Was the New Testament Originally Written in Greek?

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Mr E

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Let me wrap this up for you @EclipseEventSigns

Do you notice anything in particular about the text? I know you don't know Latin and I presume you don't read Hebrew nor Aramaic either, but how about "Syriac" or maybe....... Greek?

This might come as a shock to you, but the Assemani "Gospel" is essentially Greek. Of the kind from the Greek city of Edessa circa 1100 CE.

Glagolitic

The Glagolitic script (/ˌɡlæɡəˈlɪtɪk/,[2] ⰃⰎⰀⰃⰑⰎⰉⰜⰀ, glagolitsa) is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed to have been created in the 9th century by Saint Cyril, a monk from Thessalonica. He and his brother Saint Methodius were sent by the Byzantine Emperor Michael III in 863 to Great Moravia to spread Christianity among the West Slavs in the area.
 
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Grailhunter

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Let me wrap this up for you @EclipseEventSigns

Do you notice anything in particular about the text? I know you don't know Latin and I presume you don't read Hebrew nor Aramaic either, but how about "Syriac" or maybe....... Greek?

This might come as a shock to you, but the Assemani "Gospel" is Greek. Of the kind from the Greek city of Edessa circa 1100 CE.
Is there a point to this or did I miss it. Not be facetious just wondering if I missed the point.
 

EclipseEventSigns

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really, do you know who Porter and fitzmyer are?
I don't have to be familiar with them to read the questions and understand their assumptions. Most of the questions include unsupported supposed facts. They set up strawman arguments. Each would take a lot of explanation to refute and much more time than I'm willing to spend in a thread.

One of the best refutations of those 9 questions is to bring up the linguistic evidence itself. Instead of arguing back and forth which language was most used, examine the evidence in the texts themselves. Those that are expert in Greek AND semitic languages (ie. Hebrew and Aramaic) are very few. And even fewer are those who are not beholden to their tenured position in Greek primacy institutions. One such expert was Torrey. His expert opinion was the following.

The Septuagint is known to be a Hebrew text translated into Greek. It has a very particular flavor of Greek. It was not a Greek that was spoken. The Greek was as close to a word for word translation trying to preserve the original Hebrew text as much as possible. Anyone reading that Greek recognizes the stilted and awkward style.

Torrey recognized the same kind of Greek in the New Testament Greek. It has the same stilted and awkward style. The older manuscripts - Alexandrian - contain many grammatical flaws. But as the manuscripts got recopied and reworked, by the time of the Byzantine manuscripts, the Greek style had been smoothed and modified to remove some of the courseness. However, as many people recognize there are a lot of semitic idioms left in the text which have confused scholars. It's like the writers thought in Hebrew(Aramaic) but wrote in Greek.

So within the very text itself, the Greek New Testament text gives itself away as being a translation from a different language original.
 
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Mr E

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Is there a point to this or did I miss it. Not be facetious just wondering if I missed the point.

Maybe you have to be able to read between the lines. I'll refer you to the YouTube video I linked in post 70 of this thread... It's what the thread is actually about-- @EclipseEventSigns produced the video to make the assertion that the NT was not originally written in Greek, but in Aramaic (Syriac) and in the video he presents his evidence. Legend and lore-- by his own admission a fictionalized account of one Joseph Assemani who EES proposes found an Aramaic copy dated 78AD -- a codex that contained a complete copy of all four gospels!

Well.... it's ridiculous, but you'd have to spend an hour of your life to hear him out and listen to all the conjecture he tries so hard to twist into facts or plausibilities. He fails. The mysterious, missing Assemani Gospel and the imaginary Folio 140 he searches for, suspecting the Vatican has hidden away, are available for viewing by all online at the links I provided.

Here's one final camel-back-breaking tidbit from our friend Joseph Assemani..... it's called the Chronicle of Edessa. From a quick reading of this info-- can you surmise who might have wrote the marginal footnote in the Assamani Gospel (that isn't a gospel at all, and certainly isn't from Dec 18th, 78 AD.) ----in the year of the Greeks 389 lol.

The Chronicle of Edessa. (part of the Joseph Assemani collection)--

We have hitherto not discovered who was the author of the Edessene Chronicle, nor in what age he flourished. Yet it is sufficiently plain that he followed the Catholic faith, because he declares that he admits four holy councils down to the year 838 of the Greeks, and also because he expressly rejects the opposers of the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, strongly commending their orthodoxy, which was a most certain mark of the Catholics of the time in which he lived. He seems, indeed, to have lived about the year of Christ 550, for he brought down his history to the year 540, as will shortly appear. That he copied it out of the archives of the Edessene church is shewn by its beginning, course, and end. In the beginning of the history he describes the flood of waters which overflowed Edessa under the emperor Severus and king Abgar, according to the acts formerly drawn up by the notaries, and preserved in the archives, and put by us into their proper place. Moreover, the author is almost wholly occupied in registering the series of bishops of Edessa, and in describing their deeds. He leaves off writing just when the Jacobite pastors began to invade that church.

