Language Use in the First Century: Spoken Hebrew in a Trilingual Society in the Time of Jesus

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Hebrew was alive and well in a basically trilingual society in the land of Israel during the first century C.E.

How to cite this article: Randall Buth, “Language Use in the First Century: Spoken Hebrew in a Trilingual Society in the Time of Jesus,” Jerusalem Perspective (2026): [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/3100/].[1] 

Barbara Grimes has written on the sociolinguistic matrix of first-century Christianity.[2] Unfortunately, many of the details dealing with the actual language data from that time period reflect an old sociolinguistic model and are quite misleading.[3] This article[4] is presented partially as a corrective to the language details and partially as an introduction to a newer model. The subject is complex, and this response is necessarily short and incomplete. The references provide further reading.

The discussion on Aramaic in Grimes (ibid., 20-21), is based on Riem, who relied on Jeremias.[5] The first sentence can no longer be accepted:

In the homeland of the Jewish people in the First Century A.D., Aramaic was the mother tongue and principal language of most of the people, including virtually all of the women.

In fact, the mother tongue of the homeland was Hebrew, and virtually all the women knew it. The reason for this fundamental discrepancy is that European and U.S. scholarship has had a mistaken view of Mishnaic Hebrew for over a hundred years.

The Origin and Decline of the Aramaic Model

One of the founders of Reformed Judaism, Abraham Geiger, suggested in his book in 1845 that Mishnaic Hebrew was an artificial language created by rabbis whose first language was Aramaic but who tried to speak Hebrew.[6] Needless to say, there was a strong reaction to this within Jewish scholarship. It was very difficult to believe that the rabbis could do such a ‘bad’ job with Hebrew. In 1908, Segal showed that the features of Mishnaic Hebrew (MH) are separate from both Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic and represent a living speech, a descendant of Biblical Hebrew, and cover all aspects of daily life.[7] Some examples of these non-Biblicisms and non-Aramaisms are: אֲנוּ (’a·NŪ, “we”) instead of אֲנָחְנוּ (’a·NĀḤ·nū), לִיקַּח (li·QAḤ “to take”) instead of לָקַחַת (lā·QA·ḥat), אֵלּוּ (’Ē·lū, “these”) instead of אֵלֶּה (’Ē·leh), and the use of the Nitpd*al verb stem, nonexistent in Biblical Hebrew and all Aramaic dialects.[8] 

It is safe to say that the discoveries in the Judean desert have caused many scholars to recognize the general correctness of Segal’s position. In Kutscher’s words:

Today, thanks to the letters of Bar-Koseba and his contemporaries not the slightest doubt remains that Graetz, Segal, Ben Yehuda, Klausner and others were right in assuming that MH was a living language, and that Geiger was wrong.[9] 

Milik, one of the editors who worked extensively on the Dead Sea Scrolls, came to similar conclusions:

The copper rolls and the documents from the Second Revolt prove beyond reasonable doubt that Mishnaic was the normal language of the Judean population in the Roman period. Some Jewish scholars (e g. Segal, Klausner) had already suggested this on the basis of Talmudic anecdotes; additional evidence can be found in the inscriptions on contemporary ossuaries.[10] 

The Missing Hebrew Model

One of the problems of Grimes’ article is that it strongly relies on the views of Jeremias and Black. While they have made major contributions to biblical scholarship, they represent an old view of the language situation that has not come to full grips with current Israeli scholarship.

Rabin summarizes the general situation in his article on Hebrew for Current Trends in Linguistics:

…the fact that, broadly speaking, the thesis of Mishnaic Hebrew being a natural language has been accepted by Israeli scholarship, and hesitantly, or not at all, by many scholars outside Israel, has vitally affected the emergence of an Israeli school of research in Second-Temple linguistics, affecting both the study of Hebrew and of Aramaic in their various manifestations … It is significant that research in the language of the Scrolls—as distinct from research into their historical and religious significance—has been largely restricted to Israeli scholars.[11] 

…Though we have no clear idea of the process or of the exact chronology, the evidence on the whole goes to show that Hebrew ceased to be spoken in Palestine about 200 A.D.[12] 

The recognition of Mishnaic Hebrew as a living language changes the whole picture of language use in the first century. It answers some of the old problems but introduces some new ones of its own. For example, the situation in Judea becomes clearer while the picture in Galilee becomes more complicated, due to a lack of relevant sources. (We will refer to Galilee later.)

