The Nicene Creed

“It is impossible for any one, whether he be a student of history or no, to fail to notice a difference of both form and content between the Sermon on the Mount and the Nicene Creed. The Sermon on the Mount is the promulgation of a new law of conduct; it assumes beliefs rather than formulates them; the theological conceptions which underlie it belong to the ethical rather than the speculative side of theology; metaphysics are wholly absent. The Nicene Creed is a statement partly of historical facts and partly of dogmatic inferences; the metaphysical terms which it contains would probably have been unintelligible to the first disciples; ethics have no place in it. The one belongs to a world of Syrian peasants, the other to a world of Greek philosophers.”

(Edwin Hatch, The Hibbert Lectures, 1888: The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages Upon the Christian Church, Edited by A. M. Fairbairn, London: Williams and Norgate, 1891, 1; from Lecture I)

Greek

Greater recognition, however, should be given to the fact that many languages were current in Palestine during the time of Jesus. While it is generally agreed that Aramaic and Hebrew were key languages of the period, it is my purpose to demonstrate the widespread use of Greek and to argue that Jesus not only spoke Greek but also taught in Greek. Consequently, the Gospels may contain the very words that Jesus spoke instead of translations into Greek of Jesus’ original words in Aramaic…

I find Fitzmyer’s stages of gospel tradition unconvincing. They may reveal a bias toward a history-of-religions approach by incorrectly presupposing that Aramaic was the dominant language of Palestine and that the Greek compositions of the Gospels represent an advancement (stage three) in gospel tradition. If Jesus did indeed speak Greek, then we may have “direct access to the original utterances of our Lord and not only to a translation of them.”

(G. Scott Gleaves, Did Jesus Speak Greek?: The Emerging Evidence of Greek Dominance in First-Century Palestine, Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, Kindle E-Book, 2015, 18 & 19; Excerpt from Chapter 1, Did Jesus and His Disciples Speak Greek?)