RE: The Question of the Greek New Testament
April 19, 2015 at 12:11 pm
(This post was last modified: April 19, 2015 at 12:16 pm by Jenny A.)
(April 19, 2015 at 11:53 am)Rhondazvous Wrote: At the time of Jesus, Israel was under Roman occupation. You indicated in your first post that you do not distinguish between Roman and Greek. Although we use the term "Greco-Roman," they are not the same. Neither Paul nor Jesus nor Peter, James nor John was Greek. The fact that the Bible ascribes European names to these men and the books they didn't write raises a world of suspicions.The fact that the Roman Empire extended to Judea and the surrounding area didn't cause everyone there to start talking Latin. Greek remained the common trade language in most of the eastern portion of the Roman Empire including in and around Judea. Most educated Romans spoke Greek.
Quote:Biblical scholars tell us that none of the original manuscripts survive. If the earliest documents we have were just copies of the original manuscripts that did not survive, biblical scholars would not call them pseudonymous. They would just call them copies. There's no way to compare these later manuscripts to the originals. In fact, calling these Greek copies "original" raises the question of if there ever were any manuscripts before them. We are left with nothing more than conjecture and a fiat insistence on their authenticity.Simply the names of the towns to which Paul was writing, are enough to convince me he was writing in Greek. If he had written in Aramaic, it is unlikely Gentiles in Corinth, Thessalonica, Rome would have understood him. But yes what we have is copies of copies of copies of copies.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.