We can read in Acts 26:12-14 that when Paul had his conversion experience on the road to Damascus that he heard "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest" spoken in Hebrew. This is according to the traditional King James version. Some later versions might substitute "Aramaic" for "Hebrew", but they would be dead wrong in doing so. I believe that Luke was of Greek origin. So not all his disciples were Israelites.

Why do you say that? Surely Biblical scholarship has improved greatly since the 17th century.

Actually, it says "Hebrew dialect" and not "Hebrew language".

Doesn't Hebrew, in this instance, merely mean Jewish? After all there are and always have been many Jewish languages besides Hebrew.

Well, I'm doing this from memory, but i think it says "a Hebrew dialect". In the Jewish worldview, there was only "Jewish" and"gentile", there was no in between. Jewish was never used for the language.

Just on a sidenote... should we really consider the Bible a genuine historical source? After all it's a well-known fact that only four of the original gospels managed to get in the Bible: most of the others were discarded because they didn't fit in the vision of the 4th century christian bishops (the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD). It's only fair to assume the 4 that were selected might have been adapted as well.

It's a religious book without a doubt. But personally (and that's just my opinion) I don't think we should automatically assume everything written in the New Testament (and the old one for that matter) to be literally true.

I fully realize how 'dangerous' it is to say such a thing for a religious person, but as a scientist and a linguaphile I feel we'd be ignoring an obvious consideration that could have a very big impact on our analysis.

Well, of course not - no more than we should for any other document. But it would be equally wrong to assume the historical information it contains is untrue just because it's a religious text. Rather it should be held to the same standards as everything else.

Not entirely. I'm not just saying there might have been fiddled with the Canonical Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), I'm saying we have reasons to positively suspect (!) there was. What happened at the Council of Nicaea suggests just that. Especially since the whole idea of the Council was to pose a consequent system of dogmas and backstories as a support for the still young Church. Dropping most of the then known Gospels is one way to reach that goal, adapting the four remaining ones to their needs was another one, and one that was almost certainly used as well.

But once again, this is just a minor remark, and not entirely relevant for the discussion .

Before the Council of Nicea, the Christian father's used the already accepted gospels. If every Bible was burned, we would have the Bible anyway from the quotes of the Church fathers alone (Tertullian, Irinaeus, Ignatius, Polycarp, Clement, etc), and the majority of them being written around 100-150 AD. And the gospels were the same as the Nicean gospels. Plus, if they supposedly DID change them, why would they leave in things like a women being the first witness to Christ's resurrection, when women were nothing more than chattel and their word meant nothing? Why would they even LEAVE in Judas Iscariot? If I were to remove books that put Christianity in a bad light, I would've remove the whole thing about my lead disciple running away and denying my existence. So the whole belief that they changed the gospels is pretty stupid.

formiko...

Basically what you're saying is they DIDN'T select and adapt the gospels at the First Council of Nicaea? That's pretty much against all knowledge