What language was the Bible written in? New Testament GREEK or ARAMAIC?

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

🏛 Learn Ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Old English at the Ancient Language Institute! And sign up for the Summer Immersion Greek Camp: ancientlanguage.com/bible-camp ⬅ 📜 The Gospel of John audiobook in Three Languages (English-Latin-Greek) and Multiple Pronunciations: luke-ranieri.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/gospel-of-john-english-latin-greek-trilingual-audiobook-text

[@KarlKarsnark]

There is no such language as "Old English". It's called Anglo-Saxon because that's who spoke it the same way French is called French and Greek is called Greek. Your Leftist, historical revisionism is pathetic and utterly predictable. Grow up.

[@RMCricket103]

@@KarlKarsnark O, that charity would guide our thoughts and our words!

[@KarlKarsnark]

@@RMCricket103 What language are you typing in right now? "English". For whom is it named? The Angles and Saxon who spoke "Anglo-Saxon". Mind boggling, isn't it?

[@nevilleharris4466]

​@KarlKarsnark So, why is there a stage of French known as "Old French"? Why don't they call it "Romano-Gallo-Frankish"? After all, they are the people who spoke it. In any case, Old English has been known as "Old English" for as long as I can remember! And anyway, Old English was not exactly the same as the original Anglo-Saxon germanic that was brought to England; it contained some elements of British Celtic, Latin, and Old Norse. Furthermore, there are other know-alls out there who claim that the Anglo-Saxons were never called the Anglo-Saxons at all!

[@ΓραικοςΕλληνας]

Luke was a greek from Antioch did not speak hebrew or aramaic and wrote to a greek name person his book called Θεόφιλος

[@yiannisroubos8846]

Most Luke Ranieri statement. "I dont know Syriac, yet"

[@ProfessorMichaelWingert]

That can be arranged!

[@John-qd5of]

Emphasising the word YET!

[@Threedlite]

The camel vs. rope controversy of Matthew 19:24 and Mark 10:25 could motivate/pull you into learning it.

[@sakellarioudimitris7439]

Πόσα εγκεφαλικά και καρδιακά μου έδωσε ο τυπάς ρε συ.......

[@AngryCenturion576]

I’m a Christian and I’ve been using the Vulgate to improve my Latin. It’s especially helpful because if you’re a Christian you’re already familiar with many of the passages, so even if you don’t understand every word in the Latin, your mind fills it in intuitively because you already know the story and context

[@sisterthesister4870]

I can attest to this. And if you're not really up to that - I myself got back into it just 6 months or so ago - I can recommend Epitome Historiae Sacrae by Charles Lhomond. Same concept in regards to reading stories you already know, only it's written in easier Latin. I do have a Vulgate Bible, but like I said, I just started a while back. My only exposure I had to Latin before that was in highschool, so I'm taking small steps.

[@TomPhillipp]

I teach Latin and pray the Breviarium. Give a shout if you have questions;no charge, its a Christian service

[@sisterthesister4870]

@@TomPhillipp That’s such a kind offer. Right now I’m mainly having trouble finding reading materials that are suited to my level, perhaps you could give me some advice there? I am using the Legentibus app by Latinitium, and really enjoying it. But sometimes the reading materials in the app seem to jump up a level in a way that is a bit too steep for me. I started out with Familia Romana, and haven’t started the second book yet although what I can tell from trying the first couple of pages, that would be suited for my current level - just to give you some idea of where I am. I guess that would be considered an upper-beginner level, at least for reading comprehension.

[@nevilleharris4466]

​@@sisterthesister4870I'm also using Legentibus. It's such a great app!

[@maxhatush5918]

Most self-described Christians these days have never read a single passage of the Bible.

[@Edodod]

It appears to me that there is not yet a video of Luke Ranieri speaking Ancient Greek to modern Greeks, like you have with Ancient Latin to Italians. I'd love to see that. Maybe in the future! It was quite interesting.

[@alextzin5180]

He won't be understood by anyone, because I'm sure he will speak in the vile erasmian pronounciation. This pronounciation is so strange and unknown to Greeks and many will be visibly confused

[@ProfessorMichaelWingert]

Yes!! Optima magister! Thank you so much for putting the Syriac language (and Aramaic language more broadly) on the map. This sort of exposure is so important for the future longevity of the language. Great job!

[@shalnark543]

you are here dude i love you i just commented about you and told him to check your channel, can you make biblical aramaic and arabic video

[@abhinavchauhan7864]

Professor you here?

[@ProfessorMichaelWingert]

@@abhinavchauhan7864 Salve!

[@abhinavchauhan7864]

@@ProfessorMichaelWingert 𒊭𒀠𒈠𒆪 𒋗𒇻𒌝𒅗 𒋗𒌒𒊏𒄠

[@robleyusuf2566]

Jesus and 12 apostles never knew Greek and their preach was in Aramaic as the historian agreed. This shows the bible(new testament) was written one to two century after Jesus and the 12 apostles

[@GnosticInformant]

This hypothesis gets beat up pretty bad by some academic articles. Mark also has some latin idioms too. But these texts are written for greeks (many who are Hellenized Jews) living in Asia Minor, Egypt, etc. The explosion of Christianity in the late 1st/early 2nd century happens in greek cities and rejected by hebrew/aramaic speaking jews who begin a new rabbinic form of Judaism. Christianity is heavily influenced by Middle Platonist philosophy and the places that Paul and John are writing to are all greek speaking cities. Even the early Syrian Christians like Simon Magus, are writing in greek, and we know his native toungue was aramaic, so that could show that these people are eastern but still writing for greek audience. For this to be true, we would need to see more aramaic speaking cities dominating the early Christian scene.

[@fgdvdszedsa]

I was going to chide this comment for being rooted in an outdated view of early Christianity. Then I saw your user name...and video titles...You may want to, in general, study the past few decades of Biblical research. Because boy do they ever look like they belong in the mid-20th century! It's like a Greatest Hits of once-fresh-and-provocative-and-but-now-stale-and-debunked tinfoil hat theories 😅

[@kennethconnally4356]

Hm, while I certainly trust the expert consensus here that the texts were originally Greek, I didn't find Mr. Polymathy's supporting argument that a Greek-speaking translator wouldn't produce "errors" in Greek very persuasive. It depends what kinds of errors we're talking about, but there definitely is a phenomenon of texts in translation retaining some grammatical features of the original that don't work, or don't work as well, in the target language. Especially with a text considered sacred, the translator might do things like deliberately preserving the word order from the original even though it's awkward or confusing in the target language, using the same word to translate the same word each time it occurs in the original text even when that isn't the best choice for the context, etc. You can see that all over the place in translations of the Bible itself, for instance the Vulgate and KJV, which preserve various idioms from the Greek and Hebrew into Latin and English that could clue us into the fact that these are translations if we didn't already know. In fact, the phrase "New Testament" itself is an example of this; it's supposed to mean "new covenant" (as in, the Hebrew Bible recorded God's original covenant with the people of Israel, whereas these texts present God's new covenant based on Christ's sacrifice), but "testament" in English and "testamentum" in Latin instead mean "will," as in your "last will and testament." This error occurred because the Greek word διαθήκη can mean either "covenant" or "will," and the Latin "testamentum" was chosen to translate it (wrongly, in that context).

[@peterfireflylund]

“Wrath, Goddess sing…” is a good example.

[@Fiaw1]

What a bunch of word vomit man. Greek is a very precise language, and that is no up for debate. It is not English, and it is not Latin, it's a very precise language, and it's only strange to you because you are looking at it through an "English" speaking lens. You sir are incorrect, and should study Greek, then read the bible in Greek, the original language it was written in. Only people of other languages have historically made all these weird interpretations and it has had Greeks scratching their heads for 100's of years.

