek. So it's Modern Greek emerging compared to Attic Greek that give the impression of language misuse. Every Greek who went to school in Greece can easily understand the language of the New Testament; more so than some of the dialects, such as Cypriot and Pontic.
After LLPSI, I used the Vulgate (mainly Genesis) to learn how to read Latin. But you’ve not experienced the Bible until you’ve read it in the original Klingon.
Luke, I have something to ask (which is related to Latin, though)
I often pronounce [Vt V] as [Vd V]
e.g. et altō > edaltō
How can I fix such voicing?
Could you please recommend me a software for translating Latin? I can’t find the right translation App. Thanks.
hei luke i like your channel you are amazing you inspired me to study ancient languages and history, when you said "i dont know syriac yet" i almost died of shock because i want to learn syriac after im finished with ancient greek, i would love to see you speak syriac also there is a question in my mind where did all the scientific syriac manuscripts go i couldnt find any, thus there is in hebrew,arabic,latin and greek where did they go could you make video about it if its possible. pls respond i am a huge fan
Tons of manuscripts. What are you looking for?
Gracias por el video! Soy cristiano y usaba la Biblia para ayudarme aprender español de inglés con una Biblia bilingüe. Lo gracioso es que empecé con una traducción que usa lenguaje muy formal y antigua y cuando tenté hablar así con la gente resultó muy confuso 🤣😂
Eu usei também a Biblia para aprender português
Native Spanish speaker, and English Speaker as a second language here. I'm not religious, but I used to be, and having access to the Bible both in Spanish and English was a huge help for me. So, if you're a believer, more power to you, you have a great tool to learn your target language. And if you're not a believer, as I became with the years, do keep in mind that the Bible translation is usually one of the foundational moments in many modern languages; think of Luther's German Translation, King's James English Translation, or Reina-Valera Spanish translation; very important texts in their languages from a secular point of view.
Yes, because of that, some of the Asian language translations are quite wack from a modern speaker's perspective. For example, even though there are fine translations in the normal Korean language, somehow many protestant chuches in Korea use the century-old version as it is widely known. The translation is probably from the late 19th century. So, Korea back then was a premodern country where the vast majority has almost zero knowledge of western goods, culture, and even produces sincd many fruits and food from the bible are mediterranean that weren't just there in Korea. Also, the Korean language has gone through a huuuuge change during modern times. New concepts and words, translated into Chinese characters by the Japanese, infiltrated so deeply into the Korean language during and after the colonial era under the Japanese empire. The grammars, the tones, the vocabulary are all different and there are some funny localization of certain things. Bread becoming rice cake, Pistacchio to torreya, olive to Chinese olive(canarium album), crown of thorns to Chinese imperial crown of thorns(western crown was unknown to the public), and they put Koine pronunciation for the names. At the end of the day, it's totally a different language from modern Korean. And this applies to the Japanese one even though current Japanese chiristians use the updated translation.
Understanding multiple Romance languages and Greek will be very important once they learn and understand scripture that may scare or disappoint them horribly and very soon Luke, thank you 🙏
Love reporting from ukraine! Even with his English grammar competency everything is extremely concise and there's no down time. Straight to the point. Interesting to see the comparison of communicating the bible in greek to communicating journalism in english
Unfortunately for the Russians :)
I haven't done much side by side reading, but as a student of Celtic languages I know that we have a relatively small corpus of texts in Cornish, so the reconstruction of the language very much relies on ecclesiastical texts. The only problem is that these texts may have been written in a different register from the spoken language and we don't really have any way of working that out in the case of Cornish because the language unfortunately died.
Luke, I think you are right. Many Catholic Children go to Catholic Schools, through HS, and they take Latin, but they do not teach it via the Churches own prayers. If they taught the Mass in Latin and all of the prayers in Latin, I think our kids would be teaching us parents when they came home at night and it would be incredibly fulfilling. IMO, biggest missed opportunity in Catholic Schools. Totally structure it around the Church and watch what happens.
