Jesus' language
Jeffrey Gibson (jgibson@acfsysv.roosevelt.edu)
Wed, 5 Mar 1997 21:27:28 -0600 (CST)
In response to the posting today which took the form "if Jesus was
X" and then went on to draw conclusions regarding Jesus' language
(I deleted the post, so I can't refer to its author), may I simply
point out that even granting the post's series of doctrinally
grounded assumptions, the issue that is in question is not what languages
Jesus COULD speak, but, what languages evidence contemporary
with him indicates he DID speak. On the poster's logic, Jesus
presumably could speak English (and on these same grounds, one wonders
why he didn't - it certainly would have saved a lot of argument amongst
20th century scholars and adherents about
what he said), but there isn't a shred of evidence that he ever did.
Sorry if this seems harsh, but the use of truth table logic which is
grounded in dogmatic assumptions rather than historical evidence to
decide this question got my goat.
Jeffrey Gibson
jgibson@acfsysv.roosevelt.edu