[@Hope_Boat]

Greek was not only the official language of the Eastern empire but is was also a liturgical language of the Jews. The Torah was stabilized by the translation done by 70 rabbis of Alexandria for the Great Library at the request of the (Greek) Pharaoh Ptolemeos II. Many Jews were Hellenised after Alexander the Great freed Jerusalem for the Persian Empire even if there was an internal friction among Jews about that. The hellenization of the Jewish religion is evident in its vocabulary: Synagogue is a Greek word. In John 12:20-50 we learn that Jesus announced the hour of glory had come when Philip and Andrew informed him that some Greeks asked to see him. John explains that Phillip was from Bethsaida in Galilee as well as Andrew and Peter. In the 32AD context it means "they all spoke Greek" since Bethsaida was became a polis that year and took the name Julia after the emperor's wife. Philip and Andrew ate Greek names, implying they were both from Hellenized Jewish families. Jesus answered by the parable of the sower, implying that those Greeks were the good soil he was waiting for. So everything points towards direct writing Greek of the evangelists. Also the letters of the apostles to the populations of Antioch, Athens, Corinth, Rome, the Greek polis of Asia minor, Alexandria etc.. were most certainly written in Greek because it was the language of the people living there. Of course among early Christians were non greek speakersas well.That's wh Thet "spoke tongs" after the pentacost.

[@benkorb6359]

13:00 I've been using the Bible to improve my Chinese for a while now, to great effect! In January, I finally decided to order a physical copy of the Catholic translation from Hong Kong but it still hasn't arrived :( A few months ago I also started saying the Liturgy of the Hours in Chinese, which has been a great opportunity to polish pronunciation and intonation. And it's all online for free! Christian language learners are really missing out if they don't make use of these resources.

[@alexandermagnus82]

学中文的朋友，你很努力啊！加油！

[@JordanToJericho]

我所学中文的朋友好。用圣经来学习真好聪明啊！我之前用了圣经来学习怎么读繁体字。

[@shastasilverchairsg]

Hen2 hao3

[@JonBrase]

One question when you ask what the "original language" was is what you mean by "original". The written text of the New Testament was originally in Greek, but much of the text of the Gospels records conversations, sermons, etc. that were almost certainly in Aramaic. The grammar of Mark and Revelation reveals that, whatever language they were written in, the thoughts of the authors were in Aramaic. But for a thought, or a conversation to be written down, it first has to be thought, or spoken. So arguably the original language was Aramaic, even if it was never written down.

[@robinharwood5044]

“Records conversations” is, at a minimum, overstating the case. Assuming that the authors didn’t make it all up (a big assumption) they were just recalling the general gist of the conversation (probably as reported to them by a third party) and putting the ideas into their own words.

[@kenx8176]

I came here to make the same point. These stories were oral before they were written, and they were communicated in Aramaic before they were communicated in Greek. It also seems likely to me that they circulated orally in Greek before they were written down in Greek, since Paul was active in Greece and Asia Minor and his letters are generally considered to be older than the earliest attested written forms of the gospels. So it's a complicated situation.

[@robinharwood5044]

@@kenx8176 How do we know they were oral, in any language?

[@josephodoherty7864]

​@@robinharwood5044 - Bunkum of the highest order😅( or is that BS😅). It's overstating nothing (not "huge assumption" ; that's a clear display of your own huge prejudice) Overwhelmingly the evidence, as accepted by most scholars regardless of religious belief, is that these were NOT made up later but recorded by witnesses.

[@robinharwood5044]

@@josephodoherty7864 1. Most scholars I know of have grave doubts about how much was recorded by witnesses. 2. What is the evidence for this? 3. Early Christian writings include a mass of fantasy and forgery. They show that there was little interest in intellectual honesty or truthful reporting. Do we have any reason to suppose that the Gospeleers were any different? (Origen said that the Gospel of John was "spiritual truth" rather than literal truth. In other words, made up.)

[@Α.Ν-ν1η]

Και πάλι η εκπομπή σου είναι εξόχως διαφωτιστική. Ευχαριστώ Λουκά.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Ευχαριστώ!

[@giorgosmalfas7486]

Admirable work, Ranieri!

[@HighWideandHandsome]

Greek, no doubt in my mind. That said, it is fascinating to see the stylistic differences between the apostolic writings, as a result of their influences, linguistic or otherwise. Luke is a great example: in his prologue (Luke 1:1-4) he writes in a very classical style, but the rest of his Gospel is much more indebted to the style of the Septuagint translation. His is the most difficult of the four Gospels to read, for that and other reasons. Thanks for the video. P. S. I was wondering why I hadn't seen any videos from either of your channels lately, but I checked today and it seems that many of them evaded my notifications. I have it set to "All", so I don't know what would cause this. Perhaps others have had the same problem.

[@balkanmountains2-3131]

Very interesting! May I ask, will we ever get a video on Medieval Greek? Sadly, there is not a single video on KZbin about it.

[@axellfonz]

maybe try change the keyword to byzantine greek

[@balkanmountains2-3131]

@@axellfonz It's the same thing.

[@franciscoriordan9595]

There are some like kzbin.info/www/bejne/gWfap4CqiJ2dhrcsi=CQ4nonchbWOpTtiw But you’re right, it is sparse

[@alfonsmelenhorst9672]

My native language is Dutch. I studied Sanskrit. There is little material from my language to learn Sanskrit. I have used German textbooks. The New Testament has been translated into good classical Sanskrit. I therefore compared the Dutch Bible with the Sanskrit translation. I learned a lot from that and can now read classical Sanskrit literature in the original language.

[@watluktwel6767]

Leer ook Arabisch en lees de Koran. Moge Allah je leiden, ameen

[@stephanpopp6210]

​@@watluktwel6767Thinking that reading the Qur'an alone will make you a Muslim is pretty naive. My mother has read the Qur'an front to back, and she was shocked. She cannot understand how any sane person can believe in it, and she will never become a Muslim BECAUSE she has read the Qur'an. Same with any holy book. You need guidance by the believers. Try it yourself: If you read the Bible front to back, the tons of violence will put you off. This is to be a loving God? You won't get it if the believers don't explain it. I've read the Bhagavadgita front to back, but the hostility to the body and the casteism put me off. I, too, lacked a good commentary.

[@catoelder4696]

Awesome!

[@tomkot]

@@watluktwel6767 Read it ironically, making fun of it, because it's a really badly written fairy tale.

[@ProfessorMichaelWingert]

Great example for utilizing multilingual versions of the same text. I've always wanted to learn Sanskrit.

[@DarranUaM]

The New Testament in Coptic (both Bohairic and Sahidic) really helped me become fluent at reading the language, especially when combined with speaking aloud. Somehow it has a nice mix of repeating itself in some ways and having enough variety to push your ability.

[@polyglossia3671]

What else did you use for learning Coptic and which pronunciation do you use?,

[@DarranUaM]

@@polyglossia3671 Hi, I used Lambdin's "Introduction to Sahidic Coptic", Allen's "Coptic: A Grammar of its six major dialects" and the Polis Institute's "Ⲟⲩⲁⲓ, Ⲥ̀ⲛⲁⲩ, Ϣⲟⲙⲧ!", which Luke reads on his other channel. The 2nd edition of Ⲟⲩⲁⲓ, Ⲥ̀ⲛⲁⲩ, Ϣⲟⲙⲧ! is a good bit better than the first in my opinion. For pronunciation I've a good handle on Sahidic and Bohairic, but I default to Sahidic. There are some subtle questions around the phonology, so I'd be willing to update my pronunciation in light of more knowledge. I'd recommend the intro of Allen's dialect book and his "Egyptian Phonology" for a detailed look at the phonology. The latter is very good for all stages of Egyptian actually.

[@ProfessorMichaelWingert]

It is also helpful if you can find a Coptc language liturgy to attend (most tend to be in Arabic and English these days), as the hymns make memorizing the language easier.

