Mr Joseph S. Ellul’s letter (TMID, 2 September) is replete with inaccuracies which, unfortunately, lead to the dissemination of misinformation and myths about Malta.

Paul of Tarsus was a Hellenised Jew born in the city of Tarsus in southern Asia Minor in what is now southern Turkey. He was, according to the information in Acts, a Roman citizen and was educated as a Pharisee. He did not speak “the language of the Lebanese” but Greek and probably Hebrew. The letters or epistles attributed to him are in Greek.

I do not know where it is recorded that St Paul found that the Maltese spoke his own language – perhaps Mr Ellul could quote his sources. The Lebanese and the Phoenicians are not the same people, though some Lebanese may have Phoenician genetic connections. What language was spoken by the inhabitants of Malta in the first century AD is not certain – if we are to rely on the description in Acts that the inhabitants were barbaroi, that is, they spoke neither Greek not Latin, it may be plausible that they spoke some form of late Punic but certainly not Arabic.

What authoritative sources does Mr Ellul have indicating that people in the mountains of Syria speak Maltese and used to come to Malta to converse with Maltese troglodytes?

Mr Ellul states that “those who think Maltese is Arabic are very much mistaken”. It is true, Maltese is not Arabic but the semitic element in it derives directly from Arabic. Maltese is definitely not the original Phoenician language. All modern scholars agree that the Semitic constituent of Maltese (a modern language basically Semitic and superstructurally Romance) is closely associated with Arabic, particularly the Maghrebin variety.

The theory of Maltese having Phoenician origins has been debunked for over a century now. The Tunisian dialect of Arabic does not descend from Phoenician or Punic, even though Phoenician and Arabic both belong to the Semitic family of languages.

Dr Mario Costa

Moscow