A living Mishnaic Hebrew explains why the Mishnah is in Hebrew but the Talmud—of identical sociolinguistic function but later in time—contains considerable portions of Aramaic: earlier rabbis up through A.D. 200 naturally used their first language, Mishnaic Hebrew, in discussions, while the rabbis of the third through fifth centuries A.D. tended to use their first language, Aramaic, in their discussions.

After the Exile

Aramaic was not adopted in the fifth century B.C. as the new mother tongue of the Jewish people.[13] A little thought will show that her position would not support her theological conclusion. If Aramaic were the mother tongue, then God was not interested in reaching the people in the language that they understood and used. The prophets after the exile continued to write in Hebrew. Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachai (430 B.C.) are written in a continuation of Biblical Hebrew. Ezra, Nehemiah (fifth century), Ecclesiates, and the history of the Chronicles are also in Hebrew. (Late Biblical Hebrew does show the influence of spoken Mishnaic Hebrew on the writers.) It is true that some of Daniel and Ezra are written in Aramaic, but the major portion of those books is written in Hebrew. Aramaic was chosen for portions particularly relevant to the government, such as legal documents in Ezra, or for giving a ‘courtly tone’ to the stories in Daniel. What did happen at that time is that Ezra brought back an upper strata society who knew Aramaic, and there was definite prestige in the use of Aramaic because it was the official language of the Persian Empire. (Some of the statements in Grimes do not make sense at this point: How could the returnees bring back the ‘Western dialect of Aramaic’[14] from the East?) There was also language pressure exerted on Hebrew from neighboring societies. Nehemiah mentions the language of Ashdod (Neh. 13:24) being spoken by people of mixed marriages. This was probably Phoenician.[15] At a later time the Nabateans bordered Judea on the East. They spoke Arabic, although they wrote Aramaic. Aramaic was an advantage to traders who could use Aramaic as a lingua franca outside of Jewish settlements.

Example of Misuse of Data

Testimony to the use of Hebrew in contrast to Aramaic comes from the Letter of Aristeas (200-100 B.C.). It is also an example of how evidence has sometimes been misrepresented because of assumptions of ‘pan-Aramaism’. Demetrius is quoted, in the letter, speaking to the king:

Translation is needed [for the Hebrew Scriptures]… They [Jews] are assumed to use Aramaic [Συριακῇ ⟨sū·ri·a·KĒ⟩], but such is not the case; it is a different [ἕτερος ⟨HE·te·ros⟩] kind [of language]. (Let. Aris. §11 [translation mine])[16] 

Many Jews in Egypt knew and used Aramaic, and many communications from Israel were received and understood in Aramaic. This explains why people were able to assume that Aramaic was the language of Yehud (as Israel was called at the time). However, the writer of Aristeas knew better. There was a problem of translation. We know that Aristeas referred to Hebrew because the books in question were the Hebrew scriptures and because he equates that language with the people. Black ignores the context of the passage in order to see an ‘Aramaic dialect’ in Israel:

The reference is to the peculiar dialect of Aramaic spoken by the Jews, a dialect of West Aramaic, quite different from Syriac, the dialect of East Aramaic which was in regular use as the standard Aramaic language.[17] 

However, in the third to second century B.C. the Imperial form of Aramaic, not Syriac, was still used in the Middle East. The distinction between Syriac and Western Aramaic developed much later. Furthermore, Συριακή (Sū·ri·a·KĒ) in Greek refers to any Aramaic, not just the later Syriac dialect (cf. the Septuagint and Josephus, Ant. 1:144). A person might reasonably argue that Aristeas is only hearsay evidence or attributes Hebrew to the people because of the Hebrew Bible. But it certainly refers to a difference between Hebrew and Aramaic and cannot refer to two Aramaic dialects of the time that were mutually intelligible.

Hebrew and the Spread of Aramaic

A good survey of the sociolinguistic questions concerning the use of Hebrew after the exile and the gradual spread of Aramaic is contained in Bendavid.[18] He shows that the common people used Hebrew, and they were the major factor in its continuation, while the ‘educated and cultured’ provided the force for the spread of Aramaic (and later Greek). The rabbis needed to know Aramaic better than the common people since they had to write official documents and did more traveling. As an example of a document, consider a decree of marriage obligation. It was written in Hebrew in the countryside of Judea but in Aramaic in cosmopolitan Jerusalem. (Ketubot 4:12 quotes both texts.)[19] (Although Greek and Aramaic were widely used in Jerusalem, Hebrew was certainly used as well, as exemplified by traders and Babylonians using Hebrew [Yoma 6:4, B. Pesahim 116].) There is an educational anecdote at the end of the Hebrew period (A.D. 200) from Judah Ha-Nasi, the compiler of the Mishnah. His students did not understand a few Hebrew words and the maid [N.B.: a woman] explained them to them (b. Megillah 18). Maybe she was an old Judean refugee.

