[GCFL-discuss] Versions

[gcfl-discuss at gcfl.net]

Hi greenBubble,

I assume from your question that you are Jewish. I don't know if you are
Orthodox, Conservative, Reformed, or some other branch. (Many Christians
don't realize that Judaism and Islam both break down into many
denominations also).

To answer your question about Greek though, Jewish communities were
dispersed throughout the Greek, Roman and Persian territories, and into
India, long before the destruction of the Temple by the Romans, that is,
long before the time of Jesus. Not everyone came back from the Exile, not
everyone went to Babylon, not everyone stayed there. So, there were
Jewish communities speaking the languages of the lands in which they had
settled, and, in Judea and Galilee, most Jews spoke Aramaic, not Hebrew.
Certainly there were Hebrew texts, as there are to this day. But most of
the scrolls later compiled into the Old Testament by Christian councils
had also been translated into Greek (theologians call them the
Septaguint), into Aramaic, and perhaps into other languages as well. The
team that put together the King James Version of the Bible relied heavily
on the Septaguint, which was a step closer to the original than the Latin
version common in Europe up to that time.

Whether the texts in Hebrew used in modern synagogues actually pre-date
the Greek and Aramaic texts is an academic question, and I'm not sure
either of us has a complete answer to it. There has been a lot of
translation back and forth. It is difficult to prove an unbroken chain in
a single language. Modern Israelis speak Hebrew, but it had to be
deliberately taught, studied and cultivated by people who were born
speaking Yiddish, Polish, Russian, German, English, etc.

Siarlys


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