[Pharmboy]

Exactly! That's what puzzled me...why not Greek...or Aramaic. I posed the question to a boyhood friend of mine (we grew up together in NYC and he married an Israeli woman 30 years ago and moved there) who has become an amateur scholar on ancient Hebrew. Here's the exchange:

ME: But please explain why those Christians/Jews at the time used ancient Hebrew...I thought that the Aramaic alphabet was used then...

Him:Right, but the replacement didn't occur suddenly; there were still those who knew and used the ancient script for some scriptural writings. Another example of this is the WaYiqrah (Levitcus) scroll that was entirely written in the ancient script and discovered along with the other Dead Sea Scrolls. Additionally, in some of the scrolls, the name of God (Yahweh) was written in the ancient script while the remainder of the texts was in Aramaic script. Finally, all the coins minted by Bar Cokhbah had the ancient script engraved on them.

Nowadays, in commemoration of these coins, the Israeli one shekel and ten shekel coins have a bit of the ancient script engraved on them.

Back to me:Perhaps they used the ancient script to give it more gravity.

[Elsie]

Perhaps they used the ancient script to give it more gravity.

Like GOD told Joseph Smith to use 1611 English in the BoM to give IT more; uh; gravity.

[jjotto]

Certainly Judaism used Hebrew. Mishnaic Hebrew was certainly around for a few centuries after this time, and Aramaic for hundreds of years after that. But it is an article of faith for Christians that Aramaic was the common language of the time and that the Greek Septuagint was used as Scripture. Not much point in encoded Hebrew under those conditions. Who would be the intended audience?

Using a more ancient script and language to lend “gravity” would be an unconvincing affectation.