Originally posted by RJHinds
HELLENISM - "to speak Greek," or "to make Greek
Word used to express the assimilation, especially by the Jews, of Greek speech, manners, and culture, from the fourth century B.C. through the first centuries of the common era. Post-exilic Judaism was largely recruited from those returned exiles who regarded it as their chief task to preserve their religion ...[text shortened]... oly City itself (Acts vi. 9).
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/7535-hellenism[/b]
Oh RJ my man, you are a bit confused; Greek Koine was the lingua franca during the period we are talking about, however the day-to-day language of the Jews was Aramaic.
Here you are:
"Aramaic Displaces Hebrew.
Aramaic was destined to become Israel's vernacular tongue; but before this could come about it was necessary that the national independence should be destroyed and the people removed from their own home. These events prepared the way for that great change by which the Jewish nation parted with its national tongue and replaced it, in some districts entirely by Aramaic, in others by the adoption of Aramaized-Hebrew forms. The immediate causes of this linguistic metamorphosis are no longer historically evident. The event of the Exile itself was by no means a decisive factor, for the prophets that spoke to the people during the Exile and after the Return in the time of Cyrus, spoke in their own Hebrew tongue. The single Aramaic sentence in Jer. x. 11 was intended for the information of non-Jews. But, although the living words of prophet and poet still resounded in the time-honored language, and although Hebrew literature during this period may be said to have actually flourished, nevertheless among the large masses of the Jewish people a linguistic change was in progress. The Aramaic, already the vernacular of international intercourse in Asia Minor in the time of Assyrian and Babylonian domination, took hold more and more of the Jewish populations of Palestine and of Babylonia, bereft as they were of their own national consciousness. Under the Achæmenidæ, Aramaic became the official tongue in the provinces between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean (see Ezra iv. 7); therefore the Jews could still less resist the growing importance and spread of this language. Hebrew disappeared from their daily intercourse and from their homes; and Nehemiah—this is the only certain information respecting the process of linguistic change—once expressed his disapproval of the fact that the children of those living in mixed marriage" could no longer "speak in the Jews' language" (Neh. xiii. 24).
How long this process of Aramaization lasted is not known. About the year 300 B.C. Aramaic makes its appearance in Jewish literature. The author of Chronicles uses a source in which not only documents concerning the history of the Second Temple are reproduced in the original Aramaic (Ezra iv. 8-22; v. 1-6, 12; vii. 12-26), but the connecting narrative itself is written in Aramaic (Ezra iv. 23, v. 5, vi. 13-18). In the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, the authorof the Book of Daniel begins his narrative in Hebrew, but when he introduces the Babylonian sages and scholars as speaking Aramaic to the king, as if only awaiting this opportunity, he continues his history in Aramaic (Dan. ii. 4, vii. 28).[Other explanations have been attempted in order to account for the appearance of both Aramaic and Hebrew in Daniel and Ezra. Prof. Paul Haupt supposes that Daniel was originally written in Hebrew, that portions of it were lost, and that these portions were supplied later from an Aramaic translation. See A. Kamphausen, "The Book of Daniel" ("S. B. O. T."😉, p. 16; J. Marquart, "Fundamente der Israel. und Jüd. Gesch." p. 72.—G.]The employment of the two languages in these Biblical books well illustrates their use in those circles in which and for which the books were written. In point of fact, at the time of the Second Temple, both languages were in common use in Palestine: the Hebrew in the academies and in the circles of the learned, the Aramaic among the lower classes in the intercourse of daily life. But the Aramaic continued to spread, and became the customary popular idiom; not, however, to the complete exclusion of the Hebrew. Nevertheless, while Hebrew survived in the schools and among the learned—being rooted, as it were, in the national mind—it was continuously exposed to the influence of Aramaic. Under this influence a new form of Hebrew was developed, which has been preserved in the tannaitic literature embodying the traditions of the last two or three centuries before the common era. So that even in those fields where Hebrew remained the dominant tongue, it was closely pressed by Aramaic. There is extant an almost unique halakic utterance in Aramaic ('Eduy. viii. 4) of Yose b. Joezer, a contemporary of the author of Daniel. Legal forms for various public documents, such as marriage-contracts, bills of divorce, etc., were then drawn up in Aramaic. Official messages from Jerusalem to the provinces were couched in the same language. The "List of the Fast-Days" (Megillat Ta'anit), edited before the destruction of the Temple, was written in Aramaic. Josephus considers Aramaic so thoroughly identical with Hebrew that he quotes Aramaic words as Hebrew ("Ant." iii. 10, § 6), and describes the language in which Titus' proposals to the Jerusalemites were made (which certainly were in Aramaic) as Hebrew ("B. J." vi. 2, § 1). It was in Aramaic that Josephus had written his book on the "Jewish War," as he himself informs us in the introduction, before he wrote it in Greek. That he meant the Aramaic is evident from the reason he assigns, namely, that he desired to make this first attempt intelligible to the Parthians, Babylonians, Arabs, the Jews living beyond the Euphrates, and the inhabitants of Adiabene. That the Babylonian diaspora was linguistically Aramaized is shown by the fact that Hillel loved to frame his maxims in that language."
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/1707-aramaic-language-among-the-jews
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