Bendavid thinks that the tradition of providing an Aramaic translation in public scripture readings originated early as a concession to the imperial status of Aramaic:

Even the tradition to translate the prophets appears to have begun already at the start of the second temple [c. 500 B.C.—RB]: ‘Targum Jonathan to the Prophets was spoken by Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachai’ (Megillah 3). . . not because the people did not understand the language of the Bible (in fact, those prophets preached to the people in Hebrew) but apparently because it was the language of government and authority. (translation mine)[20] 

The question of the targums raises many different kinds of historical and linguistic problems that will not be entered into in this article. Bendavid’s position is reasonable, but no one knows when the synagogue practice of providing targum actually began.[21] 

Three points of caution regarding the targums must be mentioned. (1) The targums were a repository of exegetical traditions, not just translations. Because of this they had value to Hebrew speakers who were bilingual in Aramaic, and they protected the reading of the Hebrew text from changes and confusion. (2) The language of the Palestinian Talmud (fifth century A.D.) and the Palestinian Targums is several centuries later than the first century. They cannot be used as examples of first century Aramaic. (3) Something that is perhaps of interest to a translation organization is that the targums were ‘carefully translated,’[22] but not in our sense. The targums are a combination of two traits that are not acceptable in our translations. They are often slavishly literal, mimicking Hebrew structure while they remain free to add to the meaning (sometimes in amazing ways), delete, or even reverse the meaning according to a particular sermon or commentary. That makes them interesting to study but not a generally valid model of ‘careful translation.’

The translator of a targum was called a meturgeman[23] in Hebrew and Aramaic (not Greek)[24] According to rabbinic literature we can expect that the sermons following the scripture reading were given in Hebrew. Grimes claims that ‘any addresses given by the rabbis in Hebrew were also translated orally into Aramaic for the common people.’[25] This may have been true in Talmudic times (cf. y. Megillah 4, 74d, 9 about a rabbi from A.D. 300), although it would have been unnecessary in Second-Temple times. The rabbinic precedents imply that Hebrew sermons were normal in the pre-200 A.D. period and were often continued as traditional in the post-200 A.D. period. As mentioned earlier, it is the contention of this newer sociolinguistic model that the common people understood Hebrew during the Second-Temple period. The Pharisees chose Mishnaic Hebrew specifically as an oral communication. They were actively engaged in teaching the common people, were understood and, except for details of tithing and so forth, had popular support on many positions (cf. Josephus, Ant. 13:288).

Hebrew and Aramaic in the Galilee

The Galilee in the second to third centuries A.D. is where Hebrew ceased to be a common spoken language. It was there in the third century that the arguments and sayings of the rabbis continued unabated but were couched in Aramaic more than Hebrew. As Rabin noted the process and chain of events is not clear even though A.D. 200 appears as a ‘watershed.’[26] The majority of scholars accepting a living Mishnaic Hebrew explain a language change in A.D. 200 as linked to the major social cataclysms of A.D. 70 and A.D. 135 and based on sociolinguistic differences between Judea and Galilee with respect to Hebrew use. If Aramaic were the first language of a triglossia in Galilee before those cataclysms, one could explain the demise of spoken Hebrew as a process of assimilation in the second century A.D. when the Judean population centers were dispersed. Children of Judeans who migrated to Galilee would have produced a new social framework by A.D. 200. That is only part of the picture, though. From references in rabbinic sources it appears that there were many rabbis from Galilee in the first and early second centuries who conducted their affairs in Hebrew naturally.[27] It would seem that at least among Jewish populations in Galilee Hebrew was very much alive in the first century. Sh. Safrai reconciles the data by attributing the language change at the end of the second century to a massive emigration of Hebrew speakers following the Bar Kochba revolt (A.D. 135)—which would lower the ratio of Hebrew-speaking Jewish families to Aramaic-speaking gentiles—coupled with a substantial immigration of Aramaic-speaking Jews from Babylonia.[28] Such a hypothesis will need more detailed work before it can be embraced. Instead, I would incline with the majority and see the Galilee as sociolinguistically different from Judea. Hebrew in Galilee in the first century was apparently so widely known that it could be a natural language of teaching, reasoning, and discussion within Jewish communities. But that does not mean it was the first language that was learned by children. The situation may have been something like high German in German-speaking Switzerland. Spoken Hebrew was a second language but was an accepted norm within the Galilean Jewish communities. This would explain the rabbinic evidence, yet would provide a delicate enough situation so that the massive population upheavals in the second century could turn trilingual Jewish Galilee (Aramaic-Hebrew-Greek) into a more bilingual Jewish community (Aramaic-Greek, with Hebrew more restricted to scholars and students). More information is needed in order to follow the exact process of change.