[@polyglossia3671]

@@DarranUaM I'd really like to become conversational in Coptic and when I asked ALI about it, they said they plan on adding it, but it'll almost certainly be after they've added Syriac. Is there more advise/resources you can give on becoming conversational in Coptic?

[@andrelegeant88]

I don't give much credence to the Aramaic primacy concept. The poorness of the Greek in Mark is overstated. The poorness of the Greek in Revelation is understated. But even if neither author had "good" Greek, that doesn't mean there was a translation. It just means they were not strong in their Greek, and their native tongues may have influenced how they wrote Greek. I am confident my English influences how I write Ancient Greek (though not as much as my Latin does, oddly enough). But I am fairly well convinced that Jesus and the Apostles not only would have known some Greek simply because of its importance, but that they would have been more familiar with the Septuagint than a Hebrew text. (People will say, oh, Jesus wasn't educated, Peter was a fisherman, etc., but they would still have learned Greek to some extent just like Spanish-speaking manual laborers in modern America learn English.)

[@KaiHenningsen]

But Spanish-speaking manual laborers in modern America live in a country where English is the majority language. Jesus and his followers lived in an area where Aramaic was the majority language - *not* Greek. What you describe applies to the (many!) Jews living _outside_ of Judea ... who are thought to be the ones writing all of the NT. I'm no bible scholar, but what I've learned listening to them is that you can often look at the language and determine what the original language was by what it says. For example, there is a Jesus quote about the role of the Sabbath, and if you look closely (and know the languages), it would make perfect sense in Aramaic, but it doesn't in Greek because they translated the same word two different ways and then it no longer made sense. On the other hand, there are phrases that only make sense based on the existing Greek (in this case, mis-)translation of the Septuagint, and Jesus would presumably have known that passage in the original (Hebrew or Aramaic). Or there are passages that only made sense in one language or the other, for example, because it includes a play on words that only works in one of them. Based on that, they can be pretty certain that the original language was, indeed, Greek, but some of the quotes assigned to Jesus were indeed translated from Aramaic - and some clearly weren't and thus, presumably, not really quotes from Jesus.

[@andrelegeant88]

@@KaiHenningsen Or.... Jesus knew some Greek as well but primarily spoke Aramaic. There were Greek speaking parts of Palestine at the time. Jesus had a job that would have brought him into contact with people that likely knew and used Greek.

[@fluffysheap]

​@@KaiHenningsenExamples or references to scholarly work would really help a lot here

[@samueltomjoseph4775]

​@@andrelegeant88one time he went to the decapolis to preach

[@ehhe4381]

Jesus spoke with Pikate most likely in Greek. There were many gentile areas in Galilee where a carpenter would have to interact with his clients in Greek. The discussion with Nicodemus seems to have been in Greek as some word plays only work in Greek and even the Nicodemus name seems to be of a Hellenized Jew.

[@mengbomin]

I recently heard a claim that when attempting to "back-translate" the Synoptic Gospels into Hebrew, Luke was most amenable, while Mark was actually least easily translated, with Matthew being a patchwork. This is interesting, as some early Church sources claim that Matthew was originally written in Hebrew (which is sometimes used as a referent to Aramaïc).

[@jimfoye1055]

There is literally no chance that Luke/Acts was written in something other than Greek.

[@toddvoss52]

@@jimfoye1055that is true only of the prologue . See Carmignac’s research if you can find it in a library system (French scholar out of print in English)

[@CharlesSchaum]

At seminary (now 30 years past) I learned Greek, Hebrew, and Latin, with a "drive-by" attempt at Aramaic. I already knew English and German, plus some of my grandmother's Norwegian dialect. I have worked with people who knows Syriac. What you presented was the consensus that I learned. The early date of P52 and other papyri fragments, which are in Greek, attests to the earliness of the Greek NT. The Peshitta is older as an OT translation, but by at most 300 years. So it looks like the activity of translating the biblical sources into Syriac was ongoing, since the Syriac NT started to be translated in the second century AD through the 5th, and P52 appears in the third. John tends to refer to the Lord in the nominative case because there was a bias among Aramaic speakers not to manipulate the divine name. So what I learned agrees with what you said. Also, in producing maps for The Lutheran Study Bible and The Apocrypha: The Lutheran Edition with Notes, I learned about the intrinsic role of Jewish trade routes in early Christian mission. So it would appear that the common language of trade was a primary decision to be as well-positioned as possible when using the trade routes to spread the Gospel.

[@RobinPhillips61]

Hello . I'm English. I read the bible in Italian, and it has improved my pronunciation and fluency immensely.

[@NicholasproclaimerofMessiah]

This is a very intelligent and well conveyed perspective on this; I appreciate it.

[@ancientlanguageinstitute]

Magnificent! Thank you so much Luke.

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Χάριτας ῡ̔μῖν οἶδα!

[@chancylvania]

Well for the most part, it was written in Greek. However, all of our 2nd century sources that talk about the gospels and where they come from say some part of the gospel of Matthew was written in the “tongue/dialect/language of the hebrews,” and later translated to Greek (which is where the similar parts from Mark would come from). But other than that, the only language it’s ever been is Greek.

[@philagon]

Incorrect. Only Pappias says this, and it quite unclear what he means in context. Some, myself included, only take him to mean that Matthew wrote in the Hebrew *style*, i.e. he emphasized the Hebrew aspects of the gospel story.

[@chancylvania]

@@philagon Irenaeus also mentions it. “Matthew issued a written gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect” (Adversus Haereses, 3:1).

[@marksnow7569]

The tiny Papias quote about Matthew says that he either transcribed (συνεγράψατο) or according to other manuscripts compiled (συνετάξατο) oracles/sayings (τα λόγια) in Hebrew dialect (εβραΐδη διάλεκτο). That sounds like the "Q" material which Matthew added to Mark; "transcribed" would imply that he copied the original Aramaic, but "compiled" admits the possibility that the Aramaic text was just his source. [EDIT: The quotation does continue with a comment that others interpreted what Matthew wrote, but it seems to mean interpreted in the hermeneutic sense (given that the actual word used is ἡρμήνευσε) rather than the translation sense]

[@fluffysheap]

​@@philagon By that standard I could equally say that Edward Gibbon wrote in Latin. It's just not what the words mean. Either Papias was simply wrong, or Matthew wrote in Hebrew (or Aramaic). How much Matthew's writings have to do with the Gospel of Matthew that we have is a reasonable question.

[@petrosmpampalis6097]

​@@philagonPappias doesn't questions that John gospel was written in Greek nor he put any doubt! Even if two John were two persons with name: John. So, you try to prove what? After all, Markos is not a Jewish name.. Lukas the same! Only Mathew has some Jewish parfum!😁 Even Paul had Greek education abd spoke in Greek when he came in Greece!! You try to prove that the whole Planet is Jewish?? IT ISN'T😁

[@Jonassoe]

It was written in God's own language, American English.

[@aiocafea]

or king james' early modern english but *understood* as american english with no research, like 'thou' being honorific

[@letusplay2296]

@@aiocafea Well, 'you' being honorific and 'thou' being plain. Respectively cognates of the German 'Sie' and 'du', because we lost the informal pronoun it's use is archaic and archaisms have the feeling of being 'polite' or at least well educated

[@nuodso]

@@letusplay2296 That's the joke

[@aiocafea]

@@letusplay2296ah yes, sorry i didn't make it clear, but i meant how people can sometimes misinterpret the bible by associating its old vocabulary with solemnity or just interpreting the words of the KJV in a very modern context

[@Reazzurro90]

Rude. Everyone knows it was written in King James English. 🙄😂

[@thetanpopsicle3824]

Before beginning a masters in Syriac, I was told to read the Gospels or Psalms and use the King James to help if I ran into trouble. Much more practical than pulling out a large Syriac-English dictionary on the trains. Considering the extant Syriac literature, this method was good for vocab and grammar.