I would like a future video either on the Pre-Greek substrate or how were Τ, Δ, Θ's pronounced (dental or alveolar ?).
Rylands Library Papyrus P52, also known as the St John's fragment is the earliest Gospel writing we have, written around 100 - 175 CE. Earlier to this it has been proposed that any dissemination was probably verbal - 'sayings of Jesus' in both Aramaic & Greek which were later written down.
Very cool. Sounds like Lukie is going to learn The Targums - Aramaic Bible.
Hello, Luke! Sorry for the offtopic qustion but I wasn't able to think of a better place to ask it :D I wonder what form of the past perfect participle should be used,for example,if one wants to tell about a mixed group of people in passive Perfectum.As far as I know,there are two forms of the past perfect participle in the plural(e.g. laudati for the masculine and laudatae for the feminine).And if a member of a group consisting of both men and women want to say:we were praised,should they say laudati sumus or what? P.S. Thanks a lof for what you do!
Hope you get an answer from Luke! In the meantime, as a native speaker of Romanian, what we do in such a case is to use the masculine plural. Pretty sure it would be the same in Latin.
Whithout doubt the masculine form, so-called generic masculine.
Such soothing and captivating voice...
Thanks God, you're not a sales person 🎉
Greetings from Havana, Cuba. Can you do a reading of Old Spanish or Castilian as you are an expert in Old Latin, from El Cid Campeador, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar? Love your channel.
Luke if you read French you can likely get hold of Jean Carmignac’s work. And that could help you quite a bit . You can find the English translation of his first work on this but it is expensive because it is out of print with few used copies
Well done video! This is a topic that has interested me for years and you’re right the vast majority of the evidence shows that Greek was the original language. I still want to learn Syriac at some point though regardless, but probably after the 200 years it will take me to perfect my Greek and Latin first 😂 I definitely need to purchase your new recordings of John! ❤
During my undergraduate days at UF in Gainesville, Florida, I'd attend the 5:30 p.m. daily Mass. The library at the Catholic Student center had the collection of the late Archbishop Hurley, (died in 1968) sometime bishop of the diocese of St. Augustine. In his library was (among other items) a copy of the Bible in Latin, but its New Testament (edition of Augustin Merk, S.J.) had the Greek en face. I often grabbed it and followed the Gospel in either the Greek original or the Vulgate. If the first reading was from the New Testament, I followed it that way as well (even though the reading was by then being done in English). My paternal grandmother had bought a copy of Luther's New Testament and Psalms when she was courting my paternal grandfather, for whom German or a dialect variant was his first language. Dad had a Missal with the Ordinary of the Mass in Latin and Spanish and propers (i.e., parts assigned to a particular day) for all the Sundays and certain feasts in Spanish.
thanks for all the details. love the parentheses.
Thankyou for yet another interesting video. I studied philosophy and theology at a pontifical univesity in Roma in the 1970s. We were taught - and this is still Catholic teaching - that the koine greek manuscript text of the New Testament is the only divinely inspired text. As then, it is still the accepted view amongst Catholuc scholars, that all the books of the New Testament were composed in Greek, with the possible exception of Saint Matthews Gospel, which, according to the early christian writer Papias, was first written in the "hebrew tongue" (actually, aramaic) and then redacted in Greek (perhaps by a secretary) as the end-version for divulgation. But this is a possibility only. St. Matthews Gospel was definitely addressed to jewish christians, makes many references to jewish customs, events and places, and contains aramaic terms, whereas the other three Gospels do not. There is even a curious ancient hypothesis, that a first draft of St. Marks Gospel might have been compised in Latin, due to its geater amount of Latin terminology. For the rest of the NT books there is no such hypothesis thst I know of. Certainly the Gospels of St. Luke & St. John, as well as the Epistles, are written in an elegant greek style. I do not know what the greek style of the Apocalyose is considered to be, but I have never heard of an original, or first draft, in aramaic. Nota bwne, that the NT authors, when quoting the Old Testament, in most cases quote the greek Septuaginta.
they say that a text was divinely inspired in universities?
