From: pharvey@quack.sac.ca.us (Paul Harvey)
Subject: Re: Problems with Paul's history of Jesus
Organization: The Duck Pond public unix: +1 408 249 9630, log in as 'guest'.
	<fVs9KXt@quack.sac.ca.us> <1992Nov19.194604.4997@digi.lonestar.org>
Date: 22 Nov 1992 20:21:52 UTC

In article <1992Nov19.194604.4997@digi.lonestar.org> 
gpalo@digi.lonestar.org (Gerry Palo) writes:
>No, I don't mean his reincarnation.  I am firmly convinced that
>Christ incarnated once and only once in Jesus of Nazareth, that he
>died, and rose again. And that he will come again, but not ever again
>in a fleshly body.

OK, Jesus incarnated once in Jesus of Nazareth. Then he died and rose
again, that's the second incarnation, and he will come again, that's the
third incarnation. Now, all these incarnations are different, right?
Hence, reincarnation, multiple incarnations.

>The resurrection is something entirely different 
>and of the most enormous significance, for the whole of creation, let alone 
>for individual human souls.  This is critical to an understanding of
>reincarnation in the light of Christianity.  Likewise the idea of 
>salvation, of redemption through the deed of Christ on Golgotha takes
>on a new dimension when it is seen as a process of growth, not all
>at once and absolutely, but over a longer period of time  through
>many earth lives, the cycle of which in due course will also have a
>final end.
>The point is that reincarnation and karma in the light of Christianity
>is revealed to be something quite different than it was understood to
>be in the older eastern religions.  This is important, because a number
>of new age movements are looking for a reincarnation of Christ to happen.
>It would be a most grievous error to think that Christ will appear again
>in an earthly physical incarnation. 

Incarnations don't have to be into a physical human body. And how will
Christ reappear if not as a physical incarnation. Note that what you are
saying is that Christ exists in some form now that is not apparent to
most of us but that in the future Christ will incarnate into a form,
though not physical, that will be apparent to most of us. Right?

>This is only a sketchy indication, but I felt it needed to be said.
>I would be happy to discuss it further, including by e-mail.

Please, discuss it further. You're thinking and being creative and that's
certainly something we could use more of here.

>As four first paragraph, there is good evidence to believe that Jesus
>actually did speak Greek most of the time.

This may be possible, but it goes against the theory that he was an
uneducated man and was Jewish. Uneducated Hellenistic Jews at the time
spoke Aramaic, educated ones spoke and read and perhaps wrote Hebrew.

>It was the lingua franca
>of the Roman Empire (even the Romans didn't speak Latin except in 
>court).

The Roman Empire was composed of two major parts, the Western and
Eastern (the old Greek Empire). Latin was the "official" language 
of the Western Empire and Greek was the "official" language of the 
Eastern Empire. Science, Philosophy, Art, etc was the pastime of the 
Greeks so a scholar in either region would study in Greek. Warfare, 
Civil Engineering, Politics, etc was the pastime of the Romans so a 
scholar in either region would study these subjects in Latin. The Romans 
viewed the Greeks as "classical" much as we view the Romans today.

>The Jewish Bible was written in Greek, and certainly all but
>the very lowest classes spoke Greek rather than Aramaic.

The Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek as the Septuagint
because Hebrew was becoming unknown amongst the Hellenistic Jews who
were not very good Hebrew students. The center of Judaism had moved to
Babylon at this time and it was there that the study of the scriptures
directly in Hebrew was kept alive. Aramaic, another Semitic language,
had become the spoken language of the Hellenistic Jews and the popular
oral translation of the Hebrew into that language was known as the
Targums. Hebrew and Greek were only used by the educated classes.

>And even the
>poorer classes most likely knew enough Koine to get along.  As for
>Hebrew, it is acknowledged that only a small number of the rabinnical
>sect around Jerusalem cultivated Hebrew any more.

In the former lands of Israel. The nation was destroyed by Babylon and
it was in Babylon that Judaism survived. The center of Hebrew study was
Babylon.

>So it is very possible
>that the recorded words of Christ are really what he said in the original
>language.

Possible, but not very likely. We have no texts called the Gospel
according to Jesus.

>There are a few places where he apparently did speak Aramaic,
>and often these places are indicated by the gospel writers.

Why would Jesus speak in Aramaic at all, if it wasn't his native
language? Greek was the language of the empire, Hebrew was the language
of Judaism and Aramaic was the language of the Hellenistic Jews. If
Jesus spoke in Greek, whom was he speaking to?

>A few years ago I heard a lecture in Germany from a linguistic
>scholar, the late Karl Friedrich Althoff, on this subject.  Althoff was
>as fluent as you and I are in English in all the dialects of ancient Greek 
>from Attic to Koine and even modern Greek, Hebrew, classical and medieval 
>Latin, Aramaic, and even Sanskrit.  A really remarkable man.  He had an 
>inner sense for each language that is really rare.  Well, he tried an 
>experiment of rendering the Lord's Prayer in Hebrew and Aramaic.  He 
>discovered, to his expert ears anyway, that the Lord's Prayer could not
>be rendered in Hebrew or Aramaic, and couldn't be a translation, especially 
>from the latter. He went into some detail, which I have since forgotten, 
>and it certainly was a matter beyond the subtlety of my language ability,
>but I thought it was interesting.  Anyway, there was recently an article 
>in Biblical Review, or Biblical Archaeology Review, or one of those, that
>advocates the same thing.

This argument doesn't make sense to me. If one assumes that the Lord's
Prayer in Greek is the basis of comparison, then of course it is
difficult to render it into another language, certainly a language from
a different family. I think you could make the same argument about some
of the English from the KJV. I don't see how this supports a claim that
the form taken as the base is the form originally used. In the case of
the so-called OT, we have most of the Hebrew to compare the English KJV
to and so it becomes easy to make a value judgement since the KJV claims
to be a translation of the Hebrew. But, in the case of the so-called NT,
all we have is Greek to the best of my knowledge. Assuming Jesus to have
spoken in Aramaic, we do not have any record of what he said in that
language, thus nothing to compare to. Since all we have is Greek, of
course it is difficult to translate Greek into Aramaic and the result is
that the Aramaic can be said to be a translation and not the original.
But, is that any kind of proof that the original we no longer have was
not in Aramaic or any other language?

>As for your question about whether Jesus existed at all, that debate
>I leave to others on this forum.

There is little to debate because there is almost no information about
Jesus. Even the Greek Gospels are scant or contradictory on the historical 
record of Jesus.
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