Well Koine was widely used of course, but the characters in the Passion were all Jewish (speaking Aramaic) or military Roman, who would surely speak Latin, not Greek. Oh there is one set of characters who might speak Greek: Herod and his wife.

Well, Roman soldiers stationed in Palestine were probably Greek speaking to begin with. The Roman Empire was at least bilingual. Certainly, all the communication between Romans and Jews would be in Greek. Pontius Pilate's conversation with Jesus would have been in Greek. Latin would only been used among some Romans talking among themselves, even though Greek would be just as good a choice for those conversations.

People sometimes forget that even in Italy Greek was as important as Latin. Julius Caesar himself spoke his final words in Greek.

"People sometimes forget that even in Italy Greek was as important as Latin. Julius Caesar himself spoke his final words in Greek."

Many people in Britain when classical education was common, mignt have said things in Greek. It doesn't mean that Greek was as important as English.

Similarly Greek was an intellectual language in Italy, it doesn't mean it was as important as Latin for intellectual Romans and to be as important as Latin you are implying that Greek was as important for working class Romans as well.

Im not an expert on the Romans but I am extremely sceptical of this.

Respectfully, I am under the impression that you see Greek culture as the centre of everyone else's culture too.

In Greece you won't know what we have to put up with from Jews. Everything in the west is anti-Semitism. Sod the ADL.

>> Similarly Greek was an intellectual language in Italy, it doesn't mean it was as important as Latin for intellectual Romans and to be as important as Latin you are implying that Greek was as important for working class Romans as well.

There was a Greek speaking element in all strata of Roman society. Educated Romans sent their sons to Greece or got Greek teachers. But you had a whole class of slaves, merchants and craftsmen from the East that also spoke Greek.

Additionally, 'Roman' was a political, NOT a linguistic label, certainly in Jesus' time. Unless the troops stationed in Palestine at that time were of Roman stock, they would probably be Greek speaking. In any case, there is no doubt that they would need to be Greek speaking to communicate to the natives.

By the way, St. Paul's epistle to Romans was written in Greek. Why would St. Paul write in Greek to the people in Rome, unless there were Greek speakers among them? More importantly, why was the Roman church Greek speaking in the first few centuries of its life?

This has nothing to do with thinking everything is centered on the Greeks. This is about historical realism. Unless there are many scenes of inter-Roman communication in the movie, there is absolutely no reason for Latin to be used at all.

In high school, we learned that most 'Roman' officials stationed in Israel were actually of 'Greek stock'.

i read a book on roman history that calculated the % of different ethnic groups enrolled in the legions at various times-i believe it was classed as over 90% "italian" during the time of augustus. many of the "italians" were recently given roman citizenship after the Social Wars. some them might have been greeks from neopolis or syracuse, but it seems that the null hypothesis is that oscans, marsians, greeks and latin speakers would have spoken vulgar latin (by 30 AD the percentage of italians would have dropped, but most likely to be replaced by other latin speakers from the older provinces like provence or spain who had citizenship).

additionally, after the time of gaus marius (100 BC), the legions were recruited from the proletariat and servile portions of the populace. before that time, they came from the free peasants, who might have known greek, though i am still skeptical of this. maurius had to change elements of command & control because there was an influx of illiterates. certainly the roman aristocracy was highly hellenized more or less-but from centurion downward most of the soldiers were of less-than-common stock, but not slaves, they had to be citizens (thoug auxilliaries were non-citizens, and often therefore barbarian or non-latin).

it might also be of interest that the greek speaking elite remained relatively aloof from the imperial adminstrative structure until around the 3rd century chaos-"emperors not made in rome" tended to come from spain & gaul (later illyria and thrace), rather than the greek city-states which had their own thriving political life.

Some interesting info about the the Roman military in Judaea around the time of Jesus from http://www.livius.org/jo-jz/judaea/judaea.htm:

"There were two cohorts of auxiliaries in Jerusalem (at the old Herodian palace and at the fortress called Antonia): about thousand men. A third cohort guarded the capital Caesarea. Two cohorts of infantry and one squadron of cavalry served throughout the province.

The latter was the Ala I Sebastenorum which must be meant in Acts 23.23-32. It consisted of Samaritans. We also know of the existence of an Cohors I Sebastenorum. These two regiments were probably created by king Herod the Great, who may have chosen Samaritans to guard the population of Judaea.

Other known units are the Cohors Prima Italica Civium Romanorum,the Cohors Secunda Italica Civium Romanorum (Acts 10.1) and the Italian Cohors Prima Augusta (Acts 27.1). In short, of only one cohors we do not know the name."