How would you recommend one begin studying Ancient Greek on their own?
Mark used some old compilations of the sayings of Jesus, its possible that this compilations were in Aramaic, the idiomatic marks of Aramaic can come from that.
Not a Bible scholar here but in addition to the good point you make, one has to notice the glosses appearing in many spots, like the (announced, explicit) translation of _Golgotha,_ or of _Eli Eli Lama Sabachtani_ - these would not make sense if the text had just been translated.
I've bought your Gospel of John in Greek, Latin and English and it's very useful for learning the ancient languages, at which I'm very much a beginner. I can see, though, how closely the King James English follows the Greek.
i was always buffled when my fellow conlangers used as gold standard to translate biblical texts into their conlangs. i see the certain appeal of genesis 11:8-9 but otherwise religious text are quite, how to pose it, difficult semantically. thus, the tales of aisópos i found always better to the job and would seek their help when learning other languages.
Great topic! I myself got into a debate with someone on Telegram about this. Needless to say, it went nowhere even after I conceded to try to be more open minded about it because he never provided the solid evidence I asked him to give me about this that supports Aramaic primacy, which is very telling. At this point, I feel it's almost wishful thinking on the part of those who are so in favor of Aramaic primacy. That said, your reason for lightly questioning this idea is all that needs to be said about this topic. They were writing in less than ideal Koine Greek to reach their wide audience, therefore it makes zero sense for them to first have written all the gospels in Aramaic and only then still translate it into "bad" Greek. In addition, do Peshitta primacists not realize that the Syriac translation is from the 4th or 5th century AD rather than from the time of Christ?
I am a bit like Luke and I took the same journey on learning several languages, apart from my native Brazilian Portuguese (English, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Hebrew, Latin and Greek in my case). I happen to be a practicing Catholic and I really love reading scripture and I can surely affirm that reading translations of the Bible is indeed helpfull for learning a new language, because you already have the narrative vivid in your mind, hence the context itself makes you internalize new words and expressions (given you know some grammar and basic vocabulary, for sure. The Bible is not am easy read at all). As for the Peshitta being the original NT, I really don't think so... Firstly because the Aramaic speakers of Jerusalem could tell really well that Peter sounded like Galilean, and the Peshitta is in Classical Syriac, not Galilean. Secondly, though there sure is some semitiveness in some expressions of the NT Koine, the text we have really does not seem to be a translation, but something originally composed in Greek, by competent Greek speakers. Many jewish writers of that era were using the Greek language and even on Talmudic literature contemporary to that time you find a plenty of greek words amidst the Aramaic and the Hebrew. I have a personal impression that the apostles themselves had a person native to Greek writting down as they were reciting.
I didn't use the Bible for learning another languague, but I used to study language change, very interesting to see verb conjugations and such fall out of use over time.
Regarding your point about grammar and translation from Aramaic into Greek, some Old English texts translated from Latin have highly idiomatic grammar that is (often taken to be) Old English speakers aping Latin grammar.
It might not be for everyone, but even though English is not a first language of mine, I do love my Nestle-Marshall interlinear Greek-English NT and use it a lot when working with the bible, which in my field of study I do quite often.
Greek was not only the official language of the Eastern empire but is was also a liturgical language of the Jews.
The Torah was stabilized by the translation done by 70 rabbis of Alexandria for the Great Library at the request of the (Greek) Pharaoh Ptolemeos II.
Many Jews were Hellenised after Alexander the Great freed Jerusalem for the Persian Empire even if there was an internal friction among Jews about that.
The hellenization of the Jewish religion is evident in its vocabulary: Synagogue is a Greek word.
In John 12:20-50 we learn that Jesus announced the hour of glory had come when Philip and Andrew informed him that some Greeks asked to see him.
John explains that Phillip was from Bethsaida in Galilee as well as Andrew and Peter. In the 32AD context it means "they all spoke Greek" since Bethsaida was became a polis that year and took the name Julia after the emperor's wife.
