Aramaic Peshitta
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page XIII
Prof.
Neubauer gives many reasons for his "belief that few Jews in Palestine had
a substantial knowledge of Greek." One of them is, that no events had
occurred which could have made "Greek prominent in Palestine," (pg.
62); that no nation ever makes so great a change in its language as to adopt
"a totally different" one, unless the conqueror transports the greater
part of the inhabitants, and introduces foreign colonists who are far more
numerous than the remaining inhabitants; and that the Greeks had never this
superiority of numbers in Palestine, (pg. 64). He says that few Greek words
occur in the Jewish writings such as the Mishnah, the Targums, and the Talmud of
Jerusalem; that "no apocryphal book, as far as our knowledge goes, was
composed in Greek by a Palestinian Jew," (pg. 65); that "so far as he
can judge, all that the Jews in Palestine learned of Greek was at most a few
sentences, sufficient to enable them to carry on trade, and to hold intercourse
with the lower officials; and that even this minimum certainly ceased after the
Maccabean victory over Antiochus Epiphanes; because it was the interest of the
Asmonean Princes to keep the Jews aloof from the influence of the neighbouring
dialects," (pg. 66).
Professor Neubauer thinks that those Hebrews who lived in cities occupied
chiefly by Greeks, "may have acquired a fair knowledge of conversational
Greek, but not to such an extent as to enable them to speak it in public,"
(pg. 67). He says that even those Jews of Egypt and Asia Minor who spoke Greek,
maintained a connection with the mother-land by going to Jerusalem for
feast-days; and that "we may infer that they all still spoke, more or less,
their native Hebrew dialect, because no mention is made of interpreters being
required for them either in the temple or outside of it," (pp. 62, 63).
The Greek translation of the Old-Covenant Hebrew Scriptures, called the
Septuagint, which was made in Egypt, existed in the time of Christ; but Prof.
Neubauer says, "we may boldly state that this Greek translation of the
Bible was unknown in Palestine, except to men of the schools, and perhaps a few
of the Hellenistic Jews. It is said in the Talmud that when the Greek
translation of the Seventy appeared, there came darkness upon the earth, and
that the day was as unfortunate for Israel, as that on which the golden calf was
made," (pg. 67).
The fact that the Jews at Jerusalem who spoke Greek are called HELLENISTS, that
is, GRECIANS, in Acts vi. 1, and ix. 29, shows that their Greek speech made them
a peculiar class quite distinct from the rest of the people.