Trafika Europe 6 - Arabesque

györgy spiró

language, and they had passed it on to their successors in Rome. Cultured Latini spoke more polished Greek, but this was also Greek; Jews spoke the same Greek as the Greeks themselves, it was impossible to tell them apart from their pronunciation. Joseph and his family were exceptional in that they also spoke Aramaic at home, which was related to Hebrew, the original but by then extinct language of the Holy Scriptures. There was a somewhat calculated dimension to this: Joseph had the view that as long as it was necessary to do business with commercial agents who spoke only Aramaic, his children should learn it too. Rome’s Jews had, for some time, spoken neither Aramaic nor Hebrew, and

the Hebrew texts had been translated into Greek for the congregation in the house of prayer. A Greek translation of the Old Testament was already in existence: the Septuagint, which seventy- two scholars translated in seventy-two days on the island of Pharos in Alexandria about two centuries before. At home, left to themselves, everyone would read aloud from this Greek Torah. It was not permitted to recite the Holy Scriptures by heart, lest one commit the grave error of misremembering a text and saying something other than what was written; that might have unforeseen consequences for the whole of Creation. In the house of prayer, on the other hand, Hebrew texts were translated impromptu in front of the assembled community, and of course a person was not

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