History Lesson

• Messages sorted by:[ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]

Sorry for the delay in answering this, I was away on vacation for a
short time.

David Walden (Thu Aug 26) writes: “Those who traveled with Saul were
Grecians and did not understand
Hebrew........Saul knew both languages.  Therefore they heard a voice
but did not understand it since it was
spoken in Hebrew.”

Acts 21:37  Chief captain, said, Canst thou speak Greek?
Paul would then ask according to your assumption, what a silly question,
of course you know all people in
the Empire can speak Greek!! Paul had apparently spoken to the Captain
in Greek. The Captain, astonished because few Jews could, asked the most
obvious question, which many of us do when caught by surprise, the
answer Paul had just demonstrated.

38  Art not thou that Egyptian?
The Egyptian the captain is thinking of is a fugitive whose rebel mob
intended to attack Jerusalem but was
defeated by Felix, the Roman governor and was still at large. The
captain assumes he’s an Egyptian because of the situation he finds Paul
in and since Egyptians had no religious drawbacks to indulging in Greek
culture as did the Jews, many knew Greek.

39  Paul said, “I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia,
a citizen of no mean city.”
Notice Paul didn’t even bother to answer his question or should we say
he answered it by showing he was a Jew from a well known city of the
empire.

40  When there was made a great silence, he spake unto them in the
Hebrew tongue, saying.
He spoke to them in the what?  The Hebrew tongue?  Why would Paul do
that?  Why not speak to them in
Greek so all would understand him, since all Jews, like the whole
empire, according to you, understood
Greek?

D. W. wrote: “Evidence that not all Jews knew Hebrew.  In fact it was
virtually a dead language at
the time.”
Why then did Paul speak in this dead language? Why would he bother
saying, “Men, brethren, and fathers,
hear ye my defence which I make now unto you” (Acts 22.1), if he knew
they wouldn’t understand?
“When they heard that he spake in the Hebrew tongue to them, they kept
the more silence.”  Why did they
do this if they couldn’t understand him?

Who were this “men, brethren, and fathers?” They were Jews, for he
mentions in verse 3 how they are
zealous for God and the law, as he was when he persecuted Christians.
And not just the “upper crust” as you put it, or educated or priests
but: 21:27 they “stirred up ALL THE PEOPLE,” (30) “ALL THE CITY was
moved,” (31) ALL JERUSALEM was in an uproar.”  How do we know they
listened and understood Paul?  “They gave him audience unto this word”
(Ac 22:22). What word might that be?  Gentiles!  (21) Depart: for I will
send thee far hence unto the Gentiles.  The Jews weren’t about to listen
to someone telling them Gentiles were chosen over them.

Why then could Paul speak Greek and few of the other Jews not?
Paul was extremely well educated both in the Law of the Israelites and
in Greek culture.  So well educated
in fact that Festus the governor said to Paul in Acts 26:24,  “much
learning doth make thee mad.” Paul tells
us he was “brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to
the perfect manner of the law of the
fathers.” We find Gamaliel mentioned in Ac 5:34  “Then stood there up
one in the council, a Pharisee,
named Gamaliel, a doctor of the law, had in reputation among all the
people, and commanded to put the
apostles forth a little space.”  Paul’s knowledge of Greek culture shows
up in his frequent quotations of
Greek writers. See for instance Acts 17:28; 1 Co 15:32 and Titus 1:12.
In his letters Paul quotes, Aratus,
Cleanthes, Menander, Epimenides, Pinder, Aristophanes and other well
known Greek authors. It’s no
wonder Peter, a fisherman, and “unlearned and ignorant” (Acts 4:13),
found in Paul’s letters “some things
hard to be understood” (2Pe 3:16).

D. W. writes: “Those who traveled with Saul were Grecians.”
Pray tell how did you find this out?

D. W. asked: “How could they hear this voice but yet not hear this
voice??”
He then jumps to the conclusion: “They heard a voice but did not
understand it since it was spoken in
Hebrew.”

It does not say they didn’t understand it. It says, “ they heard not the
voice of him that spake to me” (22:9)
Also take note of the fact the men with Paul, no mention of who they
were, “Saw the light” (22:9), “seeing
no man” (9:7).  Why do you suppose only Paul saw Yahshua and only Paul
heard His voice? Because Paul
says “the voice of him that spake TO ME.” This visitation was for Paul,
and Paul alone.  Lets look at other
similar incidents.

Da 10:7  And I Daniel alone saw the vision: for the men that were with
me saw not the vision.

2Ki 6:17  And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes,
that he may see. And the LORD
opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain
[was] full of horses and chariots
of fire round about Elisha.

Joh 12:28  Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from
heaven, saying, I have both glorified it,
and will glorify it again. 29  The people therefore, that stood by, and
heard it, said that it thundered: others
said, An angel spake to him.

Here we see a vision just for Daniel as well as Elisha, until Elisha
prayed for his companion’s eyes to be
opened. We see in John where some hear an angel speak while others just
heard thunder.

Why, if the men with Paul saw the light were they not also blind?
Because the message and the light were
meant for Paul’s benefit only.

D. W. writes: “The evidence for this is the use of the Targums written
in Aramaic.”
To answer this lets look at the Hebrew and Aramaic languages.

Aramaic is a close relative, not a derivative of Hebrew. They both come
from the Semitic language family. It
is the language of Dan 2:4 -7:28, Ezr 4:8-6:18; 7:12-26; Jer 10:11 and
the Targums. The script is the same
as Hebrew, which it was taken from, it also has approximately the same
phonological characteristics as
Hebrew, including the position of the stress. The Israelites blended the
Hebrew they knew with the Aramaic
of the Babylonians during their captivity there, hence the Aramaic in
Daniel and Ezra. Aramaic came to
predominate over Hebrew because of the seventy years in Babylon,
consequently it became customary for
the reading of the Hebrew scriptures to be followed by an oral rendering
into Aramaic, some of which later
was written down becoming the Targums.

How does the Targums have anything to do with all the Jews speaking
Greek? Maybe you meant to imply
the people with Paul on the road to Damascus only spoke Aramaic and
couldn’t understand Hebrew.

D. W. :”We have evidence that two dialect of Aramaic were
used........that by those of Jerusalem and
that by those of Galilee.”
Probably far more then two. How many dialects, accents or local slang
variations are there in America? Do
the people in Louisiana speak the same as those in Boston?  I’ve heard
those in the north of London could
go to the south end and not understand a word they were saying. And all
Londoners claim to speak English
despite what we might think. Some of these dialects in England and
America are more foreign to each other
then Hebrew is to Aramaic.

D. W. : “It is interesting to see that on numerous occasions the authors
of the New Testament writings
quoted from or paraphrased the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old
Testament.”
Since we do not have any original autographed copies we can’t be sure
the Septuagint was used by the
authors or by the Greek translators.

Dave Smith