Re: Languages in Gibson's Passion

At 08:55 8.3.2004, Nik Taylor wrote:

>In addition to which, the Bible has Pilate speaking *with* the crowd,
>which must mean that they were using the same language, and, as I doubt
>that the general public of Judea would've spoken Latin or Greek (the
>elite, yes, but not the general public), Aramaic is the most logical
>possibility.
Most likely Pilate used a Greek-Aramaic interpreter
when speaking both with Jesus and with the crowd.
A procurator held his office only for a few years,
and I doubt most of them (aside from linguistically
inclined persons*) would bother to learn any other
language than the recognized international language,
which was Greek.

(*There *were* of course such people in Antiquity,
e.g. Cleopatra, who is said to have been able to
converse with all her subjects in their own language,
this probably meaning that she knew Egyptian and
Aramaic in addition to Greek, as well as possibly
whatever Nubians and Libyans spoke.  It is doubtful
whether she would have deigned to learn Latin:  she
had no Latin-speaking subject, and being an educated
Roman entailed knowing Greek!  Notably her son was
called Kaisarion and not Caesarellus!)

/BP 8^)
--
  B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Truth, Sir, is a cow which will give [skeptics] no more milk,
and so they are gone to milk the bull."
                                    -- Sam. Johnson (no rel. ;)