The language of "the people" was not Hebrew. They spoke Aramaic. They studied Targumim - Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Scriptures - in their synagogues. They named their children Aramaic names. They wrote their marriage contracts in Aramaic.
Hebrew to a 1st century Jew in Judaea was like Latin to an 18th century Italian.
Every educated man knew it thoroughly, even uneducated men knew prayers and sayings in it, but it was not the language of daily conversation.
“Every educated man knew it thoroughly, even uneducated men knew prayers and sayings in it, but it was not the language of daily conversation”
Probably not.
First of all, it is (and has been since Mt. Sinai) a requirement of Judaism that all males write at least one scroll of the Torah. This mitzvah resulted in near universal Hebrew literacy among my people, which, in turn, resulted in literacy in a number of other languages, a fact that was commented on by Greek, Roman, and other historians. Indeed, it is why common Jewish people ended up in relatively high places throughout the Roman empire -— we were the accountants and bookkeepers of the Empire.
I’ve personally seen hundreds (probably thousands) of mundane items from the Herodian periods. Hebrew was certainly used in commerce (I saw shipping manifests), and even things like public bathrooms (”men” and “women” signs have been around for a long time), street signs, and more solemn things like gravestones and public monuments.
So, yes, I am sure Aramaic (a pigeon language) was common, just as Yiddish is (or was) very common, as was Ladino.
But Hebrew was certainly equally and widely understood and used in common parlance.