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Thank you for the first detailed site I have seen on this!

http://www.answers.com/topic/aramaic-of-jesus

While I wont argue that Aramaic was never spoken, (it probably sounded like I was, I didn't mean it to be something that I thought never happened), I will stick to my statement that Hebrew was the most common language Jesus spoke, but I will also expand on what I think but didn't say, that I recognize Jesus most likely certainly knew certain phrases or even spoke fluently those other languages like Aramaic and maybe even Greek.

My thoughts have to do with the language handed down through Israel, before all the conquests they endured over time; from Egypt, Greece, Persia, Syria, Assyria, there had to be a plethora of languages just like 1949 Israel had.

However, the first language of Abraham is what I would place my bet on with Jesus main spoken tongue. While I have no Biblical evidence verse by verse, when the languages that were created at Babel happened, Abraham's ancestors spoke the same language from that day, Abraham spoke that language they spoke, Abraham's sons spoke the language their father spoke, and so did their sons, and so on.

Other languages would be learned such as Egyptian during the period of slavery, but certainly the Israelites would have retained their own language, (like hispanics do today and Polish, and Vietnamese to name a few modern peoples here in the USA), especially proven thorough Moses written account of the first 5 books of the Bible and copied letter for letter over the years.

Certainly when Jesus spoke in the Temple at the start of His ministry, that was Hebrew for He read out of the scroll itself. If Hebrew was NOT the main language of the people, then where are the copies of Aramaic Scrolls of the Torah? Where are the copies of Aramaic writings of carvings?

I have been to the British Museum in London, and among the displays of the time are HEBREW carvings of letters that were etched in stone, to represent the people of Israel, and not any in Aramaic that I saw at all. In fact, in the book they published in 1991, "THE BIBLE IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM, I dont remember any Aramaic discoveries that were included at all. Certainly the British Museum would have doen so if it was a genuine Biblical language of the Jews at that time.

Certainly some words were in Aramaiac, for the examples shown on that site (Thank you, I never found it in my searches), but for these verses to be separated from all the others, to be written in Aramaic while others were in Greek, that tells us that Aramaic was NOT the common tongue or else all the verses would be in AAramaic and only small portions would be in Greek!

Think of that! If Aramaic was the main language of Jesus, then why are only certain verses highlighted with small particular phrases in Aramaic, and not the entire New Testament?

It would make no sense to highlight the smallest number of verses that have Aramaic phrases if the entire conversation was in Aramaic.

That logic alone tells me that Aramaic was NOT the main language of Jesus time.

While I wont argue that Aramaic was never spoken, (it probably sounded like I was, I didn't mean it to be something that I thought never happened), I will stick to my statement that Hebrew was the most common language Jesus spoke

Actually, it wasn't, but that doesn't help you anyway: the alleged "Petros/petra" pun doesn't exist in Hebrew anymore than it exists in Aramaic.

BTW, we know very well that Peter was called "Rock" in Aramaic, because the Aramaic "Kepha" (="Rock") is the origin of the name "Cephas," which is simply Kepha transliterated into Greek.

And, no, Jesus didn't call Peter a "stone". The word for stone is "lithos". "Petros" was used for small stone in classical Greek poetry, but not in the Koine Greek of the New Testament. (Matthew was probably not written originally in Greek anyway, but in Hebrew or Aramaic.) Peter was called "Petros" because Petros is the masculine-declension analogue of "petra" (=rock). Jesus couldn't have called Simon "Petra" if he'd wanted to, because petra has feminine gender and He would have effectively been giving Peter a woman's name.

I have been to the British Museum in London, and among the displays of the time are HEBREW carvings of letters that were etched in stone, to represent the people of Israel, and not any in Aramaic that I saw at all. In fact, in the book they published in 1991, "THE BIBLE IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM, I dont remember any Aramaic discoveries that were included at all. Certainly the British Museum would have doen so if it was a genuine Biblical language of the Jews at that time.

I knew it! I knew that Mel Gibson guy was full of it! See, nobody spoke Aramaic back then. He just made that language up for his movie! It's just like how those guys that made Star Trek invented Klingon so that they could make lots of money teaching seminars to trekkies everywhere.