They are not Christians!

[Mountain Man]

Ah so no valid answer then?

If there's a good reason to believe that John 3:16 does not accurately quote Jesus, you certainly have not presented it.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

If there's a good reason to believe that John 3:16 does not accurately quote Jesus, you certainly have not presented it.

Why should I cast my literary pearls before swine who will ignore and reject what I write?

[tabibito]

It seems that rogue06 might even consider Jesus of Nazareth to have been a polyglot!

Contrary to parochial opinion, poly-lingual societies tend to produce poly-lingual children.

[Mountain Man]

Why should I cast my literary pearls before swine who will ignore and reject what I write?

In other words, you don't have a good reason for thinking that John 3:16 is an inaccurate quote and are inviting others to wink at your ignorance.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Contrary to parochial opinion, poly-lingual societies tend to produce poly-lingual children.

On what attested historical evidence are you suggesting rural Galilee was polylingual?

[rogue06]

There was NO middle class in early first century Palestine provinces.


Wrong. Galileans spoke Galilean Aramaic. That was their language.
Pretending that Jesus used Gfreek names or uundderstood Greek is just rubbish.
The Southern Jews spoke Western Aramaic, the two could understand each other but ciould distinguish from each other, but Simon's given name was CEPHAS.


Gennesaret is nowhere near Damascus....... the people had different currency and speech.
If people usually write and talk in the language that they use, why do you use 'Christ', or the Aramaic Meshiah? etc?

No.

Given that you had one of the cities of the Decapolis (Hippos) as well as Tiberias, which was founded by Herod Antipas in 20 A.D., along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, where Greek was the primary language, and that people from the Decapolis came to listen to his sermons (Matthew 4:23-25), it is likely that Jesus picked up at the very minimum, a few Greek words and phrases. Sort of like how English speakers along our southern border pick up at the very least some Spanish words and phrases.

Here is a bit more regarding whether or not Jesus knew some Greek.

Source: Did Jesus Speak Greek?

[...]


But it’s not right for me to simply wish for Jesus to speak Greek because that would make me feel safer from challenge. So I did some study in my journals in Logos -- this is precisely the kind of question that is too complicated for commentaries to handle and too narrow for monographs. So to journals I turned. And I was happy to see one of the premier New Testament scholars of the day directly taking up my question: Stanley Porter, in “Did Jesus Ever Teach In Greek?” (Tyndale Bulletin 44, no. 1 [1993]: 199–235).

I’m not going to do original research for this post; Porter’s command of the primary sources far exceeds my own. But I’m going to list in detail the major reasons why Porter’s answer to his own titular question was “Yes.” Jesus did most likely, at least on occasion, teach in Greek.

Porter says that “evidence is increasing that [lower Galilee] was the Palestinian area most heavily influenced by Greek language and culture.” Porter cites several books, as well as this interesting article by eminent Roman Catholic Joseph Fitzmyer (who writes, “There are some indications that Palestinian Jews in some areas may have used nothing else but Greek”), but Porter also points to evidence within the text of Scripture. We’ll start there.

Biblical Evidence

1. “One indication of the pervasive influence of Greek [is that] in Acts 6:1 (cf. 9:29) a distinction is made between Ἐλληνισταί and Ἑβραῖοι, probably a linguistic distinction made between Jews who spoke mainly Greek and those who spoke mainly Aramaic or who also spoke Aramaic. Before the third century A.D. these terms were virtually exclusively linguistic terms referring to language competence. To distinguish those outside Palestine as Greek speakers would not have been necessary (it would have been assumed), but apparently there was a significant part of the population that spoke mostly Greek even of those resident in Jerusalem.”
2. “The seven men appointed in Acts 6:5 to serve the Greek-speaking constituency all have Greek names.”
3. “Referred to as the ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’ in Matthew 4:15, lower Galilee was a center for trade among the Mediterranean, Sea of Galilee and Decapolis regions. Galilee was completely surrounded by hellenistic culture.”
4. “Matthew (Mt. 9:9; Lk. 5:27-28) or Levi (Mk. 2:13-14), the tax collector in Capernaum, would probably have known Greek in order to conduct his duties with the local taxpayers and the tetrarch Herod Antipas’s officials. Many of Jesus’ disciples were fishermen who worked the Sea of Galilee, including Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John. They almost assuredly would have needed to conduct in Greek much of their business of selling fish.”

Extrabiblical Evidence

Porter also points to evidence from outside the Bible.

