In an article on theater in Roman Palestine:
Batey also builds his case on Jesus’ usage of particular words. For instance, Jesus uses the Greek term hupokritas, or hypocrite, to criticize Jewish leaders, particularly the Pharisees. The word, McCollough says, is “virtually unknown in the Greek texts associated with first-century Palestine.” But it shows up regularly in the Gospels of the Bible. Hupokritas, he adds, “is most commonly understood to refer to an actor on the stage. … In one particularly striking passage, Matthew 6:16, Jesus attacks (the Jewish leaders) when they fast for making up their faces so as to appear to be distressed and ‘be seen by men.'” The consistent and unique use of hupokritas convinced Batey that Jesus had a first-hand knowledge of the dramatic actor.
“You get a conceptual sense of reality from the words Jesus used,” McCollough notes. “There is theater imagery is all over the place.
“Jesus had an understanding of Greek tragedy. … Maybe he (saw) himself as a Greek tragic hero.”
4 comments
Did he not realize that Christ happened to speak Aramaic and not Greek?
I just saw a movie, and it’s evident that Jesus also spoke Latin fluently as well as Aramaic. 😉
Earlier movies I’ve seen indicate that He also spoke English, with a British accent as well.
We shouldn’t be surprised by all this, since He is, after all, God.
A Catholic theologian told me that not only is Jesus speaking Latin not in Scripture, but neither is it in church tradition. He pointed out that since the Septuagint or Greek Old Testament existed at the time, and the gospels were written in Greek, that it is not implausible that He spoke Greek or knew Greek.
But no, Jesus did not see Himself as a Greek tragic hero…
Why are you all so quick to dismiss Jesus’s representation as a Greek tragic hero? The concept is not unknown, and surely the Gospel authors could portray Jesus as any figure they wanted (whether or not Jesus saw himself as such is, ultimately, irrelevant–much the same that we, nowadays, represent public figures as how we see them, not necessarily how they really are).
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