Bible Question: What language did Jesus speak |
Bible Answer: HI, Good question and one that I have studied in depth in times past. But quess what, there's considerable difference of opinion among scholars. Concerning languages used in Palestine when Jesus Christ was on earth, Professor G. Ernest Wright states: “Various languages were undoubtedly to be heard on the streets of the major cities. Greek and Aramaic were evidently the common tongues, and most of the urban peoples could probably understand both even in such ‘modern’ or ‘western’ cities as Caesarea and Samaria where Greek was the more common. Roman soldiers and officials might be heard conversing in Latin, while orthodox Jews may well have spoken a late variety of Hebrew with one another, a language that we know to have been neither classical Hebrew nor Aramaic, despite its similarities to both.” Commenting further, on the language spoken by Jesus Christ, Professor Wright says: “The language spoken by Jesus has been much debated. We have no certain way of knowing whether he could speak Greek or Latin, but in his teaching ministry he regularly used either Aramaic or the highly Aramaized popular Hebrew. When Paul addressed the mob in the Temple, it is said that he spoke Hebrew (Acts 21:40). Scholars generally have taken this to mean Aramaic, but it is quite possible that a popular Hebrew was then the common tongue among the Jews.”—Biblical Archaeology, 1963, p. 243. It is possible that Jesus and his early disciples, such as the apostle Peter, at least at times spoke Galilean Aramaic, Peter being told on the night Christ was taken into custody: “Certainly you also are one of them, for, in fact, your dialect gives you away.” (Mt 26:73) This may have been said because the apostle was using Galilean Aramaic at the time, though that is not certain, or he may have been speaking a Galilean Hebrew that differed dialectally from that employed in Jerusalem or elsewhere in Judea. Earlier, when Jesus came to Nazareth in Galilee and entered the synagogue there, he read from the prophecy of Isaiah, evidently as written in Hebrew, and then said: “Today this scripture that you just heard is fulfilled.” Nothing is said about Jesus’ translating this passage into Aramaic. So it is likely that persons present on that occasion could readily understand Biblical Hebrew. (Lu 4:16-21) It may also be noted that Acts 6:1, referring to a time shortly after Pentecost 33 C.E., mentions Greek-speaking Jews and Hebrew-speaking Jews in Jerusalem. Professor Harris Birkeland (The Language of Jesus, Oslo, 1954, pp. 10, 11) points out that Aramaic’s being the written language of Palestine when Jesus was on earth does not necessarily mean that it was spoken by the masses. Also, the fact that the Elephantine Papyri belonging to a Jewish colony in Egypt were written in Aramaic does not prove that it was the chief or common tongue in their homeland, for Aramaic was then an international literary language. Of course, the Christian Greek Scriptures contain a number of Aramaisms, Jesus using some Aramaic words, for instance. However, as Birkeland argues, perhaps Jesus ordinarily spoke the popular Hebrew, while occasionally using Aramaic expressions. While it may not be provable, as Birkeland contends, that the common people were illiterate as far as Aramaic was concerned, it does seem that when Luke, an educated physician, records that Paul spoke to the Jews ‘in Hebrew’ and when the apostle said the voice from heaven spoke to him ‘in Hebrew,’ a form of Hebrew was actually meant (though perhaps not the ancient Hebrew) and not Aramaic.—Ac 22:2; 26:14. Lending further support to the use of a form of Hebrew in Palestine when Jesus Christ was on earth are early indications that the apostle Matthew first wrote his Gospel account in Hebrew. For instance, Eusebius (of the third and fourth centuries C.E.) said that “the evangelist Matthew delivered his Gospel in the Hebrew tongue.” (Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XXII, col. 941) And Jerome (of the fourth and fifth centuries C.E.) stated in his work De viris inlustribus (Concerning Illustrious Men), chapter III: “Matthew, who is also Levi, and who from a publican came to be an apostle, first of all composed a Gospel of Christ in Judaea in the Hebrew language and characters for the benefit of those of the circumcision who had believed. . . . Moreover, the Hebrew itself is preserved to this day in the library at Caesarea, which the martyr Pamphilus so diligently collected.” (Translation from the Latin text edited by E. C. Richardson and published in the series “Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur,” Leipzig, 1896, Vol. 14, pp. 8, 9.) So, Jesus Christ as a man on earth could well have used a form of Hebrew and a dialect of Aramaic. Tara1 |