The epoch which he uses is that of the Greeks, also called that of the Seleucidae, or the Syro-Macedonian. He affirms that the Christian era was later by 309 years, according to the common opinion of the Edessenes. But if we look closely into the indictions which he sometimes mentions, and the days of the month and of the week, which he often mentions, it becomes evident that the aforesaid years are called 309, but are really 311; and, therefore, the nativity of Christ, according to his view, fell in the three hundred and eleventh year of the Greeks, and not in the three hundred and ninth. That is plainly the case from what he writes of the earthquake at Antioch, and the death of Simeon Stylites, who he affirms was taken to heaven in the year 771 of the Greeks, on the second of September, and on the fourth day of the week, which answers to the vulgar era A.D. 460, not 462. He relates that the earthquake at Antioch happened in the year 837 of the Greeks, on the 29th of May, and on the sixth day of the week, which will be A.D. 526, when May 29th fell on the Friday, not A.D. 528, when it could not happen on a Friday. To the year of the Greeks 850 he also adds the "second indiction," which nevertheless answers to 539 A.D., and not to 541. Therefore the vulgar Christian epoch, according to his view, must be later than the era of the Greeks 311 years, and not 309.

He starts at the beginning of the kingdom of Edessa, which he ascribes to the year 180 of the Greeks.

EES opens this thread with a big "If" >>>

If it is true that the 4 Gospels existed in Aramaic by at least 78 AD, what evidence is there for the rest of the New Testament?
 
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EclipseEventSigns

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When Jesus met with the Samaritan woman, would there language they spoke be different than the language in Nazareth?
What is the origin of the Samaritans?
[2Ki 17:24 LSB] 24 And the king of Assyria brought [men] from Babylon and from Cuthah and from Avva and from Hamath and Sepharvaim, and settled [them] in the cities of Samaria in place of the sons of Israel. So they possessed Samaria and lived in its cities.

Around 700 BC, the Assyrians took a good portion of the northern tribes of Israel and relocated them into the empire. They forced other populations to relocate into the area around Samaria. What language did these other people speak? The lingua franca of that time was Aramaic. So even without getting into the evidence about the Babylonian period and the adoption of Aramaic by the rest of the Jews, the Samaritan woman spoke Aramaic to Jesus.
 

Mr E

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Check out the marginal note on the last page---- looks legit!

Much ado about nothing.

1692323738650.png
 

The Learner

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I don't have to be familiar with them to read the questions and understand their assumptions. Most of the questions include unsupported supposed facts. They set up strawman arguments. Each would take a lot of explanation to refute and much more time than I'm willing to spend in a thread.

One of the best refutations of those 9 questions is to bring up the linguistic evidence itself. Instead of arguing back and forth which language was most used, examine the evidence in the texts themselves. Those that are expert in Greek AND semitic languages (ie. Hebrew and Aramaic) are very few. And even fewer are those who are not beholden to their tenured position in Greek primacy institutions. One such expert was Torrey. His expert opinion was the following.

The Septuagint is known to be a Hebrew text translated into Greek. It has a very particular flavor of Greek. It was not a Greek that was spoken. The Greek was as close to a word for word translation trying to preserve the original Hebrew text as much as possible. Anyone reading that Greek recognizes the stilted and awkward style.

Torrey recognized the same kind of Greek in the New Testament Greek. It has the same stilted and awkward style. The older manuscripts - Alexandrian - contain many grammatical flaws. But as the manuscripts got recopied and reworked, by the time of the Byzantine manuscripts, the Greek style had been smoothed and modified to remove some of the courseness. However, as many people recognize there are a lot of semitic idioms left in the text which have confused scholars. It's like the writers thought in Hebrew(Aramaic) but wrote in Greek.

So within the very text itself, the Greek New Testament text gives itself away as being a translation from a different language original.
Torrey has been refuted for years.


Did you see the Kepha Kepha post?
 

EclipseEventSigns

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Torrey has been refuted for years.


Did you see the Kepha Kepha post?
Has he though? By the Greekies? Nothing he said has been refuted with any actual facts. It's all the same fallacious stuff that gets passed around on this type of forums as "facts". And nothing you said refutes my post. You can't. The style of Greek in the Septuagint and the New Testament is the way it is.
 
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The Learner

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Nice discussion all, I already showed that they were multi-lingal in those times.
Even the notice in the Temple was in three languages. It is known, that the area was traders travelled through it. Many had greek names.
 

The Learner

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Has he though? By the Greekies? Nothing he said has been refuted with any actual facts. It's all the same fallacious stuff that gets passed around on this type of forums as "facts". And nothing you said refutes my post. You can't. The style of Greek in the Septuagint and the New Testament is the way it is.