"More impressive than what is known even of Galilee for establishing the probability that Jesus spoke Greek is the epigraphic and literary evidence for the widespread knowledge of Greek throughout Palestine including Galilee…. That Greek was used not only in the Diaspora but also in Palestine, even for composition by Jews of distinctly Jewish literature including much religious literature, indicates that Greek was an important and widely used language by a sizable portion of the Palestinian Jewish population."

Porter gives several examples of literary evidence for the use of Greek:

1. “There have been a number of papyrus texts (including a number of fragments) found in Palestine written in Greek by Jews. The papyri of the Judaean Desert include a wide range and variety of artifacts, such as commercial transactions, fiduciary notes, contracts of marriage, and fragments of philosophical and literary texts, among others.”
2. “So far as Jewish literature is concerned, there is also significant evidence of composition being done in Greek in Palestine by Jews for Jewish audiences. For example, the book of Daniel, besides using Greek names to refer in 3:5 to three musical instruments (lyre, harp and pipes [NIV]), and being composed in Hebrew and Aramaic, in its deuterocanonical form includes additional sections composed in Greek (Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Children, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon).”
3. “Worth noting as well is the fact that, although 2 Esdras and Judith were written in Hebrew, they survive virtually entirely or at least in significant part in Greek versions, quite possibly reflecting Jewish linguistic priorities for preservation of religious texts.”

Inscriptional Evidence

Porter also gives examples from inscriptions.

"The inscriptional evidence points in the same direction…. There are a number of crucial texts that do point to the early and sustained, widespread use of Greek in Palestine and in particular in Galilee."

For example:

1. “Kee notes that ‘when the synagogue movement began to flourish and to take on architectural forms in the second century C.E., the inscriptions were in Greek, even in Jerusalem.’”
2. “The best indicator of the language of the common people is the sepulchral inscriptions, and the evidence certainly indicates a widespread and constant use of Greek in Palestine, including especially Galilee. To put the evidence from funerary inscriptions into its proper context, it is worth noting that, according to the latest statistics on published inscriptions, 68% of all of the ancient Jewish inscriptions from the Mediterranean world are in Greek (70% if one counts as Greek bilingual inscriptions with Greek as one of the languages).”

Porter concludes from the above:

"In the light of this accumulated evidence, which is overwhelming when compared to the equivalent Aramaic evidence, it is surprising that many scholars have not given more consideration to the hypothesis that Jesus spoke and even possibly taught in Greek."

So what about Jesus’ own speech as recorded in the New Testament? Does it point in the same direction?

Evidence from the Recorded Speech of Jesus


Porter thinks so. He offers this evidence from within Jesus’ own words in the New Testament:

1. “The first and most important example, and the one that sets the tenor for the subsequent treatment of passages, is Jesus’ trial before Pilate (Mk. 15:2-5; Mt. 27:11-14; Lk. 23:2-5; Jn. 18:29- 38; cf. 1 Tim. 6:13). It is highly unlikely that Pilate, the prefect assigned to this remote posting in the Roman empire, would have known any Semitic language. No translator or interpreter is mentioned for the conversation that occurs between Jesus and Pilate, making it unlikely that Latin or Aramaic was used. In fact, the pace of the narrative, in which conversation is held between not only Pilate and Jesus but Pilate and the Jewish leaders, Pilate and the crowd, and the Jewish leaders and the crowd, argues against an interpreter intervening. It is most likely, therefore, that Jesus spoke to Pilate in Greek.”

And that brings us back to the diminutive κυνάριον and Jesus’ conversation with the Syrophoenician woman. Porter actually cites this very passage as a reason to believe that Jesus spoke Greek:

1. “The first example of a passage in which Jesus may well have spoken Greek is Mark 7:25-30, when Jesus travels to the area of Tyre. A woman with a daughter possessed by an evil spirit hears of his presence there and begs for Jesus’ help. The woman is called in Mark’s Gospel a Ἑλληνίς, a Συροφοινίκισσα by birth, i.e. a gentile (7:26). Even though the indigenous language of the area was Semitic, this area had long been under hellenistic influence (and antagonistic to the Jews; see Josephus, Ag. Ap. 1.69-72) and evidenced widespread use of Greek, as has been noted above. The description of the woman in the Gospel makes sure that the reader knows that the woman was a Greek-speaker despite her birth. Otherwise the reference is gratuitous. There is no indication of an interpreter being present.”

