[B-Greek] "The Passion" and Koine Greek
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Sep 17 17:06:43 EDT 2003
At 4:11 PM -0400 9/17/03, James Jackson wrote:
>
>So I guess my question is, was Koine Greek a prevalent language spoken in
>Israel during the first century? I realize that there were many
>Hellenistic Jews living in Israel at that time and would have spoken Greek
>to each other. However I am not sure what language would have been spoken
>between those of different nationalities during that time.
There's a good deal of speculation here. It is certain that Koine Greek WAS
spoken "between those of different nationalities" in first-century
Palestine, and it was surely the dominant language in some Palestinian
communities, especially in the so-called "Decapolis" to the east of the Sea
of Galilee, and merchants and military people must have used Greek; I
personally think that a lot of Greek was spoken in Galilee. It is a
question open to dispute whether Jesus spoke or understood Greek at all:
some list-members seem to deem it extremely unlikely while others (myself
included) think it not at all unlikely that he did. In fact, however, this
is a question that really lies beyond the proper scope of B-Greek, where we
need to keep the focus on matters pertaining to the language itself and to
Greek biblical texts.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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