What Language Did Jesus Speak?

There is wide consensus among scholars that Aramaic was the primary language spoken by the Jews of first century Palestine.

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.

I would also respectfully ask you to list these eminent authors (scholars?) and well versed Hebrew scholars. Thank you in advance.

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I already did in the Posts #43, #52, and #58, leaning heavily on the Hebrew and Greek dictionary appendices to Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the (KJV) Bible, as well as the Brown/Driver/Briggs Hebrew Definitions and Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament.

Also at hand I have of the S. P. Tregelles' translation of the Gesenius Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures (1889), the Rev. C. E. Butler's Old Testament Word Studies, Jay P. Green's Interlinear Bible in Hebrew/Greek/English, J. Weingreen (Emeritus Professor of Hebrew, University of Dublin) tome "A Practical Grammar for Classical Hebrew", Young's Analytical Concordance, and the five volumes of the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia.

Additional Greek resources on my shelf are Greek grammars by J. Gresham Machen, Dana and Mantey, W, E. Vine, and Daniel B. Wallace's "Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics"m plus W. E. Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Restament Words. William D. Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek has helped me immensely in understanding Greek translation and interpretation.

There are more supplementary textbooks, that could be mentioned but the above ought to be sufficient to demonstrate that these resources, plus my Logos Bible Study software that I've used for over twenty years, and the copious features of Rick Meyers' "e-Sword" software that I have come to depend on, have made timely response to FR posters a good possibility.

For speed, in "e-Sword" I have immediate access to the Textus Receptus, Robinson and Pierpont's Byzantine/Majority Textform of the Greek, The Biblica Hebraica Stuttgartensia Maasoretic text with Tense/voice/Mood apparatus, the Septuagint, the Vulgate, Darby and Douay-Rheims Bibles, and many commentaries to get their doctrinal viewpoints.

And, oh, I also have a copy of The Torah: A Modern Commentary edited by W. Gunther Plaut and contributors B. J. Bamberger and essays on Ancient Near Eastern Literature by William Hallo. I also have a copy of the Koran, but I don't use that much at all.

In view of the above superfluosity of information and centuries of accumulated wisdom, I count my own schooling through B. S., M. S., and Ph. D. with postdoctoral work in the Solar Energy Research Institute, years of research as a Member of Staff of the General Electric Semiconductor Products Department, and thirteen years as Senior Research Ceramist with the Dupont Company as quite unremarkable, though two years each of Latin, French, and German have helped significantly in learning Biblical Greek.

For 20 years I've been discipled by Dr. Fred Wittman, a Bible teacher, pastor, and missionary, who is the author and translator of the New Testament, the first volume of which is "The Gospels: A Precise Translation" with the second volume of the remainder being prepared for publication. He is basically the person who began my education in hermeneutics and expository writing.

Considering your own accomplishments, I have read through your profile here on FR, and am greatly impressed with the breadth and quality of your efforts.

I am not sure that the above is exactly what you want me to prove to you about mine, but I do know that the excellence of the authors and scholars I mentioned ought to put both of us in a little more humble frame of mind.

I hope our communication can always be as FRiends and mutually supportive fellow sojourners in a difficult environment.

Ciao for now.

Actually, we KNOW why the Catholic church objected to vernacular translations. They explained it in their writings. They did NOT object to the wealthy reading translations. They objected to COMMONERS reading God’s Word.

“Thus it is obvious that the reading of scripture translated into the vulgar tongue is the act of the superior, and is not to be elicited or commanded by the will of a person of the inferior order. Therefore such an act, that is to say, reading of the scriptures, when found in a person of the lower order of the terrestrial hierarchy—even in one to some extent purified by the sacrament of penance—is almost an infernal act. ...

...St. Jerome says 12 that the study of the scriptures needs a multitude of books, silence, sedulous librarians, safe and leisured scribes: how then, when the occupation of the people in tilling the fields, caring for the beasts, and performing their due services, is as great as, or greater than, the occupation of a soldier in fighting, how, I ask, can it but be, among such various cares, but that study of the scriptures should sleep?’...

‘Nothing should be revealed to those who are not capable of understanding it: but these lay people are not capable of understanding many of the difficulties of holy scripture: therefore these matters at least should not be written in our vulgar tongue. ... Nothing should be had in the vulgar tongue which might be an occasion and cause of error to the simple: for the mass of the people are led into error very easily; but many parts of scripture, if translated into our vulgar tongue, would be wrongly understood and lead simple people into error; for if the difficulty of scripture led Arius, Sabellius, Nestorius, Frontinus and other heretics into error, therefore even more would it mislead simple people. ... For it is foolish to be scrupulous about what can without peril be ignored; and much of holy scripture may be ignored by the simple without peril, because it surpasses their understanding. ... Some things are too hard and difficult and lofty for simple people: even as Paul the apostle wrote: Even as babes in Christ, I have fed you with milk and not with meat. ... Those things needful for salvation, and no other part of holy scripture, should be translated for them.’...

...That proposition then, that the common people should read holy scripture, ought to be given up: for it is not a means of leading them into knowledge of the aforesaid scripture...

... Since the best means of knowing God is to meditate on God, and humbly to entreat Him, and since Christian people profit more by these two means than by reading or hearing the scriptures ... it seems to me that it would be better to exhort people to make use of these two means: namely, meditation and prayer, than to advise that a translation of scripture into the vulgar tongue should be handed over to the laity’

http://www.bible-researcher.com/wyclif5.html

Also, Tyndale’s response to the objections of Catholics gives a good review of those objections - along, of course, with his answers to them:

http://www.godrules.net/library/tyndale/19tyndale7.htm

As a rule, it was not the notes in the margins that the Catholic Church objected to, but the idea of translating God’s Word into language commoners could understand.

Looking at the first appearance of Joshua (in English) in Torah at Exodus 17:9, here are the characters one sees:

jodh sh'va he vav-with-a-dot-on-top=holem shin kibbuts ayin pathah

ee eh h oh sh oo ah

Brown/Driver/Briggs lexicon says this:

H3091
יהושׁע / יהושׁוּע
yehoÌ‚shuÌ‚a‛
BDB Definition:
Joshua or Jehoshua = "Jehovah is salvation"

According to Strong's Concordance dictionary:

Strong's Number = H3091
יהושׁע יהושׁוּע
yehoÌ‚shuÌ‚a‛ yehoÌ‚shuÌ‚a‛
yeh-ho-shoo'-ah, yeh-ho-shoo'-ah
From H3068 and H3467; Jehovah-saved; Jehoshua (that is, Joshua),
the Jewish leader: - Jehoshua, Jehoshuah, Joshua.
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But try it youself: If you say "Jehoshuah" vey fast, , the Je and the hah elide, and the sound simply becomes "Joshuah."

Remember, too, that in transliterating to Greek, the Koine has no "sh" sound. So that means when a Greek says His Name, it will come out as:

"Ee ay soo" (no "sh" sound)

But to be grammatical as the nominative of a masculine noun, the letter sigma must be appended, so the sound will come out as "Ee ay soos", and be spelled as Ἰησοῦς.

To Luther, it would be spelled in German as "Jesus", yet souns the same as the Greek.

However, if we take the spelling as in German, and make it a proper noun in English, it would be spelled the same.

But when an Englishman (or American) is shown it, he/she is going to look at the name "Jesus" and say "gee-zuhs". This is how we lost the "hah" out of Yehoshua to get Jesus. If we talked about Him to a first century Christian, he/she would have no idea of who this "geezuhs" was.

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