I knew portions of the Bible were originally written in Aramaic, though I wasn't certain how isolated these passages were... and if that ultimately excluded Aramaic from the New Testament.
Since Deepak and the fundie were discussing "the Gospels" in specific, which I take to mean just the NT, I decided to look for some info that might sort out if Deepak was mistaken.
As John has noted, there is not a lot of convincing evidence one way or the other. A safe default position would seem to be that while the oral teachings were almost certainly Aramaic and Hebrew, while travelling abroad and in writing them down Greek was probably the preferred method.
This does not discount the possibility that portions of the original text were written in Aramaic (mainly for personal reasons of the writer), just that when being assembled they were more likely to have been written in Greek.
Here are some basic links outlining positions on this:
http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/20030227.html[basic bible language info]
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[more basic language info]
http://www.metamind.net/biblemanus.html[this is where the debate starts to get crazy. some of this sounds very reasonable as an argument that the NT was originally written in Aramaic, but the source itself seems biased and with no objective evidence presented (or references cited) I get a little sceptical]
Christianseparatist.org[this is the other side of the argument. once again some very good arguments are made-- this time for the NT being written in Greek. however the hysteric, vitriolic, and racist nature of the commentary makes it hard for me to trust this as a source.]
http://www.bibleandscience.com/aramaic.htm[this appears to be a more calm assessment of the issue, lending some credibility to the notion that some original NT texts were Aramaic. then again this appears to be a pro-jewish source, which if the previous site is to be believed, means this site is automatically to be disregarded.]
In the end I believe Deepak was less correct than the fundie, in asserting that the NT was definitively Aramaic. The major text was more than likely Greek.
However this doesn't exactly subtract from Deepak's overall point. Certainly one must use the OT in conjunction with the NT,and so both Aramaic and Hebrew are important languages to understand in order to put NT teachings in perspective, as well as understanding the "true faith of the Bible."
Oh yeah, and I want to correct my original post in this thread. Verbal fights with fundies are usually followed by violence OR a deep silence. Obviously on a forum, violence is an unlikely response. I have yet to hear a fundie of any stripe admit they were wrong, even when confronted with pretty solid evidence and arguments against their case. Just a deep dark silence.
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holmes
[This message has been edited by holmes, 04-22-2003]
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