Did Jesus speak Greek? The New Testament doesn’t directly answer all the questions we like to ask it. But when combined with archaeological evidence, Porter concludes that

"the evidence regarding what is known about the use of Greek in ancient Palestine, including the cosmopolitan hellenistic character of lower Galilee, the epigraphic and literary evidence, including coins, papyri, literary writers, inscriptions and funerary texts, but most of all several significant contexts in the Gospels, all points in one direction: whereas it is not always known how much and on which occasions Jesus spoke Greek, it is virtually certain that he used Greek at various times in his itinerant ministry."

Source

© Copyright Original Source

Source: Did Jesus speak Greek?

[...]

We may not be able to resolve these questions, but we can at least ask what a typical person with Jesus’s life experience would have known, while bearing in mind that Jesus was very much not a typical person.

According to Matthew 2:13–21, Joseph took Mary and Jesus into Egypt to escape Herod. There Mary and Joseph would have needed to communicate in Greek for some time. They returned to Nazareth where Joseph was a “carpenter” (Greek tektōn, τέκτων), which can mean someone who works with wood or stone. But if, as scholars often suggest, Nazareth was a tiny hamlet, then clearly Joseph did not restrict his business merely to servicing the hamlet, but undertook work for those further afield.

One place nearby where we know there was lots of construction work was Sepphoris, Galilee’s capital until AD 19. The absence of mention of Sepphoris in the Gospels is hardly surprising since they relate so little about the area where Jesus grew up. There are, however, plenty of reasons to think that Jesus would have gone there. It was:

• Less than four miles away
• Visible from Nazareth
• On the main road north of Nazareth on the way to Cana, where Jesus had connections
• The traditional hometown of Mary (according to the sixth-century account of the Piacenza Pilgrim)

So Mary, Joseph and Jesus may have had extensive exposure to Greek in that city. It’s also interesting to note that Sepphoris had a theatre. Does Jesus’s use of the word “hypocrite” (Greek hypokrites, ὑποκριτής, meaning “actor”) stem from the fact that Greek plays would have been regularly performed just over an hour’s walk from his house?

John 7:3 and 7:10 present Jesus’s brothers as regarding attendance in Jerusalem during the Feast of Tabernacles as usual. Luke 2:42 presents Joseph, Mary and their wider family as customary attendees at a festival in Jerusalem, while Matthew and Luke present Jesus as one who had visited Jerusalem often (Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:34). Greek speaking is well attested in Jerusalem, and during festival time the proportion of Greek speakers would rise considerably because of the presence of Diaspora Jews on pilgrimage. It is not unreasonable to suppose that Jesus would have interacted with Greek speakers on these occasions.

In Galilee, Jesus is presented as an itinerant teacher who went through a wide range of towns and villages (Matthew 9:35; Mark 6:6, 56; Luke 8:1, 13:22), including the villages of Caesarea Philippi (Mark 8:27), which was dominated by Greek culture. He also sent his disciples into different towns and villages (Matthew 10:11; Luke 9:6). If he really sent 70 (or 72) in pairs to “every city and place where he was about to come” (Luke 10:1), then presumably the teams went to several villages or towns each and we should not assume that they only talked to Aramaic speakers. Itinerant teachers by their very nature must adapt to the languages of their audiences.

Jesus had two disciples with Greek names: Andrew and Philip. In fact, Andrew, whose parents gave him a relatively rare Greek name, was one of the four men in a common fishing business from which Jesus selected his three innermost disciples, with whom Andrew could sometimes tag along (Mark 13:3).

The likelihood that Jesus had Greek-speaking disciples is highlighted in John 12:20–23, where a group of Greeks specifically approach Philip who then in turn approaches Andrew. Philip and Andrew then together approach Jesus about the Greeks.

In John 7:35 the crowd even speculates that Jesus might leave them and go and teach Greeks, which presumably means they thought he could speak Greek.

[...]


Source[/source]

© Copyright Original Source

Finally, starts out a bit narrow in scope but makes a good point about how widespread its use actually was, before getting to the main question

Source: Did Jesus speak Greek?

[...]

Israel had been part of the Hellenistic world ever since the fourth century BC Asian conquest of Alexander the Great, and the influence of Greek culture in it was thorough and swift. A simple flip through the names of the Hosmonean rulers of the region in the wake of the Maccabean revolt of 167-160 BC gives us a clear picture of this. Although the local revolution by the Maccabees was done to illustrate a distaste for the mix of Jewish and Greek culture, the dynasty that emerged from it was thoroughly Hellenized.