Philip and Andrew ate Greek names, implying they were both from Hellenized Jewish families.
Jesus answered by the parable of the sower, implying that those Greeks were the good soil he was waiting for.
So everything points towards direct writing Greek of the evangelists. Also the letters of the apostles to the populations of Antioch, Athens, Corinth, Rome, the Greek polis of Asia minor, Alexandria etc.. were most certainly written in Greek because it was the language of the people living there.
Of course among early Christians were non greek speakersas well.That's wh Thet "spoke tongs" after the pentacost.
As an atheist who's interested in the Bible (esp. NT) from a historical/cultural perspective, I occasionally enjoy reading some of it in Latin. I must say that I've been surprised by how relatively easy it's been compared to, say, Cicero. I can read entire stretches without using my dictionary (admittedly, the fact that I already know the story helps quite a bit). I'm not quite good enough to fluently read it in Ancient Greek though, but sometimes when I find a passage that I want to analyze more in-depth I give it a go. I try to do it using my old Ancient Greek dictionary from high school, but I must confess that I often fall back on using BibleHub, which has a pretty well done word-for-word grammatical analysis and translation of the original into English.
You raise very interesting questions!
First of all, I full-heartedly agree that knowing the bible or at least the most important parts in one's foreign languages is important because a lot of common idioms and proverbs that we do not even realize anymore are from the bible were actually coined by the first bible translators - at least in my main languages, German, French, Italian, and English.
Secondly, Luke, I am aware that you are also very interested, and well-versed, in musicology. And the translations of the names of antique musical instruments used in the bible are a fascinating rabbit hole in itself.
Take this bible verse: "in momento, in ictu oculi, in novissima tuba: canet enim tuba, et mortui resurgent incorrupti, et nos immutabimur." Clearly, the vulgata does not refer to a modern "tuba" because that quite modern instrument did not exist back then - nor would it have existed at the times of the King James Bible or Luther's German bible translation. Now, interestingly, the Roman "tuba" became a "trombone" ("Posaune") in the German bible translations and a "trumpet" in the English bible translations - both equally valid translations because we really don't know what an ancient tuba sounded like. And, boy, did this make a difference not only in how this bible verse was set to music by composers, but also in the extra-musical connotations of the trumpet and the trombone, even when used in purely orchestral, secular works.
I know I am now walking into a musicological minefield because I am comparing a baroque to a romantic work, but still, if you look at how this verse was interpreted musically in Händel's Messiah ("And the trumpet shall sound" plus preceding recitative) as opposed to Brahms's German Requiem (movement 6, "Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt"), I would argue that Händel's interpretation would be much less "cheerful" if the English translation mentioned a "trombone" instead of the bright "trumpet" and that Brahms's interpretation of this verse hinges a lot on the ominous, dark sound of the trombone.
The Greek is σαλπιγξ (σαλπιγγι in that verse). But is that in Hebrew a chatzotzrah (made of metal) or a shofar (made of a horn)?
One of the instruments mentioned in Daniel, used to play the music at which everyone was ordered to bow down, is the sumponyah, borrowed from Greek συμφωνια from which we get "symphony". This is translated into Spanish as "zampoña" and Italian as "zampogna", both of which descend from that word, but one is a panflute and the other a bagpipe. What, then, was the sumponyah?
@@pierreabbat6157 Thanks for this additional information - since I do not know Greek, Aramaic, or Hebrew, I was wondering about this exactly.
When it comes to the Latin term "tuba", I remember reading an article about what it might have been quite a while ago, and the article argued it had not really been an "instrument" by today's musical standards, but just a tool to make a lot of noise or to give an acoustic signal, be it in battle or at festivities. Think the kind of vuvuzelas or noise-makers that might be used by the public at modern football/soccer games.
That being said, the really interesting question you raise is whether the original text might even refer to an instrument made of horn. Because to my knowledge, the one thing that the Roman "tuba" and the late-medieval/renaissance/baroque European "trumpet" and "trombone" have in common is that they are all made of metal rather than horn.