Greek

The question of the use of Greek is more complex. On the one hand, in some periods rabbis were forbidden from teaching it, but Mishnaic Hebrew reveals many Greek loan words and the family of Gameliel, the teacher of Paul, was expressly permitted to teach half of their students Greek literature. This would have provided trained rabbinical students who would have been capable of serving in government and administrative positions (t. Sota 15:8, y. Shabbat 6, 7d, b. Sota 49b.) So Paul probably studied his Greek literature in Jerusalem. Inscriptions from Jerusalem and the Galilee suggest that Greek was widespread. Because of this it is more accurate to talk about trilingualism in the first century rather than bilingualism.[29] 

A revealing quotation comes from Judah ha-Nasi around A.D. 200:

In the land of Israel, why do we need Aramaic [Syrian]? Either use the Holy Tongue or Greek. (b. Bava Qamma 82b-83a)

  1. This shows that Greek was widely known and used, widely enough to be considered for normal use.
  2. Hebrew was still known. Probably it was used as the upper language of Jewish diglossia (dual language use) in the Galilee.
  3. It reflects an awareness that Aramaic had spread and taken over as the first language among Jews around A.D. 200. His question about the propriety of such a language change came a bit late.

Jesus

If one accepts Luke 1:46-55 as from Mary, then Jesus’ mother not only knew Hebrew but was able to compose elegant poetry in it. (If one assumes that this poem came from the Christian community, then it shows that that community considered Hebrew appropriate for the situation.) The structure of the poetry shows that it comes from a Hebrew source, not Aramaic, and that it is not simply a Lukan composition based on the Septuagint.[30] Of course, this is what one would expect of a Judean girl. If one assumes that both Mary and Joseph had roots in Bethlehem, then Jesus’ first language would have been Mishnaic Hebrew. He controlled Aramaic and, almost certainly, Greek as well.

There is insufficient evidence for ascertaining the full picture of the language situation in Galilee in the first century. It appears that Hebrew was used in the synagogue as in Judea. Some probably used Hebrew as a first language, but a majority of Jews in Galilee probably used Hebrew as a second language and Aramaic as a first language.

Two possibilities are open for Jesus’ language use. He may have used Aramaic mainly in Galilee and Hebrew mainly in Judea or in technical religious discussions anywhere. Or, since it seems that Hebrew was commonly used for Jewish teaching in Galilee as well, he may have used mainly Hebrew with all his Jewish audiences. We do not have the evidence at present to decide finally one way or the other. One genre that was almost always in Hebrew was ‘parable.’

Written sources for the New Testament writers is a separate question from the language(s) of Jesus’ teaching. Internal evidence from the Gospels as well as the examples of the Dead Sea Scrolls suggest a literary Hebrew (see below, under the subheadings “Matthew and Aramaic/Hebrew,” and “Semitic/Hebrew Background to Greek Sources”). During the late Second-Temple period a classicized literary dialect was used for written documents and was distinct from Mishnaic Hebrew. (An example occurs in b. Quiddushin 66a, in addition to Dead Sea documents. Books like 1 Maccabbees were probably written in such a dialect.)

