I just had one of those Aha moments. I've read numerous papers that the Hebrews despised the Greek language, and I realized at least some proof of that may be in Acts:
21:27 And when the seven days were almost ended, the Jews which were of Asia, when they saw him in the temple, stirred up all the people, and laid hands on him,
39 But Paul said, I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city: and, I beseech thee, suffer me to speak unto the people.
40 And when he had given him licence, Paul stood on the stairs, and beckoned with the hand unto the people. And when there was made a great silence, he spake unto them in the Hebrew tongue, saying,
Acts 22 Men, brethren, and fathers, hear ye my defence which I make now unto you.
2 (And when they heard that he spake in the Hebrew tongue to them, they kept the more silence: and he saith,)
Maybe some of you know of other instances, but certainly this shows the authors of those papers are accurate.
Here is a little of what I'm talking about:
Jesus would have spoken Hebrew because the Rabbis and Pharisees could hardly be expected to understand the parables if Jesus spoke Aramaic or Greek, because the parables were all based on Hebrew analogies.
The Jews considered Hebrew to be a Holy Language and every other language to be pagan. As such, the Jewish writers of the New Testament would never have allowed their sacred writings to be in a pagan language. This is important to note, because many of the teachings of Jesus are based on Old Testament scriptures which were wholly written in Hebrew and sometimes Jesus quoted in the Hebrew language itself. If Jesus had ever tried to convince Israel He was the Jewish Messiah while preaching and quoting from the Tanakh in a pagan language, He would have lost all credibility immediately. Jesus was called Rabbi many times. If Jesus had preached in Greek or Aramaic instead of Hebrew, it would have completely undermined His credibility as a Jewish Rabbi, because Rabbis spoke Hebrew as they still do today. No Jew would have accepted Him. It is inconceivable to think that the high priests and the dedicated Jews spoke any other language than Hebrew in the synagogues. When Jesus preached in the synagogue, He would have spoken in Hebrew or He would have been thrown out for speaking in a pagan language.
I would think so. Hebrew would have been the normal language of the day. Matthew might have spoken Greek as a tax collector as Greek was the language of finance.
There can be little question that every word spoken to a Hebrew audience was always in Hebrew, but Paul was an educated Pharisee Rabbi before his encounter on the Damascus road, and likely spoke all of the languages of the near east to some extent.
I disagree. Paul had obviously not been speaking Hebrew prior to that or they would have realized He spoke Hebrew before that. I should be obvious to the reader that he had to prove to them he could actually speak Hebrew. That passage would tend to prove that Paul generally spoke Greek thus the people didn’t realize he could speak Hebrew.
And yet, here you are, posting passages of Scripture in English, a pagan language.
E-S claimed way back that the majority of the world's population, including probably my own ancestry, is of Hebrew descent. If that's the case, why are you communicating to me in English, a language spoken by pagans? Why do you cite Scripture to me from the King James version, a translation into that same pagan language?
If I'm an Israelite, in other words, why don't you guys try to reason with me in Hebrew, since Hebrew concepts apparently don't translate well?
What if he did? That's a red herring.
The issue has not been what language Jesus spoke, but what language the Gospels were originally written in. Is it impossible for one of the Gospel authors to have translated what Jesus said into Greek, without needing to write it down in Hebrew first?
2 (And when they heard that he spake in the Hebrew tongue to them, they kept the more silence: and he saith,)
Why did they react to the fact that he spoke Hebrew by quieting down even more? Supposedly, by your argument he should have been speaking it all along.
Of course, if you'd started quoting Acts 21 at verse 37 instead of verse 29, we'd easily see the answer: he was speaking Greek first.