Yes, seriously (I cited the same article). The statement in the article that Jesus and the disciples primarily spoke Aramaic is taken from this reference:
"Allen C. Myers, ed. (1987). "Aramaic". The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. p. 72. ISBN 0-8028-2402-1. "It is generally agreed that Aramaic was the common language of Palestine in the first century AD. Jesus and his disciples spoke the Galilean dialect, which was distinguished from that of Jerusalem (Matt. 26:73) "
Does Eerdmans Bible Dictionary pass muster as a legit source?
The context of the discussion was Matt. 16;18 and the reference to "rock." As I've pointed out, in John 1:42 Jesus tells Simon he will be called "Cephas," which to anyone with half an ounce of linguistic knowledge is a transliteration into Greek of the Aramaic word "Kepha" meaning "rock."
Why do y’all want Peter for your rock to build your church on instead of Jesus?
No one is disputing the use of Aramaic in the region. However, Greek was the primary language of commerce as already noted.
Your presumption is that when Jesus was talking to His disciples it was always in Aramaic. A Jew might argue it was Hebrew.
Bottom line is we don't know in which language He spoke to His disciples. What we do know is that the NT, inspired by the Holy Spirit, was written in Greek for a reason.
To pull Matt 16:18 out of context by itself does a disservice to the text and leads to error. You have to read the whole exchange starting with Matt 16:13-19 to get the full meaning of the text.
To understand this passage you have to ask the following:
What was Peter's answer to the question in 16:15?
What did Jesus note was revealed to Peter in 16:17
Does Jesus say I will built my church upon you Peter?
Did Jesus use the same Greek word for rock in His statement to Peter? Hint: How is the word rock used elsewhere in the NT? And just in case you ask, they're all in the feminine indicating the gender doesn't matter in this case. See 1 Corinthians 10:4 for a good reference.
You might also do a word search on rock in the OT. I believe either cynicalbear or elsie has collected the various uses of rock in the Bible and how they are used in referring to God and/or Jesus.
Good discussion.
That's right...A little rock...A stone...Jesus says Cephas in Greek means stone...Petros...
Street language would likely have been Aramaic, Hebrew, or Greek depending on the group of people He was with. We do know that all three were used at the time including Latin although less common. We also know however that Greek was the predominate language of the entire area. Alexander had conquered that region over 300 years before the birth of Jesus. We know that Koine Greek was the common street language of Rome, Alexandria, Athens, and Jerusalem from 330BC to 330AD. It was surely the language of commerce. G.L. Archer wrote this: "Greek was the most ideally adapted linguistic medium for the World-Wide communication of the Gospel in the entire region of the eastern Mediterranean, Egypt and the Near East. Accurate in expression, beautiful in sound, and capable of great rhetorical force, it furnished an ideal vehicle for the proclamation of God’s message to man, transcending Semitic barriers and reaching out to all the Gentile races. [Archer, Gleason L. 1975. Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible. Vol. 3. Merrill C. Tenney, ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.]
Given all that the fact still remains that the Holy Spirit inspired the New Testament to be written and preserved in the Greek language. It is the meaning of the words in the Greek language that we need to do our best to understand the meaning of. The Holy Spirit didn't have to guess as to what Jesus meant when He spoke. Whether Jesus was speaking in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, or even Latin is immaterial to this discussion. It is the Greek language that the Holy Spirit had those words recorded in for all time. It is the Greek that we need to understand. Injecting the Aramaic is second guessing what the Holy Spirit had written.