Salome

Today I came across an idea which I had never heard before; that the apostles James and John, the sons of Zebedee are the cousins of Jesus, as their mother is Salome, who is Mary’s sister. I was beginning to wonder how I had managed to read the Bible and do several years of biblical studies (including papers in Luke and John) without encountering this idea before. It was distracting me so much that I had to go and find out where it came from. As it turns out, it is fairly simple, traditional view, albeit a tad presumptive.

The Greek Old Testament

Old Testament Texts Translated into Greek

As discussed in the previous post (here), the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and passed down for thousands of years to form the basis of our Old Testaments today. However, the New Testament was written in Greek, as by the first century AD the common language of the Roman Empire – which Israel was a part of – was Greek and a majority of the people spoke it (often in addition to their indigenous languages). When the New Testament authors came to quote the Old Testament (their Bible), they would quote from a Greek translation known today as the Septuagint. It had existed alongside the Hebrew for several hundred years by the first century AD.