The evidence of ‘Aramaic’ in the Gospels does not help with the question of Jesus’ language use. First, some words are good Mishnaic Hebrew, like אַבָּא (’ab·BĀ’, “abba,” “father”). (Yes, the ending -a looks like Aramaic but it is probably not the Aramaic article because people did not address their father as ‘the father’.) Some sayings are definitely Aramaic (Mark 5:41 and 15:34 [Egyptian and Byzantine texts]). However, the fact that they are in Aramaic in a Greek document suggests that something is happening[31] out of the ordinary and it may even testify that Jesus did not ordinarily use Aramaic.[32] 

Advantage of Hebrew as a Solution for Son of Man

New Testament scholars continue to publish ‘explanations’ of the phrase Son of Man that cannot explain all the evidence. It is clear that the phrase is a title in the Gospels. It is also clear that the early Greek church ignored and forgot the title. (It is difficult to take seriously any suggestion that the church ‘invented’ the title in Greek, only to immediately discard it.) Another fact is that it is sometimes explicitly connected with Daniel 7. However, the problem with simply calling Son of Man a title is that in both Aramaic and Hebrew son of man is already a lexical item meaning ‘someone, a person’. Scholars approaching the phrase from an Aramaic perspective cannot support the titular use of the phrase in the Gospels. Suggestions to follow the unnatural Syriac (an Aramaic dialect) the son of a particular man receive less than enthusiastic response.

A Hebrew perspective provides a neat solution. Since Daniel 7 in the Old Testament is in Aramaic, Jesus could quote son of man in Aramaic in the middle of Hebrew speech and immediately signal both the use of the phrase as a title and its connection to Daniel 7:13-14. The story of the healing of the man who was brought in through the roof (Mark 2:1-12 and parallel passages) makes the best sense with an explicit connection to Daniel. Jesus uses the phrase son of man along with ‘authority’. ‘Authority’ is one of the attributes given the one like a human person in Daniel 7. Even more compelling is the mention of on earth. The relevance for including such a phrase only becomes clear against Daniel 7 where every thing takes place ‘in heaven’. Jesus mentioned on earth in order to contrast the heavenly context of Daniel 7. So with Jesus able to converse with his audience in Hebrew, there is now a natural sociolinguistic mechanism for son of man to be a title and explain how this all ended up in the gospels in a generally correct but literal form.

Language Development in Hebrew

There is an interesting statement in Grimes, “Language Choice in First Century Christianity.” Ironically, it is historically correct regarding Hebrew although it is presented as contrary to fact:

All spoken languages change over time, and even if the Jews had not adopted Aramaic as their mother tongue during their exile, their spoken Hebrew language would have become very different by the time Christ came into the world 1400 years later.[33] 

In fact, Mishnaic Hebrew did become quite different from the old Biblical Hebrew. The result was that in the first century people would speak the Mishnaic dialect of Hebrew but apparently used a continuation of Late Biblical Hebrew as the literary language. It is also true that some of the old Biblical Hebrew was no longer understood by speakers of the later Hebrew dialects. The most extreme example of this is the poetry in Job (and a targum to Job was found at Qumran).[34] There are words and phrases sprinkled throughout the Bible that would give people trouble in the first century, though probably not to the degree that Shakespeare can give trouble to modern English speakers.

In addition, our understanding of Mishnaic Hebrew is about to grow as Qimron and Strugnell publish the text of 4QMMT with comments. Qimron has already pointed out that the language situation is even more complicated than previously thought:

4QMMT, whose language is most similar to MH [Mishnaic Hebrew—RB] and presumably best reflects the spoken Hebrew of Qumran, differs markedly from MH in its grammar…. These unique features show that DSS [Dead Sea Scroll—RB] Hebrew is not merely a mixture of BH [Biblical Hebrew—RB], MH, and Aramaic but also draws on a distinct spoken dialect. Thus the way is open for new theories about the nature and origin of the Hebrew of the Second Temple period.[35] 

Language Switching in the New Testament

Paul’s switch of language in Acts 22:2, Ἑβραΐδι (Heb·ra·I·di), becomes something of a nonissue when Hebrew is known to be commonly used in Judea. He spoke Hebrew like the text says. The people understood every word. Greek had a way of specifying Aramaic, Συριστί (Sū·ris·TI), and people were able to distinguish the two easily. Grintz has argued that Josephus consistently used ‘Hebrew’ to refer to Hebrew and not Aramaic.[36] [The evidence for supposing that ‘Hebrew’ means ‘Aramaic’ in the New Testament is based on a few place names. But one must remember that names are a special category and can cross language boundaries. Aramaic place names were common in the Second-Temple period and were even referred to as Hebrew. Such as, if a restaurant in the United States were named Le Chef it would not mean that the people spoke only French, and a foreigner could say it means ‘cook’ in English (cf. ha-golgolet (Hebrew), golgolta (Aramaic) ‘The Skull’; har-megidon (Hebrew), tur-megidon (Aramaic) ‘Armageddon’).][37] 

