Cristianesimo delle origini e politica linguistica

Abstract

The Roman world was a multilingual community. Aiming on one side to ensure effective communication (as Latin was not so widely known and spoken)\xa0but not to encourage nationalistic revivals on the other, Romans choose Greek as an\xa0additional official language. Indeed, Greek, by then already deprived of any national\xa0character, was already used as a ‘lingua franca’ in the eastern Mediterranean. Despite\xa0Jewish tendency to refer to Hebrew as a mark of national and religious identity, early Christianity adopted (and maintained until the second half of the II century) Greek\xa0as its own language. This choice was not only due to practical considerations related\xa0to communication needs, but also to more ‘political’ reasons, and therefore it must be\xa0framed in the more general friendly approach to the Roman empire which was always\xa0taught during his life by Jesus and was practiced by him even in front of Pilate.