Aramaic, Greek and Latin: a linguistic history of Christmas

Today I want to talk about.

languages and Christmas.

This time of year, Christmas, we see, people shopping,

it's sort of a commercial event in many countries of the world.

People are buying their Christmas trees for some reason, Christ or

Christmas is associated with Christmas trees, which is sort of a Northern,

Northwest European type of thing, which had nothing to do with Christ, of course,

because, Christianity began right there on the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean,

but sometimes people say, why make so much fuss about Christianity, there are

other religions in the world.

In North America or in Europe, it's perceived as a European thing,

which of course it isn't because Christianity is the most widespread religion in the world.

It's on all continents and has the largest number of adherents.

There's even 70 million Christians in China.

Of the top 10 Christian countries by population,

three are in Africa, two are in Asia, and then

of course, Europe and North America.

So it's actually a very widespread religion, but it originated right

there in what we now call the Middle East, which is a bit of a misnomer

because everywhere can be the Middle East, depending on your perspective,

depending on where you're looking at it from, but it did begin in that part

of the world, and it's interesting to see what languages were prevalent.

At that time, some of which are still, you know, in use today.

So Christ was a Jew, but the majority of Jews at that time

spoke Aramaic in their daily lives.

And, you know, uh, Israel or Judea in those days was part of the Roman empire.

And so therefore Pontius Pilate spoke Latin.

Presumably, and officials may have spoken Latin, but it was part of the

Hellenic world, Greek speaking world.

And of course the new Testament was written in Greek and the apostles were

Greek speaking Jews predominantly.

Uh, although they also presumably, I wasn't there obviously, but the vernacular

daily speech, a lot of Aramaic was used.

So what is Aramaic?

So then again, if you look back in history and having studied my Persian

and heard the wonderful history of Iran that, uh, Sahra did for us, you

go back to the Achaemenid dynasty.

When the Persians ruled, what is today Iraq, much of the area of

the Fertile Crescent, because those people were many of them descendants

of the Babylonians and the Assyrians, Aramaic was widely used in Persia.

And because when Alexander expanded Macedonian power over much of

Western Asia, uh, he spread the Greek language, even to India,

there were Buddhist, Greek speaking

empires on the Indian subcontinent as a result of, uh, Alexander's expansion.

But leaving that aside, we have the Seleucid empire, however

that's called. One of the generals who succeeded Alexander

conquered a vast area or controlled a vast area of Western Asia and an

area that included much of today's Iran, Iraq, and of course, Israel,

Palestine, Jordan, and all of that area.

With that, the Greek language became the dominant language in much

of what we call the Middle East.

We often refer to this period as the Hellenistic period.

Aramaic was spoken daily by people.

Greek was the language of administration.

People wrote in Greek.

And so far as Arabic is concerned, we do know that Herod, who was the king

of Judea at that time, if I remember correctly, his mother was Nabatean.

So when I think of Nabatea, I think of Petra, which my

wife and I visited in Jordan.

So those were Arabic speakers.

What form of Arabic or was it more like Aramaic?

I don't know, but eventually the Arabic speakers up there, the Nabateans and

those in Arabia and those in Southern Arabia, there was sort of a blending of

all of those languages to produce what we know as Arabic today, but in those

days, that was not the language that was spoken

But language and religion

and ethnicity are things that help us identify who we are.

There are markers of identity.

There are things that separate us.

They are things that sometimes we fight over.

There are also things that can be in flux.

Ethnic identity, uh, language, religion can evolve.

I mean, there were no Muslims when Christ was alive.

There were no Christians before Christ appeared on the scene.

So religions change, ethnicity changes.

And of course, a lot of the religious dogma can be disputed over, can be

the cause of strife and even warfare

within a religion, you know, sects within a religion or between religions.

However, my view is the good things in religion, the values, the sort

of universal values of generosity, humility, charity, respect for

others, treating others the way you want others to treat you.

All of these good things are universal across all religions.

And so while Christmas might be a Christian religious festival

or a commercial festival, I think it's also an opportunity to think

of all these universal values.

That, uh, helped make, uh, the world a better place.

And so that's what I think of when I think of Christmas.

And I think of languages, of course.

Thank you for listening.

Bye for now.