Re: Languages in Gibson's Passion

Ray Brown wrote:

> On Monday, March 8, 2004, at 06:16 AM, John L. Leland wrote:
>
>> I saw this film yesterday and was struck by several things that
>> seemed to
>> me
>> linguistic incongruities:
>> 1) the Latin was given the "church"pronunciation instead of the
>> reconstructed
>> "classical" pronunciation
>
>
> Um - a bit slack of Gibson, methinks. The ecclesiastical pronunciation is
> OK for Medieval Latin, but not Latin of the 1st cent. CE.
>
>> 2) Pilate addressed the Jewish crowd in fluent Aramaic (which I doubt
>> very
>> much he bothered to learn)
>
>
> I doubt very much either. It wasn't a normal habit of the Romans, with
> the
> sole exception of Greek. Indeed, educated Romans of this period were
> normally more or less bilingual in Greek & Latin, and Pilate certainly
> would've been.
>
>
Just a thought, John 19:19 says that Pilate wrote the inscription above
Jesus.  I'm sure that could be interpreted that he had it written, but
otherwise, it would indicate that he knew Aramaic.

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