Hellenistic Commentary to the New Testament​

Boring, M. Eugene

 

EclipseEventSigns

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Nice discussion all, I already showed that they were multi-lingal in those times.
Even the notice in the Temple was in three languages. It is known, that the area was traders travelled through it. Many had greek names.
What? The temple was NOT in three languages. Hebrew and Aramaic. That's it. The Jews fought a rebellion to get Greek OUT of Judea and Temple.
 

The Learner

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What is Hellenism in the New Testament?
Hellenization, or Hellenism, refers to the spread of Greek culture that had begun after the conquest of Alexander the Great in the fourth century, B.C.E. One must think of the development of the eastern Mediterranean, really, in two major phases.

And what was the language and culture of the Hellenistic world?

The language and culture of the Hellenistic world was Greek. That became the lingua franca of all of these subject peoples. It was to that world what English is to the modern world in many ways, what French was to the world of the 19th century.

"
Granting that somewhere between most and all of the books of the New Testament were originally written in Greek, they are not written in the Attic Greek of the great philosophers, they are written in Koine Greek, the street-Greek of the Roman world at the time. This would have been a practical necessity in order make them accessible to audiences across the Mediterranean.

Even then, these Greek writings have significant underlying Hebrew structure. As Jean Psichari observed, “In considering all these different Hebraisms, it is impossible not to realize how much the language of the New Testament constituted one of the principal initial obstacles to the acceptance of the faith among the educated classes in the first and second centuries. These Hebraisms were hardly what was called for to impress the educated classes.” (“Essai sure le Grec de la Septante”, in translation of “The Hebrew Christ” by Kenneth D. Whitehead)"
 
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EclipseEventSigns

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What is Hellenism in the New Testament?
Hellenization, or Hellenism, refers to the spread of Greek culture that had begun after the conquest of Alexander the Great in the fourth century, B.C.E. One must think of the development of the eastern Mediterranean, really, in two major phases.

And what was the language and culture of the Hellenistic world?

The language and culture of the Hellenistic world was Greek. That became the lingua franca of all of these subject peoples. It was to that world what English is to the modern world in many ways, what French was to the world of the 19th century.

"
Granting that somewhere between most and all of the books of the New Testament were originally written in Greek, they are not written in the Attic Greek of the great philosophers, they are written in Koine Greek, the street-Greek of the Roman world at the time. This would have been a practical necessity in order make them accessible to audiences across the Mediterranean.

Even then, these Greek writings have significant underlying Hebrew structure. As Jean Psichari observed, “In considering all these different Hebraisms, it is impossible not to realize how much the language of the New Testament constituted one of the principal initial obstacles to the acceptance of the faith among the educated classes in the first and second centuries. These Hebraisms were hardly what was called for to impress the educated classes.” (“Essai sure le Grec de la Septante”, in translation of “The Hebrew Christ” by Kenneth D. Whitehead)"
What a bunch of absolute hogwash. That's not even historically accurate.
 
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Bob Estey

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If it is true that the 4 Gospels existed in Aramaic by at least 78 AD, what evidence is there for the rest of the New Testament?

Start with what Peter says. In II Peter, he references Paul's multiple letters having been available and read by those Peter is addressing.

[2Pe 3:15-16 LSB] 15 just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, 16 as also in all [his] letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as [they do] also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.

Peter's audience had been able to read what Paul had written. So who was Peter's audience. We find out a few verses previous:
[2Pe 3:1 LSB] 1 This is now, beloved, the second letter I am writing to you ...

Who was the first letter addressed to?
[1Pe 1:1 LSB] 1 Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who reside as exiles, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who are chosen

It was to the Christians of Jewish heritage who were living outside of the Jewish homeland. Where are those places? In modern day Turkey. So the writings of both Peter and Paul had made it through that entire area. They were able to read it in a language they understood. That language was Aramaic and not Greek. Aramaic was the lingua franca outside of the Roman Empire. It was the lingua franca of the Jewish people whether in their homeland or those living in exile. This is demonstrated in Acts 21:26-40. Paul is arrested after some visiting unbelieving Jews slander him and rile up the residents of Jerusalem. The Roman commander arrests him and is just about to put him in prison. Paul talks to the commander in a different language and he is shocked to hear Paul speaking Greek. This convinces the commander that Paul is being slandered and Paul is allowed to address his accusers - in their own language. He does not speak to them in Greek but in their own language - stated to be the language of the Hebrews.

So things are not as we have always been told. While Paul did know Greek, that does not mean the entire Jewish population knew or spoke Greek. And the content of the New Testament probably was not originally in Greek. But it was translated very soon after being written in Aramaic.
I'm sure something on the internet will tell us what language (or languages) the New Testament was originally written in.
 
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