Paul could speak Greek and Aramaic

[tonychanyt]

Acts 21:

27 When the seven days were nearly over, some Jews from the province of Asia saw Paul at the temple. They stirred up the whole crowd and seized him, 28 shouting, “Fellow Israelites, help us! This is the man who teaches everyone everywhere against our people and our law and this place. And besides, he has brought Greeks into the temple and defiled this holy place.” 29(They had previously seen Trophimus the Ephesian in the city with Paul and assumed that Paul had brought him into the temple.)

Some Jews thought Paul brought Greek Gentile people into the temple. Chaos ensued. The Roman soldiers arrived to stop the uproar.

37 As the soldiers were about to take Paul into the barracks, he asked the commander, “May I say something to you?”
“Do you speak Greek?” he replied. 38“Aren’t you the Egyptian who started a revolt and led four thousand terrorists out into the wilderness some time ago?”

The commander was surprised that Paul spoke Greek.

39 Paul answered, “I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no ordinary city. Please let me speak to the people.”
40After receiving the commander’s permission, Paul stood on the steps and motioned to the crowd. When they were all silent, he said to them in Aramaic.

On the other hand, the Jews were surprised that Paul spoke Aramaic.

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers:

Nothing could better illustrate the familiarity of the population of Jerusalem with both languages.

 

[ViaCrucis]

Spoke Greek, but apparently had terrible penmanship in Greek. So Paul made use of a amanuensis someone who works for another to, for example, take dictation, which is obvious from his letters because they explicitly mention it (e.g. Romans 16:22). And when Paul actually does take the pen and put ink to parchment, he mentions his "big letters" (Galatians 6:11) as ]evidence that it was his own hand there. So apparently Paul had poor penmanship.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[The Liturgist]

Spoke Greek, but apparently had terrible penmanship in Greek. So Paul made use of a amanuensis someone who works for another to, for example, take dictation, which is obvious from his letters because they explicitly mention it (e.g. Romans 16:22). And when Paul actually does take the pen and put ink to parchment, he mentions his "big letters" (Galatians 6:11) as ]evidence that it was his own hand there. So apparently Paul had poor penmanship.

-CryptoLutheran

In addition, the tradition of the early church indicates that just as the Gospel of St. Mark was based on St. Peter’s recollections, that of St. Luke was based largely on St. Paul’s knowledge of the events which I would expect was a synthesis of what our Lord directly conveyed to him on the Road to Damascus with knowledge he acquired from the Blessed Virgin Mary, who he would have had the opportunity to meet if he visited St. Luke who is recorded as serving as her physician, or St. John the Beloved Disciple, her adopted son, and also what he learned from the surviving members of the Eleven who had not been martyred or had not travelled into inaccessible areas (it seems quite likely that St. Paul and St. Thomas may not have met directly, given that they travelled from the Levant in opposite directions, St. Paul to Rome where he was eventually martyred, via modern day Turkey and Greece and a return trip to Jerusalem where he was of course arrested, with an unanticipated stop on Cyprus on the way to Rome, whereas St. Thomas went to India via Edessa, Nineveh, and Seleucia-Cstesiphon, aided by Saints Addai (possibly Thaddaeus) and Mari (not one of the twelve, but of the seventy), to India, where he was martyred by an enraged javelin-wielding maharaja), the traitor Judas’s replacement St. Matthias and, certain members of the Seventy like St. James the Just who had personal knowledge of our Lord. Making this tradition very plausible is the fact that much of Acts revolves around St. Paul becoming an Apostle and working with them, whereas in contrast, several of the Apostles toiled in comparative obscurity, since the only Acts we have about their work are apocrypha either written by or corrupted by Gnostic heretics. For example, the Acts of Thomas, which does correctly record his mission to India, but which is also filled with goofy Gnostic gnonsense.

 

[trents]

Spoke Greek, but apparently had terrible penmanship in Greek. So Paul made use of a amanuensis someone who works for another to, for example, take dictation, which is obvious from his letters because they explicitly mention it (e.g. Romans 16:22). And when Paul actually does take the pen and put ink to parchment, he mentions his "big letters" (Galatians 6:11) as ]evidence that it was his own hand there. So apparently Paul had poor penmanship.