[@SylveonSimp]

As far as I've been told, the Bible was orignally transmitted in AASL.

[@veritas399]

AASL as in Ancient Albanian Sign Language? That is a good one! 😂

[@rizzwan-42069]

👏 🦅 👏👏🦅👏🦅👏🦅👏👏🦅 🦅🦅👏👏🦅👏👏👏🦅👏👏👏👏👏🦅🦅👏👏👏🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅

[@flameguy3416]

I'm pretty sure it was in Finnish Braille for the blind men Jesus didn't heal in time

[@rexcapra]

Yeah, lol. But AASL was mainly used in the kingdom of Albania between 1272 and 1368. But still funny.

[@stephenhoyle2005]

A number of years ago I began reading the Bible in Chinese in order to improve my reading ability in Chinese. Given that I have read the Bible in my native English since I was fairly young, I reasoned that my familiarity with the text in English would help in me in trying to read it in Chinese. And it worked! Consequently, I would strongly agree with Luke that this is one of the best ways to improve one's reading ability in a second language. Incidentally, I started trying to read the New Testament in the original Greek about a year ago, and although my progress has been sometimes a little slow, I do believe I am making some progress. I started off with short books with relatively uncomplicated vocabulary, like the Epistles of 2 John and 3 John, and found that helped.

[@cpnlsn88]

My advice to anyone with Greek is to start with 1John. I found all the shorter epistles quite hard (2 Jo, 3 Jo, Philemon).

[@aspalathossplit3001]

All Gospels were written by 4 Evangelists (John, Markos, Matthew, Loukas) in KOINE GREEK Only evangelist Matthew wrote in both ARAMAIC and GREEK

[@timflatus]

I haven't done much side by side reading, but as a student of Celtic languages I know that we have a relatively small corpus of texts in Cornish, so the reconstruction of the language very much relies on ecclesiastical texts. The only problem is that these texts may have been written in a different register from the spoken language and we don't really have any way of working that out in the case of Cornish because the language unfortunately died.

[@CP-jk8nm]

The priest at my parish gifted me a Missal in Latin / French. I just started using it last Easter. I'm intermediate level in French.

[@jonaszswietomierz8017]

It was written in Uzbek, of course

[@GregProkhorov]

Just like the meme: "Write google the mightiest nation. There will be Uzbek."

[@juniusrabbinius211]

After LLPSI, I used the Vulgate (mainly Genesis) to learn how to read Latin. But you’ve not experienced the Bible until you’ve read it in the original Klingon.

[@Thelaretus]

You seem to have misspelt 'consensus' as 'concensus' in the description.

[@Kolious_Thrace]

The New Testament was written in Hellenic. Also, later the Old Testament was translated into Hellenic as well. Three of Gospels were written in Hellenic: Ioannes’ Luke’s and Marcus’ Gospels. Mattheus though, we wrote his Evangelion in Aramaic and he himself translated it into Hellenic. In some Monasteries in Mt. Athos they have one or two of the Gospels. I’ve read that somewhere but I don’t remember exactly. It’s not something that any visitor can go and see, they are kept in a safe place. They are written in Hellenic.

[@ArturoSubutex]

As an atheist who's interested in the Bible (esp. NT) from a historical/cultural perspective, I occasionally enjoy reading some of it in Latin. I must say that I've been surprised by how relatively easy it's been compared to, say, Cicero. I can read entire stretches without using my dictionary (admittedly, the fact that I already know the story helps quite a bit). I'm not quite good enough to fluently read it in Ancient Greek though, but sometimes when I find a passage that I want to analyze more in-depth I give it a go. I try to do it using my old Ancient Greek dictionary from high school, but I must confess that I often fall back on using BibleHub, which has a pretty well done word-for-word grammatical analysis and translation of the original into English.

[@plazmatik533]

@polyMATHY_Luke when will u make a video about old greek letters such as digamma koppa san or sampi?

[@graceocallie2647]

i was really happy when i heard you mention using bible translations to help with language learning bc that's usually exactly what i do when i learn a new language. i have the first chapter or so of mark almost memorized, and so once i get a basic handle of the grammar i usually just try to start there and see how far i get. i find it works really well for me, and it gives me some insight into which areas of the language i should give more intense focus to. i am a christian personally, but i agree that you don't need to be religious for it to be useful, especially if you come from a background where the basic stories and some quotations are familiar to you.

[@ShuajoX]

I once used an app to have side-by-side the KJV and a Japanese translation of the Bible. I found Genesis somewhat easy just because it's introducing many basic concepts all humans know, and therefore uses many basic kanji for water, sky, animals, humans, etc.

[@Ice_Karma]

The style of the KJV was actually archaizing even for its day.

[@bf99ls]

And intentionally so.

[@stevekaczynski3793]

The "-eth" ending on verbs was going out of use in the normal language of the day, for example but the KJV held on to it as an archaism.

[@peterfireflylund]

Much of the translation was also older than the KJV. It was reused from an earlier translation.

[@zephlodwick1009]

Indeed. It was partly because English was undergoing many changes, so the translators. I'll give some examples: - "Ye" (subject form of "you") was already going out of fashion - "Thou" was kept, always being singular, to make specific if someone was talking to one or many people - "Its" was avoided. The King James used "thereof" or even "his" Perhaps the translators wanted not to favor any variety of English, as many of the new changes weren't countrywide.

[@grandtourpeninsular9347]

What a beautiful voice!!! ❤

[@bigcat5348]

There's a prof at my college who believes in Matthaean priority, and that Matthew wrote in Hebrew. He connects this on a really interesting analysis of Matthew which shows parallels with the Hexateuch (Pentateuch plus Joshua)

[@Hadrianus01]

That's definitely a minority opinion among scholars....

[@ElizabethDMadison]

It definitely was not Hebrew. There was a Jewish-Christian "Gospel of the Nazoraeans" used by a sect in Syria that followed the Law of Moses (thus, not Catholic), that is described by ancient writers as having been written in "Hebrew letters" meaning it was in Aramaic but written in square letters and not in the Syriac alphabet.

[@justsomeguywithoutamustach3rd]

There are multiple church fathers, who reference the existence of a Hebrew version of Matthew and Jerome went as far as to state he has seen it, so I like to believe that Matthew wrote one to two versions, the first one in Hebrew, then translate in Greek, or a Hebrew version and a Greek version

[@ghost-user559]

@@justsomeguywithoutamustach3rdIt’s just as possible for it to have gone the other way around as well, a Greek text being given an early translation for a Hebrew audience.

[@justsomeguywithoutamustach3rd]

@@ghost-user559 it would make less sense, however, because Matthew’s gospel is the most Jewish of the gospels, and was specifically written for Jews as a warning to Jews, specifically before the destruction of the second temple, so having the Greek first would make less sense, in the context of the audience for Matthew’s gospels.

[@RMCricket103]

Thanks for the video! Yes, indeed, my favorite approach has been to use Sacred Scripture or a missal in my target language to improve. My Swahili missal from Kenya is my constant companion on Sundays. One key benefit is that is forces me to slow down when reading otherwise familiar passages, and this promotes a certain devotional focus. The other benefit is that is presents familiar truths in a fresh, and often moving, way for this believer. A highly recommended practice.

[@nicholasdominic2825]

Understanding multiple Romance languages and Greek will be very important once they learn and understand scripture that may scare or disappoint them horribly and very soon Luke, thank you 🙏

[@eriathdien]

Native Spanish speaker, and English Speaker as a second language here. I'm not religious, but I used to be, and having access to the Bible both in Spanish and English was a huge help for me. So, if you're a believer, more power to you, you have a great tool to learn your target language. And if you're not a believer, as I became with the years, do keep in mind that the Bible translation is usually one of the foundational moments in many modern languages; think of Luther's German Translation, King's James English Translation, or Reina-Valera Spanish translation; very important texts in their languages from a secular point of view.

