[malakhi]

My understanding that Pleastinian Jews spoke Aramaic rather than Hebrew

They spoke Aramaic, but they used Hebrew in their worship and in study of scripture. All of those synagogues that Jesus visited were not using Greek translations.

[RobbyS]

They spoke Aramaic, but they used Hebrew in their worship and in study of scripture. All of those synagogues that Jesus visited were not using Greek translations. A bit like the Latin mass, no? Hebrew had become a sacred language rather than the vernacular. In Germany, before the days of universal education there was a social gap between those who spokespoke the local dialect and those who spoke Hochdeutsch, just as earlier between those who spoke the vernacular and those who spoke Latin. I suspect a similar gap existed between trained rabbis and ordinary people in First Century Palestine.