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Navina -> RE: Rewriting the bible to suit your agenda (12/7/2009 1:57:07 PM)
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I am posting this on behalf of Demspotis, as Collarme isn't letting him put the post through due to a bug in the system.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Arpig
One of the main advantages of the bible is that it is written in a collection of long dead languages so one can retranslate & reinterpret to one's heart's delight.
The Bible was written in three languages. The older, Jewish, portion was written mainly in Hebrew, with a small part in the closely related Aramaic language. The Christian addition are usually thought to have been written originally in Greek, although some believe that some parts of the Christian scripture may have been first written in Hebrew or Aramaic, and later translated into Greek.
None of those three languages is "dead". Aside from "living" languages (which are learned by children as first languages and used in daily life by a group of people), and "dead" languages (which are not used, although they may be studied by scholars and amateur enthusiasts), there is a third category of languages, which can be called "literary" or "liturgical". These languages are not spoken as a first language, nor in every-day life, but they are kept alive in religious and/or academic spheres, so that there is a continuity (or sometimes a revival) of study, use and understanding. Such languages are in use, sometimes as a medium of communication among scholars, sometimes in literature, including scripture, and in many cases, new work is composed in them as well (a good way to distinguish between "dead" languages and "literary" ones).
A few examples may help. There are three other languages popularly thought to be "dead" which are in fact still in use to the present day in those ways: Latin, Sanskrit, and Egyptian. In the case of Egyptian, the "modern" form is not written in hieroglyphs, but in a modified form of the Greek alphabet. Being that it is used by Coptic Orthodox Church, it has borrowed a fair amount of ecclesiastical language from Greek, too, but even such central religious terms as words for God and priest are native Egyptian words, and not the Greek equivalents like ho theos and presbyteros. The Roman Catholic Church has never stopped using Latin for its official purposes; and Sanskrit remains an important and lively part of Hindu culture, and also influential for several other religions of Indian origin.
So, as for the Biblical languages: Greek and Hebrew are very much alive, although the modern languages have some differences from the forms of the languages in which those texts were written. Even those ancient versions have been continually studied, and used, in the religious and academic world. Aramaic may still be alive in one or two small communities in the Middle East... I've seen some articles saying so... but in any case it has also been continuously studied and used. Observant Jews in the Rabbinical tradition all learn Aramaic from childhood, in order to study the Talmud, and of course, they learn Biblical Hebrew in order to study the Bible... and medieval Hebrew in order to study the voluminous commentaries that their sages have produced over the centuries. Meanwhile, several Christian denominations in the Middle East use Aramaic (sometimes under other names, such as Syriac and Assyrian) at least for religious purposes, and whether or not they are able to speak it in daily life, they regard it as a major part of their heritage and culture.
Thus, even taking into account the archaic nature of the Biblical dialects, they are all at the very least "literary" and "liturgical" languages, even if not "living languages" in the usual sense of being spoken as first languages and used in daily life.
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