I doubt any of the early apostles could have written something like Paul's Colossians which exhibits good literary Greek, koine Greek no doubt but still good literary Greek which Paul with his educational background in Tarsus, a diaspora Jew who knew Greek well was trained to do. Perhaps in his early teens or earlier Paul went to Jerusalem and commenced his Pharisaic training under Gamiliel but even in Jerusalem Greek was prevalent as argued by Martin Hengel several decades ago. You have in Paul a true bilingual with equal felicity in Hebrew and Greek which came in very handy as the apostle to the Gentiles in a largely Greek world though Rome took over as superpower a century before Paul became apostle. Like today unless you know English well and perhaps another local language, then it will be difficult to move about in ministry because the Gospel has to be preached in a language understood by the masses.
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Taking Leave & Paul's Greek in Colossians
I doubt any of the early apostles could have written something like Paul's Colossians which exhibits good literary Greek, koine Greek no doubt but still good literary Greek which Paul with his educational background in Tarsus, a diaspora Jew who knew Greek well was trained to do. Perhaps in his early teens or earlier Paul went to Jerusalem and commenced his Pharisaic training under Gamiliel but even in Jerusalem Greek was prevalent as argued by Martin Hengel several decades ago. You have in Paul a true bilingual with equal felicity in Hebrew and Greek which came in very handy as the apostle to the Gentiles in a largely Greek world though Rome took over as superpower a century before Paul became apostle. Like today unless you know English well and perhaps another local language, then it will be difficult to move about in ministry because the Gospel has to be preached in a language understood by the masses.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
-
My transition is almost complete. It will be complete by early hours of tomorrow when the Lunar Eclipse for May 5th-6th. Did not the Scriptu...
-
I just wrote a 500-word abstract for my proposed paper to be presented in an Old Testament Conference in Europe. It will either be presented...
No comments:
Post a Comment