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Re: orion Spoken DSS Hebrew

Mr. Hays 
  Where do you have sources for this. Hellenization dictated the use of
Greek by locals as the official language. This was the very nature of the
phenomena called Hellenistic civilization. It is well known that Egyptians
had two faces, an Egyptian speaking and practicing one and a face
doing a sort of Greek impersonation. 
  Jews spoke the languages of their cultural background.For example Hebrew
is now spoken in modern Israel, but some traditional Jews still speak in
Yiddish others in Arabic. Remember the Jews are a diaspora people who may
draw upon several regions and sources of their linguistic heritage.
Also remember that Jews were heavily concentrated in Babylonia at this
time. Please take into consideration demographic and historical realities.
For example, the CPJ is mostly Greek sources from Egypt written by 
Jews.Many are contempory to the DSS. There is too much out there to
suggest that Jews were monolingual as a culture at any period of time
after the Babylonian diaspora. 
  By the way, who speaks Jewish?

Harrison

On Wed, 26 Nov 1997, John Hays wrote:

> I wish I could make this subject as simple as some people seem to be
> able to. Bradley Harrison can follow this thread only half-heartedly,
> because he seems to be sure of the situation. I unfortunately am not.
> 
> Do we agree that the Jews spoke several languages? Well, I can't really
> answer this question. I know that some spoke one language and some
> another. But I have no idea of the percentages and no idea if many
> people could speak more than one language. I can see no necessary lines
> to argue one way or another.
> 
> Jerusalem was on "the outskirts of civilization" for the Persians, the
> Ptolemids, the Seleucids, the Romans etc, and so the only speakers of
> the related languages seen by the Jews were the odd representatives of
> those powers, and often they were actually Jews who would have spoken
> Jewish in Jerusalem and the official language to the direct
> representatives of those powers. Any parallels with the Egyptian
> situation would have to be constructed, though I don't think a related
> situation existed in Jerusalem. If in fact people in Judea were
> bilingual on account of the presence of overlords, I could imagine that
> there would have been very few. Such activities as tax collecting were
> performed by local people, minimizing contact between the powers and the
> subjected populations. How long did it take for the Seleucids to
> intervene directly at the beginning of the so-called Hellenistic Crisis?
> It was not until Menelaus was given the high priesthood. Even in such
> tense situations the Seleucids were not involved directly, but received
> audience on matters in Antioch. If I remember, Hyrcanus Tobiad went to
> Egypt to obtain the tax concession of his father.
> 
> What the relationship between the Aramaic of the church and Jewish
> Aramaic is I don't know, but I know that the Jewish dominions were
> surrounded by cultures that spoke Aramaic, including the Nabataeans and
> the Samaritans (at least those responsible for the Wadi ed-Daliyeh
> documents). I would posit that we can't make use of the data regarding
> church Aramaic for we can't demonstrate the relevance. Which dialect of
> ancient Aramaic supplied the raw material for that spoken in Maalula?
> 
> Jay
> 
> John J. Hays
> jhays@mail.com
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> I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto!
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