The Language of God?? Jesus spoke what?

Easter is right around the corner and with it, my normally very religious Roman Catholic family is increasing the talk we have about religious themes. It could also be that we're restricted from going to church and this is some sort of spiritual outlet for us. Anyways, my mom posed a question:

What language did Jesus speak?

This was a slam dunk for me - I had taken a class first semester that covered the societal and legal history of Ancient Israel, so I knew the answer was...

"Hebrew!" Exclaimed my father. Of course, this was incorrect. I knew the right answer.

"No, it's Aramaic" I responded.

It turns out we were both right. When we researched the topic after getting nowhere saying "I'm right" and "Nuh-uh" a couple of times, it turns out that Jesus spoke Aramaic but was proficient in Hebrew, which I guess shouldn't come as a surprise to me or to anyone. Aramaic, for anyone who doesn't know, is another Semitic language that is home to certain parts of the Levant which includes modern-day Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel.

Additionally, Jesus is believed to have known som Greek. At first, this was very confusing, but because Israel was conquered by the Hellenistic empire, there were apparently long-lasting influences of the Greek language on the region. Jesus is believed to have known more Greek than he knew Latin, which I think is strange because he lived within the Roman Empire and was even put to death by the Roman governor of the region.

I never thought of Jesus as being bilingual, and I really never thought of him as having been trilingual. In fact, because this topic is never brought up and Jesus is so often portrayed as a white man living among other white men, I much more often think of Jesus as being fluent in English, which of course is not the case.

I think this is an important question to answer, and I'm glad there is an answer because to me it is important to contextualize the Bible to better understand what it is and in order to remind ourselves how much has changed between now and biblical times.

Comments

  1. Interesting Easter conversation.
    I wonder how scholars uncovered or otherwise inferred that information.

    ReplyDelete

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