[@sanlee6328]

Yes, because of that, some of the Asian language translations are quite wack from a modern speaker's perspective. For example, even though there are fine translations in the normal Korean language, somehow many protestant chuches in Korea use the century-old version as it is widely known. The translation is probably from the late 19th century. So, Korea back then was a premodern country where the vast majority has almost zero knowledge of western goods, culture, and even produces sincd many fruits and food from the bible are mediterranean that weren't just there in Korea. Also, the Korean language has gone through a huuuuge change during modern times. New concepts and words, translated into Chinese characters by the Japanese, infiltrated so deeply into the Korean language during and after the colonial era under the Japanese empire. The grammars, the tones, the vocabulary are all different and there are some funny localization of certain things. Bread becoming rice cake, Pistacchio to torreya, olive to Chinese olive(canarium album), crown of thorns to Chinese imperial crown of thorns(western crown was unknown to the public), and they put Koine pronunciation for the names. At the end of the day, it's totally a different language from modern Korean. And this applies to the Japanese one even though current Japanese chiristians use the updated translation.

[@mschauki]

So Greek then was what English is now, basically...

[@Slaweniskadela]

Your videos surely bring a lot of joy to a viewer like me :) Multas gratias ago!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Et tibi referō grātiās!

[@rogercarl3969]

Great video as always Luke, but I do have to quibble with one point: I think many people misunderstand (and perhaps misinterpret) Revelations because it has a very strong lyrical quality, as many ancient writings happen to have. (Consider Shakespeare, Chaucer or Beowulf in English.) Now all of the New Testament has some lyrical quality, and I feel most translators ignore this, yet Revelations is perhaps the most poetic. Interesting that you mention the Gospel of John being very good Greek but remember the same writer composes Revelations. (btw I do agree that Mark, on the other hand, struggles with his Greek.)

[@fluffysheap]

The Greek of Revelation is terrible, but the thing is, it's not terrible in a way that looks like the author doesn't know Greek. It's not simplistic. It's done that way to bring the reader into the supernatural, mystical, and unreal nature of the text. John (whether he is the same person as the apostle or not) is an exceptional writer.

[@cpnlsn88]

The author of John's gospel is not the author of Revelation, the style and content are too different. Unlikely also to be the author of the Johannine epistles.

[@armyaj]

Love reporting from ukraine! Even with his English grammar competency everything is extremely concise and there's no down time. Straight to the point. Interesting to see the comparison of communicating the bible in greek to communicating journalism in english

[@peterfireflylund]

Unfortunately for the Russians :)

[@adoramus]

Great film. Thank you.

[@r.b.ratieta6111]

I'm a native English speaker who became fluent in Spanish from living in South America for a few years. Learning a second language showed me that language itself is a layer or "shell" that we use to communicate ideas, and knowing multiple languages is like having multiple flashlights to cast on an object or location from different angles. So whenever people ask, "What's the point of learning an ancient language that no one speaks anymore?" the purpose is not so much to speak with more people in the current day, it's to gain insight from a society that lived hundreds or thousands of years ago and understand things as they saw them. I don't speak Arabic, but when I heard how English translates using Arabic sentence structure, I was somewhat taken aback by how "eloquently succinct" it was. Similar to Latin and the Latin-based languages, it's a language that uses "less to describe more".

[@simondeep]

Great discussion, thank you! The history of the bible’s translations can be a deep dive. Its what even got me into learning about translation itself-literal vs dynamic and all that: People struggling over the years to preserve both meaning and structure in not only the bible but all kinds of literature

[@Chris.M]

Greek, at least the version that we recognize today as the Bible.

[@marjae2767]

I don't know nearly as much Gutiska as I'd like, but being able to compare that version to English versions helps.

[@benedyktjaworski9877]

I’m an atheist and an anticlerical, but I find reading Bedell’s Bible (early 17th c. Irish) to be a good way to get into Classical Gaelic if one knows modern Irish (this version doesn’t follow strictly classical grammar but it is very close to the language of Classical Gaelic syllabic poetry). Also comparing that to 20th century Irish translation of Ó Fiannachta, so called Maynooth Bible, is a good way to learn a lot of good literary Modern Irish grammar. Even comparing Ó Fiannachta’s original from 1981 to a new edition from 2012 is very instructive - as it’s clear that the new editors didn’t understand multiple finer points of Ó Fiannachta’s grammar and actually made the Irish worse - so it’s visible what constructions fall out of use in the language and sometimes are opaque today even to many language professionals.

[@AthanasiosJapan]

My reply is that we can't be sure. The most educated author in NT was Luke, who was a medic and had a good command of Greek. All other authors were Jews, who knew Greek to a degree, but their thinking wasn't Greek. Greek words, but not Greek mind, Greek thinking. Perhaps there was a core text in non-Greek, but we can't be sure. By the way, it is interesting to mention that the text we call New Testament now, was decided later. Some texts that were part of early Christian tradition were cut from various reasons and didn't became part of New Testament. They are usually called Apocrypha. It is interesting to search who decided which book can be part of NT and which can not or must not be part of NT. And why. Finally to your last question. When I started learning Japanese, I bought a Japanese Bible. It was really helpful because all text had Furigana. Japanese texts without Furigana requires a good command of Kanji which takes years of study to master to a sufficient level. By the way there are many Japanese translations of the Bible. All of them are unique, but the most interesting is the Orthodox one, which has a very archaic feeling. Other than the Bible, another frequently translated book is the Elements of Euclid. I suggest it to people who are not interested in religion. A must read for all fans of Geometry.

[@bemple6344]

Eugene E Nida has written a wonderful book "Towards a science of translating" which thoroughly addresses the topic of bible translation out of the original language. He addresses the fact that since the conception of the letters of the new testament, there has been great debate in the church on whether or not to translate from one language to another more syntactically or more 'meaningfully'. Many earlier Latin translations of the NT were criticized for not following the Greek as closely as possible in regards to things such as word order and idioms even if it wouldn't make total sense in the final translation. Throughout the times it seems that the populous/the church seems to favor one over the other. Many newer English translations of the bible still fall on this very polarizing scale, with some like the NLT trying to preserve the meaning while still writing in casual, somewhat colloquial English, and others like the NASB designed specifically to adhere as close as possible to the original Greek and Hebrew. There is a lot of debate on whether or not John the apostle wrote Revelation or not with a large part of the argument lying in the contrasting styles. In my opinion, it would make a great deal of sense for Revelation to be written by John the Apostle in Aramaic to then be translated in a very literal manner into Greek by a scribe or member of the church.

[@paulinho_eletron]

Mark used some old compilations of the sayings of Jesus, its possible that this compilations were in Aramaic, the idiomatic marks of Aramaic can come from that.

[@girgameth8031]

Hi Luke, would you ever do a video on the Mediterranean Lingua France aka Sabir? There are very few videos on youtube that discuss it, and I think it would be a great topic to cover with your expertise

[@oleksandrkorostelov7150]

Such soothing and captivating voice... Thanks God, you're not a sales person 🎉

[@NishkamTheGeneral]

My first copy of the Bible was the Lamsa Bible which is said to be translated directly from the Aramaic. It is mostly quite similar to King James.

[@truthspokeneternally7132]

I don't think that some parts of the language of the New Testament is 'bad' Greek; Koine is just an early form of Modern Common Greek. So it's Modern Greek emerging compared to Attic Greek that give the impression of language misuse. Every Greek who went to school in Greece can easily understand the language of the New Testament; more so than some of the dialects, such as Cypriot and Pontic.