Matthew and Aramaic/Hebrew

There is no question that there is some Aramaic influence in the Gospel of Matthew. The most obvious and easiest to identify is the use of τότε (TO·te, “then”) as a narrative conjunction.[38] The word τότε “then” is not a feature of Hebrew narrative conjunctions, Biblical or Mishnaic, and it is not a Greek narrative conjunction. However, it is an Aramaic narrative conjunction in Imperial and early Jewish Aramaic. Matthew used Greek sources, as can be shown by comparison with Mark and Luke. The same word choices and word orders, sometimes including favorite Markan expressions, make it clear. (By the way, it is misleading to say Mark wrote ‘good Greek’)[39] The simple conclusion is that our Gospel of Matthew was written in Greek. Since τότε occurs throughout triple tradition, double tradition, and material unique to Matthew, one must conclude that Matthew is the one who has added this piece of Aramaic narrative style to his Greek sources. That is, he wrote in Greek and betrays his own Aramaic style.

Semitic/Hebrew background to Greek Sources

The interesting contrast from τότε in Matthew is that Mark and Luke show a complete absence of this Aramaic narrative style while at the same time using τότε “then” in a manner compatible with Hebrew as well as giving evidence of using Semitically-colored sources. This means that discussions on the Semitic background to written Greek sources behind Mark and Luke (and Matthew as well) should not assume it to be Aramaic but should look for a Hebrew background.[40] 

Conclusions: Working Hypotheses

  1. Hebrew was alive and well in a basically trilingual society in the first century. In Judea, Hebrew was the tribal language, and Aramaic was known by many as a lingua franca with those from outside Judea and with some residents of Jerusalem. It was formally the official, prestige language. In the first century, Greek was the language of government and of ‘prestige culture’. In Galilee, Aramaic and Hebrew probably were reversed, with Hebrew an upper language used by Jews. As for the demise of Hebrew in the home, if one kills hundreds of thousands, puts many in slavery, and banishes the survivors (A.D. 135), one can bring a speech community to an end in a few generations (by A.D. 200, except for small isolated communities.[41] 
  2. Hebraisms and Jewish cultural sources in Hebrew can be treated as direct background sources for the New Testament. One does not need to bring them into a discussion as artificial Septuagintalisms (although that remains a factor, especially in the end of Acts) or through restorations from unattested Aramaic.
  3. New Testament studies and translations benefit from a knowledge of Hebrew and the history of Hebrew. The problem of the Semitic background and meaning son of man is a major case in point.
    Spoken Hebrew provides a sociolinguistic matrix for son of man as a provocative title.
  4. Jesus was most probably trilingual. He certainly knew Hebrew and Aramaic (Luke 4:16-20; Mark 5:41). Probably he used Hebrew most of the time for parables, for legal and religious discussions (e.g. Mark 2:1-12), and for daily matters in Judea. Probably he used mainly Aramaic and Greek in daily matters in Galilee. Even in Galilee it appears that His teaching to Jewish audiences would have been in Hebrew, although present evidence is incomplete. His travel to Tyre and Sidon would presuppose ease with Greek.
  5. Hebrew was also probably the primary language used for any Semitic writings about Jesus by the first generation church.[42] 

It is especially remarkable that no records remain of the actual source language(s) of the teaching of Jesus—only translation.

Check out these recent JP articles:

Notes
  1. This article originally appeared in the Journal of Translation and Textlinguistics 5.4 (1992): 298-312 as Randall Buth “Language Use in the First Century: Spoken Hebrew in a Trilingual Society in the Time of Jesus” (https://www.sil.org/resources/archives/7175). It appears here with SIL’s kind permission. ↩
  2. Barbara F. Grimes, “Language Choice in First Century Christianity,” Notes on Scripture in Use 12 (Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1987): 20-31.