The five brothers who successfully led the Maccabean uprising and ruled in its aftermath, Yehuda (Judah), Yonatan (Joathan), Yohanan (John), Shim’on (Simon), and Elazar, all had strictly Jewish names. However, after Shim’on’s death in 134 BC, the last of the brothers to rule Israel, the only successor was his son Yohanan Hykanus (134-104 BC), who’s name was a Hebrew-Greek mix. This was true for his following sons, Aristobulus Yehudah, who ruled for one year, and Alexander Jannaeu, who controlled Judea until his death in 76 BC. Alexander Jannaeus’ sons were simply known as Hyrkanus II and Aristobulus II, both thoroughly Greek names with no Jewish additives.

By the time we get to the first century AD, Greek names were just as popular. Of Jesus’ twelve disciples two had Greek names: Andrew and Philip. Andrew’s parents called their oldest son Simon, which works equally well in Hebrew or Greek, but when they had another son they gave him a rather rare name which works exclusively in Greek. This suggests that they either spoke Greek or aspired to speak Greek.

Although it is often claimed that the other ten disciples held Hebrew / Aramaic names, this is not entirely true. Hebrew names can end in any letter but Greek words and names only end with a vowel or the sound “n,” “s,” or “r.” If we look at the list given in Matthew 10:2-4, apart from the two Simons, all the rest end with a Greek “s.” This does not necessarily mean that the names Thomas, Bartholomaios, or Iakabos (James) are Greek, but it does mean they are presented as “nativised” with Greek terminations. It was not uncommon to adopt Hebrew Old Testament names like Iacob (Hebrew) vs. Iakobos (Greek) (cf. Matthew 1:2, 10:2) or Mariam (Hebrew) and Maria (Greek), all of which have convenient Greek equivalents.

In Jesus’ immediate family we have Greek-adapted endings to Old Testament names in Iakobs and Ioudas, or a Greek and Hebrew name in Simon. The only purely Hebrew name for a sibling was Joseph (Matt. 13:55), named after his father but adapted to Greek morphology in the form of Joses in Mark 6:3. In fact, all of Jesus’ disciples and siblings have evidence of adaptation to Greek endings. Even the name Jesus ends with “s” because of its accessibility in the Greek language.

We even start to see Hebrew / Greek synchronization with some names in the gospelsr like bar-Tamaois (a Hebrew beginning and Greek ending. Mark 10:46 mentions a beggar named bar-Timaios. “Bar” is Aramaic for “son of,” but Timaios is the name of Plato’s character Timaeus of Locri, the namesake of Plato’s famous monologue. Whether there was an understanding of the origin of this important name or not, it is nonetheless evidence of thorough Greek adoption within the culture.

Greek culture had so saturated in Jewish society in Jesus’ day that the religious ruling council was known as the “Sanhedrin,” which is Greek not Hebrew or Aramaic. Greek was on the coins of this time period, and Greek is the main transcriptional language we find in artifacts of Jesus’ day. You would be hard pressed to find even Aramaic writing that didn’t include at least some semblance of fusion with Greek words and phrases.

None of this is evidence Jesus could speak Greek, but it is interesting to see the Hellenization that took place in a nearly exclusively Jewish Roman province.

So, did Jesus speak Greek?

Throughout Jesus’ ministry we see some very interesting examples of interactions that seem to make far more sense if they happened in Greek. For example, Jesus’ conversation with Pilate at his interrogation (Mark 15:2-3, Matthew 27:11-14, Luke 23:2-4, John 18:29-38), his conversation with the Roman centurion (Matthew 8:5-13, John 4:46-54), or his interaction with the Syrophoenician (or Canaanite gentile) woman (Mark7:25-30, Matthew 15:21-28). These examples make the most sense if, taking into considering both the flow of the conversation (as it’s recorded in the Greek gospels) as well as who these individuals Jesus is speaking to are, speaking Greek specifically and not Aramaic or Hebrew.

Either way, the language spoken at that time was a bit of a mix. For example, in Matthew 5:22 it is recorded that Jesus says “But whoever says to his brother' ‘Raca’ will be liable to the Sanhedrin.” If Jesus spoke these words in Aramaic, he used the Greek-origin word “Sanhedrin” in the sentence. If he spoke that sentence in Greek, he still used the Aramaic word “raca.” This is just one example of many that we can see being a mix of cultures and languages. First century Aramaic would have been interspersed with all sorts of Greek phrases and terms.

Although not specifically the first century, we do know that Greek ended up becoming seamless with a lot of the regional dialects like Coptic and Syriac between the second and fourth centuries. One only has to look through lexicons of these two languages to see that Coptic, as it was read in the fourth century, had developed into just over 15% Greek in its vocabulary.