[@janhavlis]

i was always buffled when my fellow conlangers used as gold standard to translate biblical texts into their conlangs. i see the certain appeal of genesis 11:8-9 but otherwise religious text are quite, how to pose it, difficult semantically. thus, the tales of aisópos i found always better to the job and would seek their help when learning other languages.

[@unquietthoughts]

Luke, I have something to ask (which is related to Latin, though) I often pronounce [Vt V] as [Vd V] e.g. et altō > edaltō How can I fix such voicing?

[@tomasgonzalez4819]

I agree. If its evidence of anything, it's that the author was not a native Greek speaker, not that the source text was of a non-Greek language.

[@richardlaing103]

I've bought your Gospel of John in Greek, Latin and English and it's very useful for learning the ancient languages, at which I'm very much a beginner. I can see, though, how closely the King James English follows the Greek.

[@isancicramon0926]

Not a Bible scholar here but in addition to the good point you make, one has to notice the glosses appearing in many spots, like the (announced, explicit) translation of _Golgotha,_ or of _Eli Eli Lama Sabachtani_ - these would not make sense if the text had just been translated.

[@SpartanLeonidas1821]

Yup, it was written in GREEK. Also, the wordplays found in the NT only make sense in GREEK 👍🏻

[@ΕρνέστοςΣμίθ]

Golgotha is a placename, and its original meaning was probably forgotten and it had just become a name. Same with Gesthemane. The cry "Eli Eli Lama Sabachtani" is used to point out that Jesus had at least partial knowledge of Hebrew while the people in the crowd generally don't, since they misinterpret Eli as a reference to the prophet Elijah. The Aramaic word for god is Allaha

[@shalnark543]

hei luke i like your channel you are amazing you inspired me to study ancient languages and history, when you said "i dont know syriac yet" i almost died of shock because i want to learn syriac after im finished with ancient greek, i would love to see you speak syriac also there is a question in my mind where did all the scientific syriac manuscripts go i couldnt find any, thus there is in hebrew,arabic,latin and greek where did they go could you make video about it if its possible. pls respond i am a huge fan

[@ProfessorMichaelWingert]

Tons of manuscripts. What are you looking for?

[@cpnlsn88]

I read the Bible in Latin and Greek. The Bibe contains religious teaching but also some nice (sometimes perplexing) stories. I drifted into reading the Bible in Latin as a way of having extended (extensive) reding material in Latin as I just wasn't getting on with Cicero et al. Greek as always wanted to read the NT in Greek but also read in the Septuagint (currently in Genesis). The Latin in the Vulgate is a little easier. What is interesting is there is a lot of reading matter in the Bible of Old and New Testaments, for instance a lot of stories. We know that stories are helpful in language learning - the gospels provide small chunks of teaching or incidents; the Old Testament contains abundant story material that is sometimes quite compelling - the creation account Noah, the Joseph story for instance. Also stuff about King David, the Exodus account, the stories in Daniel (including the origin of the phrase 'writing on the wall' and to be 'weighed in the balance and found wanting') and compelling stories of Ruth, Esther and for the Apocrypha, Judith, Tobit and the additions to Daniel (Susannah, Bel and the Dragon) - these are less well known in the Protestant world and well worth discovering; and of course a solid block of history writings. I am a lot freer in reading the Vulgate. I sometimes use the Vulgate in helping if I don't understand the Greek so I am remediating both languages. For some reason I find the King James helps me with Greek - not sure why - maybe because it's the version I grew up with, maybe because it strives for literalness. The Bible can be a bit like those who read Harry Potter in a new language where familiarity can help deciphering the text. In any case the content is fairly easily comprehensible, so i like it for that reason (comprehensible input). I am reading through the New Testament and currently in Mark. Certaily far from an expert in Greek but even I can tell that his Greek is a little suboptimal. The New Testament is a veriety of different authors and styles, and this too I like. If learning a new language it can be helpful to read in the Bible and if there are sections I know well then they are a lot easier to read. On a slightly smaller note I frequntly read through the Lord's Prayer and the Nicene Creed in Latin and Greek. These are helpful as if you know the orignal it is a lot easier to understand their content and there is a lot of grammar contained in them (verb forms).

[@marlonbryanmunoznunez3179]

I can attest that you can easily read the Vulgate if you're a Spanish speaker with just a little bit of knowledge on Latin Grammar (think of having gone through the first ten chapters of Lingua Latina Per se Illustrata). Need to check the Breviary next.

[@ROCKINSONN]

Luke, I think you are right. Many Catholic Children go to Catholic Schools, through HS, and they take Latin, but they do not teach it via the Churches own prayers. If they taught the Mass in Latin and all of the prayers in Latin, I think our kids would be teaching us parents when they came home at night and it would be incredibly fulfilling. IMO, biggest missed opportunity in Catholic Schools. Totally structure it around the Church and watch what happens.

[@cpnlsn88]

World war II was essentially won by the Allies when a beachhead was formed in Normandy. A lot of battles ensured - of course - but essentially that determined the war one way or another. If you understand one thing in a language you can understand two things. If two then three If three then..... All Christians know the Lord's prayer by heart, the Gloria and the Nicene Creed (or could understand them well if not used in their tradition). Small pieces of the language - but that is always how one begins.

[@JoelAdamson]

Regarding your point about grammar and translation from Aramaic into Greek, some Old English texts translated from Latin have highly idiomatic grammar that is (often taken to be) Old English speakers aping Latin grammar.

[@anthonymilner1851]

Rylands Library Papyrus P52, also known as the St John's fragment is the earliest Gospel writing we have, written around 100 - 175 CE. Earlier to this it has been proposed that any dissemination was probably verbal - 'sayings of Jesus' in both Aramaic & Greek which were later written down.

[@starshipchris4518]

You say you don't know Syriac "yet." That's my target language after Latin. Do you know of any resources for learning it? Many thanks for all your work!

[@Theatf10]

These resources are pretty good for learning Syriac: noahbickart.fastmail.fm.user.fm/Coakley_Robinson_Syriac_Grammar.pdf ia903208.us.archive.org/17/items/Syriac-Aramaic/01.introductionToSyriacAnElementaryGrammar.pdf

[@williambranch4283]

Basics of Classical Syriac by Steven C. Hallam is useful if your first language is English. The Syrian church resources are harder for a beginner. Helps if you are already familiar with another Semitic language of course (Coptic doesn't count).

[@starshipchris4518]

@@williambranch4283 Great, many thanks! I do have some Arabic, and had a tiny bit of Hebrew years ago. What sort of resources does the Syrian church have? I found various resources for Arabic from the Melkites, for one, but not Syriac.

[@williambranch4283]

@@starshipchris4518 Here is a start ... I have studied Arabic and Hebrew earlier. In MS Win 10... install just the text portion of Syriac. There are two keyboards, SY and SY2. SY2 is phonetic, and I prefer that one. WordPad is sufficient to get your text going R-L. In iPad Assyrian (Syriac) aka Estrangela can be added thru Keyboard controls; Pages is sufficient. Estrangela is the usual script used on-line and in scholarship (Unicode). Madnhaya or Serta are used in the churches. I find them harder to read, but search Meltho Fonts or GNU FreeFont (links in Wiki Syriac Alphabet article). There is another Zondervan book that covers the earlier Imperial Aramaic (Book of Daniel) ... the grammar is different; the text is Square Aramaic same as Hebrew. I love Syriac above the others ;-)

[@williambranch4283]

@@starshipchris4518 I gave more response but it disappeared.

[@dreamermagister8561]

Hmm, i cant wait to try out one (probably two) of these ALI courses. But i have to wait untill probably next spring or maybe winter season.

