Israel's prime minister
has verbally sparred with the Pope over which language Christ might have
spoken. Several languages were used in the places where Jesus lived -
so which would he have known, asks Tom de Castella.
It's broadly accepted that Jesus existed, although the historicity of the events of his life is still hotly debated. But language historians can shed light on what language a carpenter's son from Galilee who became a spiritual leader would have spoken.
Both the Pope and the Israeli
prime minister are right, says Dr Sebastian Brock, emeritus reader in
Aramaic at Oxford University, but it was important for Netanyahu to
clarify. Hebrew was the language of scholars and the scriptures. But
Jesus's "everyday" spoken language would have been Aramaic. And it is
Aramaic that most biblical scholars say he spoke in the Bible. This is
the language that Mel Gibson used for The Passion of the Christ,
although not all the words could be found from 1st Century Aramaic, and
some of the script used words from later centuries.
There's no clear evidence that Jesus could write in any language, says Brock. In John's gospel he writes in the dust, but that is only one account. And we don't know what language it was in. Jesus might even have been drawing rather than writing, Brock says.
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