Is it correct that Mel Gibson had “The Passion of the Christ” done entirely in Aramehic (sp?)? What the heck? Talk about a dead language! Latin is more alive than Aramehic! Sure, like anyone speaks it today to advise him??? (Like anyone would know the difference!) - Jinx
It’s spelled Aramaic, and it is still spoken today. In addition to being used as a religious language in both Judaism (the book of Daniel, among others, and large portions of the Talmud is written in Aramaic), and Christianity (I think it’s still sometimes used as a liturgical language by the Syrian Orthodox), dialects of Aramaic are spoken as a primary language in parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Cyprus.
And, btw, the Aramaic spoken in the film was reconstructed by Rev. William Fulco, professor of Ancient Mediterranian Studies at Loyola Marymount University.
Never heard of it being spoken today. That’s news to me. Yes, old Hebrew prayers are in Aramaic, but then Hebrew evolved… If it is true that “dialects of Aramaic are spoken as a primary language in parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Cyprus”, then it must have be a common bond between Hebrew and Arabic? - Jinx
And yes, Gibson most certainly had advisors to help with both the Aramaic and the Latin. I’m pretty sure they were named in the Newsweek cover article of Feb. 16, but you have to pay for that on the net.
The real criticism is that Pilate supposedly could not speak Aramaic, and that Greek, not Latin, was the common language among educated peoples of the day.
I assume Gibson’s reasoning was that the movie would appear more real if actors spoke a less-familiar language than English. Hollywood movies are always being criticized because Romans are played by actors with British accents, after all. I haven’t seen the movie so I don’t know if the result works, but the thought behind it is certainly a sound one, IMO.
And, obviously, the movie is subtitled so it doesn’t really matter except to a few scholars how exact the accents are. I’ll bet even money they’re just as realistic as the accents used in Cold Mountain to portray southerners of the 1860s.
On preview, I see CA names the name.
Since Arabic evolved as a primary language in the region after Hebrew became a secondary one, I’m not sure that Aramaic was ever a bond between the two, but lots of languages historically have been used to bridge cultures. These three would all have common roots so there would be the same ease of transition as, say, among the modern romance languages.
Exapno, I am not fluent in Latin, but I recognize it when spoken, and at one point in the movie, when Pilate was communicating with the temple priests at the head of the crowd, the one was speaking(I’m pretty sure) Latin to Pilate, not Aramaic. It happens all the time, one country in charge of another, can always find one of the “subjects” who knows, or learns, both languages. Probably happening in Iraq and Afghanistan right now.
Baker: I think the point that was trying to be made is that both Pilate and the (educated) Jewish Priests would speak Greek, making it unnecessary for the latter to learn Latin.
Do you realize that neither Iran, Turkey, nor Cyprus are Arabic speaking nations?
I thought I read somewhere that the Roman soldiers were speaking street latin? Is that incorrect?
It’s yet another Semitic language, one that was prevalent along the northern tier of the Semitic peoples, where they bordered the Indo-European peoples. Became very widespread during the Persian period.
Greek had become the “trade” language of the Eastern Mediterranean nations after Alexander’s successors (Seleucus and Ptolemy) established Hellenistic states in SW Asia and Egypt. In the circumstances of the Passion, communication betwen Pilatus and the locals would have been likely done in Greek, not Latin.
The reports so far form others that know better than I are that the Latin used in Gibson’s film sounds more like “Church” Latin, with a pronounced Italian accent. Church Latin and the Romance languages do both derive from Vulgar Latin, the everyday “street” language of a few centuries later than the portrayed events, so there could be a link to that. Or simply it’s a matter of a bunch of mostly Italian actors attempting to pronounce it the way it seems most familiar.