I don't know about you, but I could totally envisage a very interesting polýMATHY video about this whole can of worms - which I would be very much looking forward to (hint!) ...
@@pierreabbat6157 The Aramaic word in that verse (1 Corinthians 15:52) literally means _“horn“_ : «ܒ݁ܩܰܪܢܳܐ» (bəqarnā)/ «בּקַרנָא» in square letters, a form from the lexeme «ܩܰܪܢܳܐ» (qarnā)/ «קַרְנָא» ; originally meaning _horn_ in the primitive sense of an animal's horn; also could mean _corner, angle_ ; the _Lexicon Syriacum_ lists Latin _cornu_ as the primary translation of the Syriac; second definition _vas forma cornus_ ; only in the 3rd definition is there listed _tuba, buccina (σάλπιγξ)_ citing another NT verse (1 Thessalonians 4:15) which uses those same words in all 3 languages (Greek NT, Syriac Peshitta, Latin Vulgate).
My reply is that we can't be sure.
The most educated author in NT was Luke, who was a medic and had a good command of Greek. All other authors were Jews, who knew Greek to a degree, but their thinking wasn't Greek. Greek words, but not Greek mind, Greek thinking. Perhaps there was a core text in non-Greek, but we can't be sure.
By the way, it is interesting to mention that the text we call New Testament now, was decided later. Some texts that were part of early Christian tradition were cut from various reasons and didn't became part of New Testament. They are usually called Apocrypha.
It is interesting to search who decided which book can be part of NT and which can not or must not be part of NT. And why.
Finally to your last question. When I started learning Japanese, I bought a Japanese Bible. It was really helpful because all text had Furigana. Japanese texts without Furigana requires a good command of Kanji which takes years of study to master to a sufficient level. By the way there are many Japanese translations of the Bible. All of them are unique, but the most interesting is the Orthodox one, which has a very archaic feeling.
Other than the Bible, another frequently translated book is the Elements of Euclid. I suggest it to people who are not interested in religion. A must read for all fans of Geometry.
Many thanks, Luke. I find, however, that the Greek of various parts of the Bible is very different in style an grammatical complexity. Not only in the new testament (compare the Gospel of St. John with the letter to the Hebrews!) but also in the Septuaginta. I am currently reading Mακκαβαíων B' and find it incredible hard! Weird constructions an an extravagant vocabulary. Did you have a similar experience?
I'm a native English speaker who became fluent in Spanish from living in South America for a few years. Learning a second language showed me that language itself is a layer or "shell" that we use to communicate ideas, and knowing multiple languages is like having multiple flashlights to cast on an object or location from different angles.
So whenever people ask, "What's the point of learning an ancient language that no one speaks anymore?" the purpose is not so much to speak with more people in the current day, it's to gain insight from a society that lived hundreds or thousands of years ago and understand things as they saw them.
I don't speak Arabic, but when I heard how English translates using Arabic sentence structure, I was somewhat taken aback by how "eloquently succinct" it was. Similar to Latin and the Latin-based languages, it's a language that uses "less to describe more".
My first copy of the Bible was the Lamsa Bible which is said to be translated directly from the Aramaic. It is mostly quite similar to King James.
I really like your argument, and I believe without any doubt that the New Testament was written in Greek. I'll probably use the argument myself in the future. But if I may play devil's advocate a little, the Septuaguint translated each book with differing styles - sometimes to smooth Greek, and sometimes clunky to the point of being incomprehensible (or so I've read).
I mostly study Russian. I occasionally read from the Bible in Russian. I find the gospels the easiest, since they speak of concrete events. I pretty much get lost in the epistles or Old Testament.
I would very much like to hear how Ancient Spanish sounded at the time. Greetings from Havana, Cuba again.
I read some recent books which made the case for *some* of the new testament being written in Aramaic first, but at the moment I can't remember the name of those books and I can't find them in my house right now. (this is not surprising because I moved recently, and almost all of my books are still in boxes...). Hopefully I'll find them later.