-CryptoLutheran

It was common practice in Paul's day in the Roman world for authority figures like Paul to dictate letters. It is also likely that Paul suffered from an eye disease, perhaps an artifact of his Damascus road experience. He hints of this in Galatians 4 and 6 (as you mention) and also in 2 Corinthians 12, IMO. This may have affected his ability to write legibly at times in any language. However, we also know that Paul apparently penned the entire letter to Philemon as he states, "I am writing this with my own hand," in verse 19. So, perhaps this was an intermittent problem.

 

[trents]

Acts 21:

Some Jews thought Paul brought Greek Gentile people into the temple. Chaos ensued. The Roman soldiers arrived to stop the uproar.

The commander was surprised that Paul spoke Greek.

On the other hand, the Jews were surprised that Paul spoke Aramaic.

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers:

What is curious to me in this exchange between Paul and the Roman commander here in Acts 21 is that the commander had expected the Egyptian leader of the assassins to not speak Greek. Koine' Greek, or lower class Greek, was the trade language of the entire Roman world at that point in time. Perhaps the commander was referencing Attica, or upper class, Greek?

 

[Bob Crowley]

Without going into Biblical references to prove it, St. Paul probabaly spoke Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew and possibly Latin. He was a Pharisee and trained in the Law which would have required Hebrew, and as a Roman Citizen I presume he also had some Latin under his belt.

I mentioned this somewhere else, but when Christ healed the deaf man He would also have had to give him a working knowledge of Aramaic and Greek at the same time, along with the ability to hear, understand and speak those languages. He may also have given him some elements of Hebrew and Latin.

This would have been "infused" knowledge similar to the way angels gain their knowledge - it's just given to them.

 

[tonychanyt]

This would have been "infused" knowledge similar to the way angels gain their knowledge

verse?

 

[Bob Crowley]

verse?

I doubt very much if angels sit in cherub school doing their times tables eg. "one and one is two, two and two is four...".

That sort of knowledge would be given to them, otherwise you would have the archangel Gabriel sitting at the feet of some school master plodding on till he mastered his basic Aramaic to talk to a Jewish girl at her prayers.

 

[tonychanyt]

I doubt very much if angels sit in cherub school doing their times tables eg. "one and one is two, two and two is four...".

verse? This is the 2nd time I have asked.

 

[The Liturgist]

and as a Roman Citizen I presume he also had some Latin under his belt.

The eastern provinces of the Roman Empire primarily used the Greek language, which was taught to the Patricians, equestrian (that is to say, upper class) Plebeians, and the merchant class in Rome just as the Latin language would later be widely taught to privileged youths as recently as the 20th century as a matter of course (now, practical considerations seem to have led to it being largely displaced by Mandarin).

Indeed, there was not even a Latin translation of the Bible or the liturgy of the early church in Rome until the mid century, under the episcopate* of St. Victor.

*One could for simplicity sake call him Pope St. Victor, but I am too pedantic to embrace such an anachronism, as it would be roughly 350 years from the time of his episcopate before the bishop of Rome was routinely styled Papem, or Pope, and indeed it would not be until decades after his martyrdom in 199 AD before his burial.

 

[trents]

Without going into Biblical references to prove it, St. Paul probabaly spoke Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew and possibly Latin. He was a Pharisee and trained in the Law which would have required Hebrew, and as a Roman Citizen I presume he also had some Latin under his belt.

I mentioned this somewhere else, but when Christ healed the deaf man He would also have had to give him a working knowledge of Aramaic and Greek at the same time, along with the ability to hear, understand and speak those languages. He may also have given him some elements of Hebrew and Latin.

This would have been "infused" knowledge similar to the way angels gain their knowledge - it's just given to them.

Yes, but why would the Roman commander have been surprised that the Egyptian sect leader who led the uprising couldn't speak Greek? Wouldn't everyone in the Roman world be able to speak koine Greek sense it was the trade language of the Greco-Roman world?

 

[The Liturgist]

Yes, but why would the Roman commander have been surprised that the Egyptian sect leader who led the uprising couldn't speak Greek? Wouldn't everyone in the Roman world be able to speak koine Greek sense it was the trade language of the Greco-Roman world?

That is certainly true of the eastern half of the Roman Empire, and of the upper classes and merchant classes of Rome.

We do know lower class Plebeians and slaves in Rome generally knew only Latin, and Latin did serve as a lingua franca in the Western Empire and in Dacia, in those lands which wound up speaking languages descended from Latin.