What language did Jesus speak? Most people assume that Jesus spoke Aramaic. But really, we should be asking a different question... Read the accompanying blog post: t.co/q480uHGGYh
A multicultural society requires - by necessity - a multilingüal foundation for communication. This varied view of the world around him, makes Jesus’ message of empathy, acceptance, love, and forgiveness a more universal one, still applicable today in a global world. As opposed to the traditionally monolithic American interpretation of the ‘narrow’ way that simply prolongs the old testament view into Jesus’ ministry.
Pretty sure Hebrew was only a liturgical language with a very small lexicon in ancient times. To my understanding, (correct me if you know more history) Hebrew as a general purpose language was only recently invented circa the time of Theordor Herzl.
Aramaic obviously, Hebrew because its a scholarly language when reading old testament and Greek since he was a carpenter going to different places to fix wooden stuff with gentiles
Excellent! Latin because he was a Roman *Centurion* - most Romans only knew Greek at the time, but Latin was still spoken in the military. And interesting re: Niocdemus - Gk is the prestige language in this situation, between two Jews who could speak another language with each other. There are contemporary parallels in various social settings
Why do you not mention the fact that it was also possible that Jesus spoke or at least understood Latin? How did he communicate with Pontius Pilatethen, the Roman governor? Are you again assuming that all the Latin speakers also spoke Greek? That is not necessarily true. That he understood Hebrew is obvious because he taught in the temple in Jerusalem which used Hebrew. Aramaic is an offshoot of Hebrew, too. Although Latin may not have been the primary language of that area, Rome was the conquering power and that is what they spoke. Normal foot soldiers are not usually highly educated, which means they probably were not fluent in 3 languages. These are conjectures. At the time of the crucifixion, above Jesus's head was an inscription which was written in Hebrew, Greek and Latin, so one could assume the Christ also knew Latin, but nowadays people want to dismiss the marvelous sacred language because it is Roman Catholic. Peter and Paul were both in Rome, and you mean that neither of them spoke a word of Latin?????
Jesus read the scriptures at the Synagogue, it would have been most likely Hebrew (Luke 4:17-21). The torah was unlikely to be written in Aramaic, unless one knows of Aramaic scriptures older then the Targum Onkelos.
The verbal link that allowed Jesus to join the two different Isaiah passages together in his reading in the Nazareth synagogue in Luke 4 is found in the Hebrew text: רצון לה׳. This indicates he was reading from a Hebrew scroll, which aligns with expectations since we know that Jews in the Land at that time interacted with the Hebrew text directly in Hebrew. For more details, see R. Steven Notley and Jeffrey P. García, “Hebrew-Only Exegesis: A Philological Approach to Jesus’ Use of the Hebrew Bible” in _The Language Environment of First Century Judaea: Jerusalem Studies in the Synoptic Gospels_ (Brill 2014).