[@albertusjung4145]

Thankyou for yet another interesting video. I studied philosophy and theology at a pontifical univesity in Roma in the 1970s. We were taught - and this is still Catholic teaching - that the koine greek manuscript text of the New Testament is the only divinely inspired text. As then, it is still the accepted view amongst Catholuc scholars, that all the books of the New Testament were composed in Greek, with the possible exception of Saint Matthews Gospel, which, according to the early christian writer Papias, was first written in the "hebrew tongue" (actually, aramaic) and then redacted in Greek (perhaps by a secretary) as the end-version for divulgation. But this is a possibility only. St. Matthews Gospel was definitely addressed to jewish christians, makes many references to jewish customs, events and places, and contains aramaic terms, whereas the other three Gospels do not. There is even a curious ancient hypothesis, that a first draft of St. Marks Gospel might have been compised in Latin, due to its geater amount of Latin terminology. For the rest of the NT books there is no such hypothesis thst I know of. Certainly the Gospels of St. Luke & St. John, as well as the Epistles, are written in an elegant greek style. I do not know what the greek style of the Apocalyose is considered to be, but I have never heard of an original, or first draft, in aramaic. Nota bwne, that the NT authors, when quoting the Old Testament, in most cases quote the greek Septuaginta.

[@genealogiacolorada]

they say that a text was divinely inspired in universities?

[@doubleOnoah]

Interesting video Mr Ranieri! It sparks a question: What clues can help you tell the difference between a later translation of a text, and a text that is simply put down in a second language the first time? (Ευχαριστώ and keep up the nice videos, I like your stuff ☕)

[@doubleOnoah]

BTW have you done a video on Elvish and Finnish??

[@wesleyoverton1145]

I have read the NT in the original Greek almost 5 times, and I just started reading through the whole Septuagint. And I got to thinking: outside of the Byzantine Suda (which is an encyclopedia) is there any other surviving body of literature that is larger in size than the Septuagint? I know Josephus' antiquities is large but I still think the Septuagint is a bit larger. That would be cool to say that you have read the largest body of ancient Greek literature.

[@cpnlsn88]

That is an interesting thought. I love the Septuagint and get a lot from it. From a language point if view it gives you extensive reading. I found in Genesis there is a lot of repetition of words and forms. In some senses it reads a little like a language primer because of how it builds vocabulary and that is an interesting way to look at the book of Genesis. I am not sure that was necessarily the intent but one never knows. If you were teaching Hebrew you'd need some process of teaching language. Same applies in translation to Greek of course. Everyone needs to start somewhere.

[@NikolaiDavis-wg2vp]

Excellent video! I'd like to add that we have an extremely good idea how the Syriac gospel developed, and that the Aramaic tradition has a tendency to avoid literal Translations in favor of what "flows best" in the language. The oldest Aramaic gospel text we have any evidence of (and the oldest to see widespread use at any rate) is the Diatessaron of Tatian, a Harmonic gospel written in Mesopotamia in the early second century if memory serves, when St Ephraim wrote his commentary on the gospel this was the text he used. A little later separate Translations of the individual gospels begin appearing but they still deliberately emulate the style of the Diatessaron over the Greek. Then there's an ongoing process of actively revising the text to be as close to the Greek as possible while flowing naturally in the language which culminates in the Mapaqta Peshitta, which we have attestation of thanks to the Sinai and Cureton manuscripts. There is the other issue that Syriac was if memory serves not yet a major prestige dialect at the time of Christ (I believe that it's status as the single literary standard isn't cemented until the second century but feel free to correct me) and there's no reason it'd be written in that over some form of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic or Greek, with Greek being the most likely candidate because it's a fairly widespread and standardized literary form.

[@mikevanhoecke3516]

Hello Luke from one of your former students near Yokota Air Base. You look good.

[@kalex888]

There is no "debate" my dude

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

I tend to agree

[@SaltynGay]

Hey Luke, my partner is Greek and we were having a discussion about how Ancient Greek and Modern Greek are considered the same language. I'm a speaker of Spanish as a second language and I don't understand how Spanish or Italian are never considered to be the same language as Latin but Modern Greek and Ancient Greek are considered to be the same. Can you make a video explaining this please?

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

I have commented on this in other videos, actually. You may say that Modern Greek is indeed the same language as Ancient Greek, but then you must also concede that Spanish is the same language as Latin, and in fact that Spanish, Italian, French, Romanian, and Portuguese are all just dialects of the same Latin language. This is, of course, not very useful. Why then do Greeks insist that Modern Greek is the same language as Ancient Greek? For them it is useful, for political reasons: to strengthen their claim to classical antiquity. They certainly may claim a strong connexion to it, just as much as Italians and Spaniards may; I think that’s fine. But imagining that Modern Greek is the same language as Ancient Greek, while insisting this is not true for Latin and Spanish, shows profound ignorance of how Greek changed from antiquity to the present, and of the similarities and differences between comparable languages in their transformations through time. However, what constitutes a language or a dialect is ultimately a matter of politics, as I show here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/sIbPf5upbdd9lcksi=w4vBwjTagNjNKPKf

[@SpartanLeonidas1821]

⁠​⁠@@polyMATHY_LukeI don’t think Greeks need to do anything to try to strengthen their claims on Classical Antiquity at all. They don’t need to claim anything, they simply are what they are. Their connection to their history & culture are undeniable & can be easily traced since they are the best documented people group since Antiquity & it is Continuous. Now, if you want to bring up racial purity & other racist concepts, we can also take that route…but it will also be in vein for any of the modern day Failmerayers out there, since Genetics Studies have already confirmed that Modern Day Greeks carry the Majority of their Ancestors DNA in them since the Mycenaean Times. Nobody, of course, is 100% Pure, and you cannot use that as a standard against the Greeks just because they are the oldest continuously documented people since Antiquity still around today. Same goes for their language, the Modern Greek Language is simply the evolution of any & all the forms of Greek that preceded them. So Loukas, stay consistent my friend. DO NOT do: "Dio Metra kai Dio Stathma" originally from the French: "Deux Poids et Deux Mesures" 😉 Also, the definition of what is Ancient Greek needs to be made clearer in your videos because KOINE is ALSO Ancient Greek, I mean the form of 2,300 Year Old Greek is PRETTY DARN ANCIENT in anyones book. And I would challenge any Spaniard or any other Romance Language Speaker who is not trained on Latin to read & comprehend the Latin from that Era, and then do the same for any Modern Greek for the Koine from 2,000+ Years ago. I think the results will answer everyones questions 😉 Let me know if this little experiment interests you

[@SpartanLeonidas1821]

There is probably no other Language in the world where you can hand someone from today a 2,000 Year old document in which they will comprehend over 70%+, and for certain verses/sentences maybe even 90%+ This is why Greeks say we speak the same Language, because Koine of the NEW TESTAMENT (for example) is SO EASY for any modern Greek to understand the Majority. 2,000 Years back, think about how profound that is. I challenge any language to be able to do the same. There are not many choices first of all 😅 This is what Greeks mean. Prior to Koine…okay, so many dialects make it much harder to gather meaning, but still all the words are used in our modern vocabulary, and even the Homeric Roots are used & found as relics in our modern tongue that even there we can understand some meaning depending in the verse. This is the truth my friend, and anything else anyone says is incorrect. I hope Loukas from Loukania sees this & chimes in 😃👌🏻

[@toddvoss52]

Luke if you read French you can likely get hold of Jean Carmignac’s work. And that could help you quite a bit . You can find the English translation of his first work on this but it is expensive because it is out of print with few used copies

[@d3f2r1]

I am a bit like Luke and I took the same journey on learning several languages, apart from my native Brazilian Portuguese (English, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Hebrew, Latin and Greek in my case). I happen to be a practicing Catholic and I really love reading scripture and I can surely affirm that reading translations of the Bible is indeed helpfull for learning a new language, because you already have the narrative vivid in your mind, hence the context itself makes you internalize new words and expressions (given you know some grammar and basic vocabulary, for sure. The Bible is not am easy read at all). As for the Peshitta being the original NT, I really don't think so... Firstly because the Aramaic speakers of Jerusalem could tell really well that Peter sounded like Galilean, and the Peshitta is in Classical Syriac, not Galilean. Secondly, though there sure is some semitiveness in some expressions of the NT Koine, the text we have really does not seem to be a translation, but something originally composed in Greek, by competent Greek speakers. Many jewish writers of that era were using the Greek language and even on Talmudic literature contemporary to that time you find a plenty of greek words amidst the Aramaic and the Hebrew. I have a personal impression that the apostles themselves had a person native to Greek writting down as they were reciting.

