# Could Jesus have understood modern English? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 11, 2006, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-jesus-have-understood-modern-english/352169 "2006-04-11T00:53:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-jesus-have-understood-modern-english/352169/61 "2006-04-18T15:30:44Z")
Jesus would look at you, command the strange demon voices out of you, and then you’d be able to speak to him in Aramaic. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-jesus-have-understood-modern-english/352169/62 "2006-04-18T16:21:04Z")
> [@Martini Enfield](#): > > The OP was intended from the point of view that Jesus really was The Son Of God, however, if that helps. That’s how I took it. Otherwise, being an atheist, I would have said “Of course not, he couldn’t have understood english, silly!”. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-jesus-have-understood-modern-english/352169/63 "2006-04-18T19:58:07Z")
> [@severus](#): > > In other words, Jesus had _Miracle_ as a spell-like ability, at will! 😃 That would’ve cost Him a lot of Feat Points. What level was He, anyway? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-jesus-have-understood-modern-english/352169/64 "2006-04-18T21:36:14Z")
> [@Jelymag](#): > > OK. I did confuse Aramaic with Hebrew. Hebrew was the original language of the Jews and after centuries of being assimilated into various other empires and cultures Aramaic developed, which was the commoner language in the rural areas of Jewish populations. Aramaic has more in common with languages that were Arabic in nature. > > I wonder at what point this changed because modern Hebrew as spoken now in Israel has very little in common with Aramaic and uses the Hebrew alphabet with English-ized additions. It didn’t change. After they returned from Babylonian Exile, the Jews typically assimilated the language of whatever country they were in (starting with Aramaic) while preserving Hebrew as a language of worship and religious scholarship. (Like Church Latin in the Middle Ages.) E.g., the large Jewish population of Alexandria in Egypt spoke Greek; the OT was translated into Greek for their use. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septuagint](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septuagint)) In went on like that – from the Middle Ages to the 20th Century, Sephardic Jews (Spain, Italy, Ottoman Empire) spoke a Romance language, Ladino, while Ashkenazi Jews (Eastern Europe) spoke Yiddish (a German dialect with Hebrew loanwords). By the time Jews started colonizing Palestine in the early 20th Century, Hebrew was not a living, spoken language anywhere and had not been for well over 2,000 years; but all religious Jews had some knowledge of it, and the Zionists decided to revive it as their national language. It was the only language all Diaspora Jews had in common. Modern Hebrew has little in common with Aramaic but a lot in common with ancient Hebrew. (In fact it’s almost identical, except they had to add a lot of new vocabulary for things that simply didn’t exist in ancient times. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew\_language](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_language)) ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2012, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-jesus-have-understood-modern-english/352169/65 "2012-12-23T09:19:22Z")
In honour of the resurrection, how would you converse practically with a person from that era, having forgot your universal translatornat home? ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2012, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-jesus-have-understood-modern-english/352169/66 "2012-12-23T09:46:33Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > 1. Did Jesus know that the Earth revolved around the sun? I’m guessing not. I thought the Greeks already knew by his time that it did. Why wouldn’t he know it? ---
**Author:** ![Lauren-C](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/45deac/32.png) [@Lauren-C](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lauren-C)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2012, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-jesus-have-understood-modern-english/352169/67 "2012-12-23T10:47:06Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > Inspired by a (possibly apocryphal) comment I read on-line, to the effect that “If English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for us!” (Fundie Christian explaining why he didn’t want his kids learning “Foreign” Languages, and totally overlooking the fact that the Bible, in English, is merely a _translation_ of texts originally written in now long-dead languages). > > Anyway, this got me thinking. Let’s pretend for a moment (as we so often do, with reality being such a disappointment these days) that you’ve acquired a Time Machine. Having tweaked your flux capacitor and reconfigured the engine to run on Olive Oil (petrol not being something the Romans were noted for having in abundance), you’ve arrived in Jerusalem c.30 AD, and are listening to a man- obviously held in reverence by some of the listeners- addressing the crowd in Aramaic and Latin. Your Universal Translator tells you that the man is relating some parables, and your HistorID Computer tells you that you are, in fact, listening to Jesus Christ- The Man Himself, in other words. > > Anyway, after He’s stepped off the Roman equivalent of a Soapbox, you go up to Him and greet Him. > > Now, as the Son Of God and therefore Divine, would Jesus be able to understand you if you greeted Him with something like “Hello, Jesus! I’m a big fan of your work… especially the whole thing with the water and the wine, and the loaves and the fishes. Listen, I’ve got something to tell you, and it’s important, but it might be a little hard to grasp at first… What are you doing for dinner this evening?” would He be able to understand you (and if so, would He be able to converse with you in Modern English?), or would He simply pat you on the shoulder in a reassuring yet “There, there, My Son” way and head off to whatever it was He was planning on doing next? It would be Aramaic and Greek, not Aramaic and Latin. Greek was the lingua franca of the east and the language of administration in the eastern Roman Empire. “No” is the answer to your question, however. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2012, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-jesus-have-understood-modern-english/352169/68 "2012-12-23T19:03:46Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Dude can walk on water and swim in land, turn water into wine and flour into cocaine, and he can’t employ a Universal Translator? That is one of the funniest things I have read in a SDMB post. “Flour into cocaine.” I am so using that line! ---
**Author:** ![Docta\_G](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/2bfe46/32.png) [@Docta\_G](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Docta_G)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2012, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-jesus-have-understood-modern-english/352169/69 "2012-12-23T19:08:29Z")
Jesus was probably gay, on account of his weak father figure. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2012, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-jesus-have-understood-modern-english/352169/70 "2012-12-23T19:47:43Z")
Closing zombie thread. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-jesus-have-understood-modern-english/352169.md?page=3)