Posted on 06/24/2018 3:07:00 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
There is wide consensus among scholars that Aramaic was the primary language spoken by the Jews of first century Palestine.
The vast majority of Jews spoke it. Jesus spoke it.
This has been the commonly accepted view since 1845, when Abraham Geiger, a German rabbi, showed that even Jewish rabbis from the first century would have spoken Aramaic. He convincingly argued that the Hebrew from the first century (Mishnaic Hebrew) only functioned as a written language, not as a living, spoken language.
There are two reasons most scholars believe Aramaic was the primary language of Jesus’s time—and the language Jesus spoke:
The overwhelming majority of documents and inscriptions recovered from the era are in Aramaic. Although documents do exist in Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and other languages, they are a minority. And even though many religious texts are in Hebrew (for example, of the Dead Sea Scrolls, 15% are in Aramaic, 3% are in Greek, and the rest in Hebrew), most nonreligious texts—contracts, invoices, ownership claims, and other kinds of ordinary communication—are in Aramaic. Moreover, of the Hebrew inscriptions found, almost all have been found in and around Jerusalem and the Judean wilderness—and virtually none have been found in Galilee. If Hebrew was spoken regularly in ordinary conversation, there is little written evidence to support it.
The second, and perhaps most convincing evidence of Aramaic primacy is that the Hebrew Scriptures were being translated into Aramaic. There may be many reasons why the Scriptures were being translated, but the most likely one is the simplest: most ordinary people could no longer understand the Scriptures in Hebrew. This doesn’t mean Hebrew wasn’t spoken. We’ve seen above that it was.
It simply means the instances where Hebrew was spoken were the exception, not the rule.
(Excerpt) Read more at zondervanacademic.com ...
Jesus probably knew enough Greek to understand it. But he wouldn’t have spoken it as his first language. He also wouldn’t have used it in his daily conversation or taught the crowds in Greek.
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Jesus probably knew enough Greek to understand it????
Is this author for real??
20Therefore many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, Latin and in Greek. John 19:20 NASB
It's what the Romans called the region.
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All of Judea spoke Hebrew. There were outsiders that spoke other languages, such as Aramaic, but at no time did the Hebrew population speak anything but Hebrew.
English!
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Centuries after the sacking of Jerusalem, Romans used the Name “Palestine” which was a mis-spelling of Philistine, on some maps.
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>> “Is this author for real??” <<
NO!
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Zondervan is well known for their love of corrupted bibles.
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That’s right. If you don’t believe it just look at the Bible.
The leftist say that Jesus spoke Mexican.
His name is Yeshua in the Aramaic.
You’re correct, partly. I believe the “Jesus” was the Greek Translation of the Hebrew name “Yeshua.” - “God Saves.”
And no such thing as Palestinians.
There are several references in the KJV NT to the OT Joshua but they use the Greek name Jesus. It could get confusing.
But not during the time when Yeshua was walking the Earth. Even today I hear some pastor’s refer to Israel as Palestine. There is no such country. It’s just a name.
Herodotus writing about 430 B.C. describes a part of Syria as Syria Palaistine—at least including the area that had been inhabited earlier by the Philistines, maybe a larger area. The Philistines had probably been assimilated into the general (non-Israelite) population of Canaan long before then but their name continued to be associated with the area where they had lived.
Based upon my military service in Germany, where I learned some basic German to get around, I figure that Jesus probably knew some Latin, as it was the language of the Romans occupying Israel, and some Greek because of the Greek influence in that part of the Mediterranean.
I also figure that his normal, everyday language was probably Aramaic or Hebrew, and those were the language(s) he initially learned from Mary and Joseph.
His name in his native land was YESHUA.
I’ve heard it asserted that “Jesus” is a Latin version of “Joshua.” But then, “Joshua” is, in my understanding, not Hebrew or Aramaic either - it’s anglicized.The fundamental point is that nobody was running around with tape recorders documenting how any language was pronounced two millennia ago. And just consider how impenetrable Chaucer English is to modern Americans, and you have to know that the pronunciation of any word 2000 years ago would, if heard today, have approximately zero chance of being understood by a modern.
Aramaic likely but also Hebrew The languages are closely related and Jesus read from, almost certainly also preached in Hebrew in synagogue. Szswes
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