[@g.verardi3167]

Not getting into whether the New Testament was written in Greek or Aramaic, I'd like to make a counterpoint purely to your first argument that a translator wouldn't make mistakes or write in an odd fashion when translating a text to his own native language. I disagree, and I see it constantly happening in my own native Portuguese when someones tries to translate something from English. Very often I am able to tell the original text was in English because the people making the translation (who, granted, are not professionals) try to maintain the text as close as possible to the original, disregarding how it would naturally sound in their own original language. For example, just today I saw a translated 4-pannel comic on facebook that read "eu gosto disso!" when referring to a song, like you would say in English "I like it!". The problem is that nobody talks like that, the most natural interjection would be to simply say "adorei!". I'm not talking about idiomatic expressions, that's a given, but rather about sentences that don't come out exactly wrong, just odd, and keeping the "it" in a translation to portuguese and the overuse of personal pronouns are to me the biggest tell-tale signs. Although more prevalent in amateur translations, I've also seen it happen to professionals: there was this Duracell ad on tv where the bunny mascot would sprint and leap around while saying "podemos fazer isso por horas!", which is a clear direct translation from "we can do it for hours!". A more natural way of saying this would be something like "dá pra ficar correndo por horas!", but the inclusion of extra words to the translation is often frowned upon by people who speak English well but who are not good translators. It's a bizarre phenomenon, it seems like the more you know English, the closer to the original you want your translation to be, until you cross a threshold beyond which you realize that the most important is not being faithful to the original words and structure, but to the idea and vibe of the original message, even if you have to change the entire sentence and use completely different words. Just imagine if I translated "dá pra ficar correndo por horas" into "It's possible to keep running for hours!", the sentence itself is not wrong, but it sounds off, doesn't it? It's hard to imagine a running person enthusiastically exclaim "it's possible to keep running for hours!!!!".

[@uppsalarembra]

I would like a future video either on the Pre-Greek substrate or how were Τ, Δ, Θ's pronounced (dental or alveolar ?).

[@nagili4]

It might not be for everyone, but even though English is not a first language of mine, I do love my Nestle-Marshall interlinear Greek-English NT and use it a lot when working with the bible, which in my field of study I do quite often.

[@tommyhuffman7499]

I really like your argument, and I believe without any doubt that the New Testament was written in Greek. I'll probably use the argument myself in the future. But if I may play devil's advocate a little, the Septuaguint translated each book with differing styles - sometimes to smooth Greek, and sometimes clunky to the point of being incomprehensible (or so I've read). I mostly study Russian. I occasionally read from the Bible in Russian. I find the gospels the easiest, since they speak of concrete events. I pretty much get lost in the epistles or Old Testament.

[@renaissanceman419]

8:25 As a sort of response to this, as somebody who doesn't have a view, is to point to the Vulgate of Jerome. We know that Jerome was a very good Latinist, yet the Vulgate is not exactly idiomatic Latin. This is because St Jerome cared about producing a close, word for word, translation of the texts which he had. I don't see why a hypothetical translator of Mark may start with an Aramaic or Hebrew original, considering these writings sacred, wouldn't attempt to replicate this sort of formal equivalence in his Greek text. We know that this sort of thing happened even prior to Christ. For instance, the Torah portion of the LXX, which was translated in about the 3rd Century BC, I understand attempted something similar.

[@cahallo5964]

I didn't use the Bible for learning another languague, but I used to study language change, very interesting to see verb conjugations and such fall out of use over time.

[@yordanyscalvo7298]

Greetings from Havana, Cuba. Can you do a reading of Old Spanish or Castilian as you are an expert in Old Latin, from El Cid Campeador, Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar? Love your channel.

[@davidbraun6209]

During my undergraduate days at UF in Gainesville, Florida, I'd attend the 5:30 p.m. daily Mass. The library at the Catholic Student center had the collection of the late Archbishop Hurley, (died in 1968) sometime bishop of the diocese of St. Augustine. In his library was (among other items) a copy of the Bible in Latin, but its New Testament (edition of Augustin Merk, S.J.) had the Greek en face. I often grabbed it and followed the Gospel in either the Greek original or the Vulgate. If the first reading was from the New Testament, I followed it that way as well (even though the reading was by then being done in English). My paternal grandmother had bought a copy of Luther's New Testament and Psalms when she was courting my paternal grandfather, for whom German or a dialect variant was his first language. Dad had a Missal with the Ordinary of the Mass in Latin and Spanish and propers (i.e., parts assigned to a particular day) for all the Sundays and certain feasts in Spanish.

[@genealogiacolorada]

thanks for all the details. love the parentheses.

[@joeldiaz7416]

The bible is great for language learning, especially if you are familiar with it. Even if you aren't, some passages are so simple that it would be easy to read and practice with them (like John chapter 1 or Genesis 1). I read my bible in German, Greek, Latin, a little in Hebrew, as well as my native Spanish and English. It definitely helps. It also helps that it's probably one of, if not the most widely translated book there is. The trinitarian bible society sells bibles online for cheap in dozens of languages :)

[@keitholding8541]

I have no great knowledge of the subject (small Latin and Less Greek), but isn't one small support for it being in Greek Matthew 16:18, "You are Peter and on this rock I will build my church"? This seems to be a play on words that only works in Greek, with "Petros" and "Petra"

[@pierreabbat6157]

It works with Aramaic "Kifa" too; this name is sometimes left untranslated in the Greek.

[@keitholding8541]

@@pierreabbat6157 Ah, interesting to know.

[@Uthwita]

How would you recommend one begin studying Ancient Greek on their own?

[@Una_profe]

I read the bible in Spanish, English, Italian and French❤

[@iberius9937]

Great topic! I myself got into a debate with someone on Telegram about this. Needless to say, it went nowhere even after I conceded to try to be more open minded about it because he never provided the solid evidence I asked him to give me about this that supports Aramaic primacy, which is very telling. At this point, I feel it's almost wishful thinking on the part of those who are so in favor of Aramaic primacy. That said, your reason for lightly questioning this idea is all that needs to be said about this topic. They were writing in less than ideal Koine Greek to reach their wide audience, therefore it makes zero sense for them to first have written all the gospels in Aramaic and only then still translate it into "bad" Greek. In addition, do Peshitta primacists not realize that the Syriac translation is from the 4th or 5th century AD rather than from the time of Christ?

[@JasperSynth]

Bought a Portuguese-English Bible. Best purchase ever.

[@mikemoreno4469]

There is another possibility - that the author of a particular work in the New Testament wrote the original in Aramaic/Syriac and then he, himself, translated it into Greek despite not being very fluent in Greek.

[@ksbrook1430]

No doubt several languages were involved in sharing the events of Jesus' ministry and of the activities of the early church. It makes sense that the "lingua franca" if the region (koine greek) would be used to compile and distribute the narratives. But it does not exclude aramaic - both in oral history and in possible shorter records. Think about the event of Pentecost, where people of various countries could understand the message of the disciples - they would have carried that back to their homes and related it in their own language.

[@jasonbaker2370]

Well done video! This is a topic that has interested me for years and you’re right the vast majority of the evidence shows that Greek was the original language. I still want to learn Syriac at some point though regardless, but probably after the 200 years it will take me to perfect my Greek and Latin first 😂 I definitely need to purchase your new recordings of John! ❤