>> it might also be of interest that the greek speaking elite remained relatively aloof from the imperial adminstrative structure until around the 3rd century

Marcus Aurelius wrote in Greek. There was no 'Greek speaking elite' vs. a 'non-speaking one', since being educated meant knowing Greek. I was reading an article on Herculaneum recently, and the scholars are surprised that they find 10% of the scrolls in the Villa dei Papyri to be in Latin. That is the usual number, and they expected the Villa dei Papyri's library, which was part of an Epicurean community to be completely in Greek.

Also, the only peoples that would be untouched by Greek would be the rural people of Italy. In Rome most people would have at least some knowledge of Greek, either of the Attic or koine variety. In any case, Roman troops stationed in Palestine would have to learn Greek to communicate with the locals.

i know that meditations was written in greek of course-but it was also written in somewhat idiosyncratic greek-aurelius was NOT a hellene, and you know that is my point.

just because someone can speak english doesn't make them part of the anglosphere-but most scientists use english....

i emailed a classicist i know on this issue-will get back to you on their opinion.

>> i know that meditations was written in greek of course-but it was also written in somewhat idiosyncratic greek

I don't know where you heard this, but Marcus Aurelius' Greek is excellent.

>> just because someone can speak english doesn't make them part of the anglosphere-but most scientists use english....

Marcus Aurelius was a Stoic. He was a Hellene in spirit, if not by birth.

Stoicism was founded by a Phoenician wasn't it? Zeno of Kition?

Zeno was a Greek philosopher who wrote and taught in Greek. Whether or not he had Phoenician ancestry because of his birthplace in Cyprus, in a city that had a Greco-Phoenician population is beside the point.

Sorry for the late entry; anyway, getting back to the movie, I found this source of info on it. Two major points are that 1) it will have subtitles and 2) critical reaction from all sides is becoming more favorable.

Jesus historian Paula Fredriksen has criticized this film as "anti-historical, anti-intellectual, and anti-Semitic". Rather than focusing on mainstream history, Mel Gibson interpreted the Gospels, which according to historians are inconsistent with each other. This is one of the reasons most historians believe that Jesus did not speak Greek, although it was the language used to communicate with the Romans.

It's worth noting that while the film might not be explicitly anti-Semitic, Mel Gibson gets his beliefs from his father, who is a well-known Holocaust denier, and the ADL has a right to be suspicious of this type of pseudo-historical movie.

Why hasn't anyone mentioned the race/ethnicity of the cast?

cant wait to see this.
who speaks aramaic nowadays.

i think furor over 'the passion' on the part of the jews is justified. the reason being that they have been persecuted throughout history, most recently in their disbelief that Jesus was the Messiah. they were tortured throughout the middle ages and most recently, i believe that the genocide perpetrated by the jews is based partly on this difference in religious beliefs. i was born in a catholic family, went to church on Sunday often, and even read the bible with fervor because i believed it meant something, at least just because everyone said it did. but now that i am a scientific researcher, my skepticism creeps into every aspect of my life including my choice of religious belief. which leads me to this conclusion, or shall i say, in scientific terms, a hypothesis. i believe that the story as testified by the twelve apostles was a hoax and i believe this is readily provable by techniques of modern legal forensics. the twelve apostles were probably illiterate. education in those times was for the privileged and they all seem to have come from very low-status occupations. so they were probably uneducated. also, the feats performed by Jesus according to the testimony of the apostles seem impossible according to modern scientific understanding. it would very well require a leap of faith to believe that such feats were actually performed. also, they are not reliable accounts because studies have shown that they conflict on various key events in the life of Jesus. based on this, i believe that the story of Jesus retold in "The Passion" is a hoax according to modern techniques of legal forensics.

First off, I have to say, its hardly the case that the disciples were probably illiterate. The Jews have always been a very literate people. Abraham came from a city called the City of Libraries. Excavations of this city have found well over 100,000 documents there. Alphabetic writing was born in Palestine, supposedly by the Phoenicians, but this resembles paleo-hebrew and its possible that they learned it from the hebrews? Even the word Alphabet, comes from the first two letters of the hebrew Aleph-bet. If you want to know why 25% of the Nobel Prize winners in science are Jewish, when less than 1% of the population of the world is Jewish, well, its because they are the "people of the book". They have always been a literate people, and far from the disciples being illiterate, they likely were bi and maybe even tri-lingual, or at least some of them may have been. They knew hebrew and possibly aramaic, and possibly a little koine greek. For religious instruction purposes they would know hebrew, for even a most learned Jew, Josephus needed an interpreter to interpret his original hebrew writings into greek. And for business and trade purposes, they would have needed to know some aramaic and some greek.

Now, as for Mel Gibson being anti-semitic? I'm sorry to say this, but that label is abused, and used by Jews to silence their critics, more than its used legitimately. Its also a misnomer since the majority of todays Jews, are not even semitic.