But I don't remember them making much of a deal about greek being "poor grammar". It was more that there are passages where if you look at the Aramaic it's easy to see why it was translated into the Greek that we're used to seeing, but if you look at the Greek then a Greek person would not have translated that Greek passage into the Aramaic which has been found. I also remember that part of the discussion is that there are multiple Aramaic manuscripts, and some are very likely translations from the Greek while other ones really look like they written (not translated) by native Aramaic speakers.
Separate from my poor memory of those two books, I'll also say that I did not find your main point to be convincing. You suggest that if someone Jewish wrote the original texts in Greek, then that would explain the "poor grammar" that we see. The argument assumes that if the original was written in Aramaic, then the only possible way that would have been translated into Greek is if someone who was an expert in Greek did the translation. But let's say the book of Matthew was written in Aramaic simply because that was the only language that Matthew knew how to write, and he then sent that book to some congregation of Jewish people who believed in Jesus. it seems to me that it could be that someone in *that* group _(who might not be experts in written greek)_ did the translation.
I'm not suggesting that the poor grammar does prove that the original was written in Aramaic. I'm suggesting that the poor grammar does not prove *anything* about what language the original text was written in, because we have no idea who did the translation if a translation was done. The poor Greek grammar in (say) Mark could be because *Mark* was not well-versed in Greek, or it could have been that he wrote in Aramaic and the person who *translated* it was someone who was not well-versed in Greek. And that that person (or group of people) translated it into Greek not because they were experts in Greek, but because they wanted to mail a copy to their friends in Turkey.
We know that the Septuagint was translated by 70 scholars of the language because that fact was written down in history. If some of the books in the NT were written in Aramaic, we have no record of who did the translation into greek, so we cannot assume how expert they would have been in the translations.
Uh, by "recent" I mean "recent compared to the book of Matthew". 🙂 I think I read these books in the late 1990's or early 2000's, which is why my memory is so vague on the details of what was written in those books.
In the actual Syriac Church is still in use the Aramaic. The first Gispel was initially writen in Aramaic than translated into greek. But the rest of New Testament was wrote in common greek because the respectiv books was destinated to an auditorium from Asia Minor, Greece, Macedonia, Rome...
Wrong the NT was written original in greek
I once used an app to have side-by-side the KJV and a Japanese translation of the Bible. I found Genesis somewhat easy just because it's introducing many basic concepts all humans know, and therefore uses many basic kanji for water, sky, animals, humans, etc.
I can attest that you can easily read the Vulgate if you're a Spanish speaker with just a little bit of knowledge on Latin Grammar (think of having gone through the first ten chapters of Lingua Latina Per se Illustrata).
Need to check the Breviary next.
İ've been using the Bible to learn Tajik Persian (there's two translation of the NT), Tunisian Arabic and occasionally Standard Arabic.
Just a few day ago around Easter İ'm reading Matthew 28 in Arabic and İ wonder how come some verb forms are different. İ then realize that it's actually FEMİNİNE DUAL forms being used. 🤓
The New Testament was written in Hellenic. Also, later the Old Testament was translated into Hellenic as well.
Three of Gospels were written in Hellenic: Ioannes’ Luke’s and Marcus’ Gospels.
Mattheus though, we wrote his Evangelion in Aramaic and he himself translated it into Hellenic.
In some Monasteries in Mt. Athos they have one or two of the Gospels.
I’ve read that somewhere but I don’t remember exactly.
It’s not something that any visitor can go and see, they are kept in a safe place. They are written in Hellenic.
there is a website called Latin Vulgate that provides the Latin Vulgate Bible in Latin with English side by side and even includes the King James as an option (so you can see all three in columns). My Latin is no where near as good as yours, but I find it interesting.
Thank you for the video, Luke! There seems to be good evidence not only that the New Testament books were originally written in Greek, but that even some of the teachings of Jesus were originally delivered in Greek!
