était la langue répandue partout, et que beaucoup de juifs de la diaspora ne comprenaient plus ni l'hébreu ni l'araméen. Notons quand même que Matthieu a, selon la Tradition, un original araméen.

Un extrait de "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Jewish Origins of Christianity", de Carsten Peter Thiede, éditions 'A Lion Book', 2000.

" (...) Greek cultural influence, noticeable as it was, could not be regarded as an alien import. Since the times of Alexander the Great, hellenistic culture and the Greek language, had permeated Jewish culture, in the diaspora but also 'at home', sometimes with ease, sometimes against resistance. Jews who spoke about the Jew Jesus in Greek were understood by practically all fellow Jews. And for those who wanted to reach the Jews who had not acquired fluent Hebrew - in Egypt for example but also in Jerusalem, were we read about the 'Hellenists' who had their own synagogues in the city - the choice of Greek was unavoidable, anyway. To put it differently, the Greek of the first Christian texts was not a sign of a late, 'post-Jewish' stage, in the 70s or 80s of the first century. It was not a reaction to the increasing separation of Jews and Christians , which may have begun after Nero's Roman persecution (...) On the contrary, it was a strategic necessity of the inner-Jewish mission itself, from its very earliest stages." (p. 147)

A propos de la Grotte des Lettres, l'auteur remarque :

"it could have been called the 'Cave of Bar Kokhba', because fifteen of its letters were found here in an ancient waterskin, carefully tied together, four of them on slivers of wood, in Hebrew and Aramaic, rallying the few remaining zealots and ordering them to get the fruit for Sukkoth, the Feast of Tabernacles, in AD 134. Two of the letters are in Greek. 'We have no one here who understands Hebrew,' it says in one of them. Ardent orthodox Jews and freedom fighters with not even enough Hebrew or Aramaic to understand to understand or write letters in these languages - obviously the 'ideal' users of the Greek Twelve Prophets' Scroll and other Greek Bible scrolls, as they were found along the Dead Sea." (p 86)