The Shifting Languages of Religious Discourse

A resident of Naples, FL, George Richards has an extensive background guiding consumer product marketing efforts. With a deep interest in languages, George Richards studies languages such as Ancient Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.

A recent American Magazine article brought focus to the evolution of language in religious contexts. An initial example was how rabbis continued to read Scriptures out loud in Hebrew even after that language was no longer part of the common experience of worshippers. The rabbis then explained and paraphrased the Hebraic concepts in the Aramaic language that people actually spoke and understood well. A number of these translations survive in the form of Targums, which were recorded in the early Christian era. 

In some cases, knowledge of Hebrew was lacking altogether and translations were required. This was the case of those of Jewish faith in Alexandria, Egypt, in the third century BC, where Ancient Greek translations of sacred writings were undertaken. This translation is known today as the Septuagint, which refers to the 70 scholars said to have performed the work. 

This Greek Old Testament became widespread among early Christians, with the New Testament being initially composed in Greek. By the mid-second century AD, Latin was in the ascendant and “homemade” translations proliferated in the language. This was codified in the fourth century under Pope Damasus, with St. Jerome overseeing the production of a Latin Gospels and the Vulgate, a translation from Hebrew of the Old Testament. This served as the Western church’s Bible for more than a thousand years, until a modernizing project spanning several European languages emerged.