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Aramaic, a Semitic language related to Hebrew and Arabic, was the common tongue of the entire Middle East when the Middle East was the crossroads of the world. People used it for commerce and government across territory stretching from Egypt and the Holy Land to India and China. Parts of the Bible and the Jewish Talmud were written in it; the original "writing on the wall," presaging the fall of the Babylonians, was composed in it. As Jesus died on the cross, he cried in Aramaic, "Elahi, Elahi, lema shabaqtani?" ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?")
But Aramaic is down now to its last generation or two of speakers, most of them scattered over the past century from homelands where their language once flourished. In their new lands, few children and even fewer grandchildren learn it. (My father, a Jew born in Kurdish Iraq, is a native speaker and scholar of Aramaic; I grew up in Los Angeles and know just a few words.) This generational rupture marks a language's last days. For field linguists like Khan, recording native speakers—"informants," in the lingo—is both an act of cultural preservation and an investigation into how ancient languages shift and splinter over time.
In a highly connected global age, languages are in die-off. Fifty to 90 percent of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken today are expected to go silent by century's end. We live under an oligarchy of English and Mandarin and Spanish, in which 94 percent of the world's population speaks 6 percent of its languages. Yet among threatened languages, Aramaic stands out. Arguably no other still-spoken language has fallen farther.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-to-save-a-dying-language-4143017/?all
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday August 01 2019, @12:04AM (5 children)
As far as Buddha and Mohammad go, I have no idea about Buddha as I know almost nothing about Buddhism.
Mohammad definitely existed, and we know that because of the many references to him from (and this is important to historians) different sources.
Sources from almost every culture that existed in the Middle East refer to Mohammad and the Islamic culture that grew up.
That is the difference with Jesus, there is almost no corroborating evidence that he actually existed, and the history.com article you linked does the usual thing:
to which I reply, they would, wouldn't they?
It seems to me that a certain amount of faith is needed to believe in the existence of Jesus as an actual person who lived, and historians don't rely on faith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @12:14AM (1 child)
Mohammad was also a published writer. In the March 652 a.d. iss u e of Goat Fuckers Monthly, he wrote a letter to the editor complaining that his goat had bad breath but was still better looking than his wife.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @12:45PM
Well, to be fair his wife was probably 10 years old at that point so who knows maybe she would be prettier when she passed puberty. Give it another 5 or so years.
(Score: 1) by istartedi on Thursday August 01 2019, @03:23AM (2 children)
This position seems very "heads I win, tails you lose". What, pray tell, would you say if the only people defending the existence of Jesus were *not* Biblical scholars?
I didn't know much about Buddha either, so I googled it. It's a lot like Jesus--very little Buddhist writing until about 200 years after his life.
The difference might be that Mohammad engaged in conquest. War and its leaders create a lot of press, which is what becomes history. Jesus and Buddha, OTOH, created turning points within spiritual traditions. That doesn't impact the people who ultimately write history in the same way that an invading army does.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday August 01 2019, @03:45AM (1 child)
I would say "What's the evidence?" and if they showed me those passages from Josephus that seem to be about the sum total of evidence outside bits of the New Testament, I would continue to fail to take them at face value.
If there was any justice, Christianity would be called Paulism, because it was Paul who started preaching to gentiles. Jesus was pretty much all about trying to get Jews to be good Jews.
Christianity would have continued to be just one of many Middle Eastern religions practised in the Roman Empire if it hadn't become politically powerful during the 4th and 5th centuries, and then made the other religions illegal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 01 2019, @09:24AM
If you look at the Josephus quotes about Jesus, one mentions he had both Jewish and Gentile/Greek followers.
Now, admittedly, it's the passage most likely to have been fucked with by Christians to suit their ends, but, it might explain the degree of hostility recorded in the stories by the Jewish authorities to this Jewish sect, Judaism being an exclusive club and all that, but excluding thIs 'sky fairy's chosen people' guff and nonsense, at that time they were fighting foreign influences on their culture in the shape of occupying Roman forces and their Greek teachers..so anyone opening up their club to foreigners would be a bit of a 'political' liability.
I'm quite happy to accept the possibility that there was a Judaic sect which might have had a leader of the name Jesus, I might also accept that for politically expedient reasons, the Jews and Romans, either/or/both executed this leader, the sect, however, carried on, and at the point of the leaders death probably became more of a cult as I don't think they'd be welcome at temple, and, just like cults today, they attracted every gonif on the make in sight (hello there 'Paul', 'Matthew', 'Mark' and the rest of the motley crew..and look at the antics of the Popes, Bishops and Cardinals of the Roman branch)..and over the next couple of millennia this fun bunch of cultists ended up becoming the the fractious Christianity we know and loathe today..