See a video here on UA-cam titled 'The Lesson on the Mount', by Dr Peter J. Williams of Tyndale House, Cambridge.
Dr Williams got his PhD at Cambridge in ancient languages related to the Bible and among his academic writings are such titles as 'Early Syriac Translation Technique and the Textual Criticism of the Greek Gospels' 😊
Hey Luke, my partner is Greek and we were having a discussion about how Ancient Greek and Modern Greek are considered the same language. I'm a speaker of Spanish as a second language and I don't understand how Spanish or Italian are never considered to be the same language as Latin but Modern Greek and Ancient Greek are considered to be the same. Can you make a video explaining this please?
I have commented on this in other videos, actually. You may say that Modern Greek is indeed the same language as Ancient Greek, but then you must also concede that Spanish is the same language as Latin, and in fact that Spanish, Italian, French, Romanian, and Portuguese are all just dialects of the same Latin language.
This is, of course, not very useful. Why then do Greeks insist that Modern Greek is the same language as Ancient Greek? For them it is useful, for political reasons: to strengthen their claim to classical antiquity. They certainly may claim a strong connexion to it, just as much as Italians and Spaniards may; I think that’s fine. But imagining that Modern Greek is the same language as Ancient Greek, while insisting this is not true for Latin and Spanish, shows profound ignorance of how Greek changed from antiquity to the present, and of the similarities and differences between comparable languages in their transformations through time.
However, what constitutes a language or a dialect is ultimately a matter of politics, as I show here: ua-cam.com/video/zUlNhs8rJ_g/v-deo.htmlsi=w4vBwjTagNjNKPKf
You say you don't know Syriac "yet." That's my target language after Latin. Do you know of any resources for learning it?
Many thanks for all your work!
These resources are pretty good for learning Syriac:
noahbickart.fastmail.fm.user.fm/Coakley_Robinson_Syriac_Grammar.pdf
ia903208.us.archive.org/17/items/Syriac-Aramaic/01.introductionToSyriacAnElementaryGrammar.pdf
Basics of Classical Syriac by Steven C. Hallam is useful if your first language is English. The Syrian church resources are harder for a beginner. Helps if you are already familiar with another Semitic language of course (Coptic doesn't count).
@@williambranch4283 Great, many thanks!
I do have some Arabic, and had a tiny bit of Hebrew years ago. What sort of resources does the Syrian church have? I found various resources for Arabic from the Melkites, for one, but not Syriac.
@@starshipchris4518 Here is a start ...
I have studied Arabic and Hebrew earlier. In MS Win 10... install just the text portion of Syriac. There are two keyboards, SY and SY2. SY2 is phonetic, and I prefer that one. WordPad is sufficient to get your text going R-L. In iPad Assyrian (Syriac) aka Estrangela can be added thru Keyboard controls; Pages is sufficient. Estrangela is the usual script used on-line and in scholarship (Unicode). Madnhaya or Serta are used in the churches. I find them harder to read, but search Meltho Fonts or GNU FreeFont (links in Wiki Syriac Alphabet article). There is another Zondervan book that covers the earlier Imperial Aramaic (Book of Daniel) ... the grammar is different; the text is Square Aramaic same as Hebrew. I love Syriac above the others ;-)
@@starshipchris4518 I gave more response but it disappeared.
I agree. If its evidence of anything, it's that the author was not a native Greek speaker, not that the source text was of a non-Greek language.
The explanation on John is Aramaic Memre (Torah), Greek Logos (Greek Monotheistic cult) and Latin Verbum. (declaration) I like John1:1 as "Before time was the Torah."
The bible is great for language learning, especially if you are familiar with it. Even if you aren't, some passages are so simple that it would be easy to read and practice with them (like John chapter 1 or Genesis 1). I read my bible in German, Greek, Latin, a little in Hebrew, as well as my native Spanish and English. It definitely helps. It also helps that it's probably one of, if not the most widely translated book there is. The trinitarian bible society sells bibles online for cheap in dozens of languages :)