Another fascinating example pointing to a high probability of Jesus speaking Greek is that within the Gospel of Matthew Jesus starts his opening speech with alliteration of Greek words. The first four beatitudes in Matthew 5:3-6 all begin with pi (π):


”Blessed are the poor (πτωχοὶ - ‘ptochoi’)…”
”…those who mourn (πενθοῦντες - ‘penthountes’)…”
”…the meek (πραεῖς - ‘praeis’)…”
”…those who hunger (πεινῶντες - ‘peinontes’)…”

In fact, Greek alliteration is all over the place in this sermon. Matthew 5:6 states, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” Thirst is the word “διψῶντες” (dipsontes) and righteousness is “δικαιοσύνην” (dikaiosynen).

[...]

Source

© Copyright Original Source

The latter continues getting into the Beatitudes then makes another good point

Matthew 4:25 states that “Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him.” Broad Galilean Aramaic would not have helped the folks form the notoriously Greek Decapolis. It is far more likely that those from “Jerusalem, Judea…. and the region across the Jordan” would have spoken Greek as opposed to those from the Decapolis speaking Aramaic / Hebrew.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

eider Watch out! Left to his own speculations rogue06 would have you believe Peter and his brother were in the process of building up a multi-national fishing business - along the lines of an ancient Trident Seafoods!

[rogue06]

eider Watch out! Left to his own speculations rogue06 would have you believe Peter and his brother were in the process of building up a multi-national fishing business - along the lines of an ancient Trident Seafoods!

Straw man depictions don't even begin to cover your feeble and desperate buffoonery.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

In other words, you don't have a good reason for thinking that John 3:16 is an inaccurate quote and are inviting others to wink at your ignorance.

Contrary to pious beliefs, the four canonical gospels are not accurate and contemporary accounts of alleged events.

In her book Courting Betrayal: Jesus as Victim in the Gospel of John, Helen C. Orchard compares John chapter 3 verse 16 with Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac who, like Jesus, is the only begotten son.

Abraham's willingness to obey Yahweh and sacrifice his only son brings blessings on himself and also his descendants. The sacrifice of Jesus will save the nations of the world. However, benefits accruing from both can only be achieved by faith. The faith of Abraham that Yahweh will be true to his promise found in Genesis chapter seventeen verses five to eight and the faith of the believer in the name of the only son of God [John chapter three verse eighteen].

Orchard also draws attention to that other only begotten child who is sacrificed, the daughter of Jephthah and who submits to her fate which is the result of a foolish promise by her father. However, and unlike Isaac. there is reprieve for her [no ram in the thicket]. So too with Jesus he will, as she did, go to his fate with no interventions from God.

Orchard also draws parallels between Jesus and the suffering servant of Isaiah. That figure also suffers violence and slander, despite being innocent and like Jesus has no defenders.

[Mountain Man]

Contrary to pious beliefs, the four canonical gospels are not accurate and contemporary accounts of alleged events.

The rest of your post that follows this assertion, while mildly interesting, does nothing to support your claim that "the four canonical gospels are not accurate and contemporary accounts", nor have you offered anything to support your contention that John 3:16 does not accurately quote the words of Jesus.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

The rest of your post that follows this assertion, while mildly interesting, does nothing to support your claim that "the four canonical gospels are not accurate and contemporary accounts".

If these four texts are indeed eye-witness accounts of events, why do are there so many contradictions in them?

[tabibito]

If these four texts are indeed eye-witness accounts of events, why do are there so many contradictions in them?

Most of the contradictions can be attributed to defects in the readers' lenses.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Most of the contradictions can be attributed to defects in the readers' lenses.

I am still waiting for you to address this:

On what attested historical evidence are you suggesting rural Galilee was polylingual?

[Mountain Man]

If these four texts are indeed eye-witness accounts of events, why do are there so many contradictions in them?

Does this really need to be answered? Surely you're aware that multiple people giving an eyewitness description of something can present sometimes wildly differing accounts.

But we've been down this rabbit trail before, and I'll present the same challenge I have previously: for the sake of argument, let's toss out every point where you believe the gospels disagree, and keep all points on which they are in total agreement. Based on what's left, are you willing to accept that Jesus really did rise from the dead, since the gospels are in complete agreement on that point?

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

Does this really need to be answered? Surely you're aware that multiple people giving an eyewitness description of something can present sometimes wildly differing accounts.

That is an excuse provided by some believers who cannot adequately address the question.