    In the original article the first paragraph of the introduction opened with the sentence, “A Bible translation organization must understand the sociolinguistic dynamics of the biblical culture and literature,”—JP. ↩

  3. In the original article this sentence was preceded by the statement, “The theological conclusion that God has inspired translation is sound.” ↩
  4. An earlier version of this article appeared in Notes on Scripture in Use (NOS) in 1987 as a response to an article by Barbara Grimes in that journal. Editors of (NOS) have been gracious to allow the editing and updating of that article for this version in JOTT. Some points have been expanded and the discussions include material up to 1992. Since 1987 publications of Judean desert texts have continued to shed light on the language situation in the first century. The Hebrew dimension continues to expand its textual and linguistic base, and gospel studies must integrate this Hebrew dimension. Linguistically, a major text from Qumran for understanding Hebrew, 4QMMT, is scheduled to be published in 1992 by Qimron and Strugnell. [The publication was eventually released as Elisha Qimron, John Strugnell, et al., Qumran Cave 4.V: Miqṣat Maʿaśeh Ha-Torah (DJD 10; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994)—JP.] The publication of The Documents from the Bar-Kochba period in the Cave of Letters: Greek Papyri (Naphtali Lewis, 1989) filled a gap in the Greek dimension. ↩
  5. Cf., e.g., Joachim. Jeremias, Jerusalem in the time of Jesus (trans. F. H. and C. H. Cave; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969). This book is useful but needs to be redone. ↩
  6. Abraham Geiger, Lehrbuch der Sprache der Mischna (Breslau, 1845). ↩
  7. Μ. H. Segal, “Mishnaic Hebrew and its Relation to Biblical Hebrew and to Aramaic,” Jewish Quarterly Review, Old Series 20 (1908): 647-737. ↩
  8. Cf. Yechezkel E. Kutscher, A History of the Hebrew Language (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1982) [edited posthumously], 118. For more detail see Abba Bendavid, Leshon miqra ulshon hakhamim [Biblical Hebrew and Mishnaic Hebrew], (2d ed.; Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1967), 131-133) and Segal, “Mishnaic Hebrew and its Relation to Biblical Hebrew and to Aramaic,” and, idem, A Grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1927). ↩
  9. Kutscher, A History of the Hebrew Language, 117. ↩
  10. J. T. Milik, Ten Years of Discovery in the Judean Wilderness (trans., J. Strugnell and expanded from the French; London: SCM Press, 1959), 130-131. ↩
  11. Chaim Rabin, “Hebrew,” Current Trends in Linguistics 6 (ed. Thomas A. Sebeok; The Hague: Mouton, 1970): 304-346, esp. 318. ↩
  12. Ibid., 324. ↩
  13. Contra Grimes, “Language Choice in First Century Christianity,” 20. ↩
  14. Grimes, “Language Choice in First Century Christianity,” 20. ↩
  15. Cf. Milik, Ten Years of Discovery in the Judean Wilderness, 131. ↩
  16. Cf. Henry Barclay. Swete, An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek (rev. by Richard Rusden Ottley, with an appendix containing the letter of Aristea, ed. by H. St. J. Thackeray; NY: KTAV Pub. House, 1968), 552-523. ↩
  17. Matthew Black, An Aramaic approach to the Gospels and Acts, (3d ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 48. Black excludes Hebraisms from discussion on backgrounds to the gospels (p. 34) and denies that Hebrew was a common spoken language (p. 48). ↩
  18. Bendavid, Leshon miqra ulshon hakhamim, 153-165. ↩
  19. References such as this are to tractates (by name, e.g. Megillah) within the six divisions of the Mishna. References to tractates in the Talmud (later, collected discussions on themes from the Mishna) are prefaced by b. for the Babylonian Talmud (e.g. b. Megillah) and Y. for Talmud Yerushaimi (Jerusalem, Palestinian, e.g. y. Megillah). References to Tosefta (literally ‘the addition’, a collection of Mishnaic sayings from outside the Mishnah) are prefaced by t. (e.g. t. Sota). ↩
  20. Bendavid, Leshon miqra ulshon hakhamim, 155. ↩
  21. Cf. Ze’ev Safrai, “The Origins of Reading the Aramaic Targum in Synagogue,” Immanuel 24/25 (1990): 187-93. ↩
  22. Cf. Grimes, “Language Choice in First Century Christianity,” 30. ↩
  23. See the Jerusalem Perspective series “Meturgeman” by Randall Buth—JP. ↩
  24. Sic, Grimes, “Language Choice in First Century Christianity,” 21. ↩
  25. Grimes, “Language Choice in First Century Christianity,” 21. ↩
  26. Rabin, “Hebrew,” 342, cf. 300. ↩
  27. Cf. Shmuel Safrai, “The Jewish Cultural Nature of Galilee in the First Century,” Immanuel 24/25 (1990): 147-86 [republished as Shmuel Safrai, “The Jewish Cultural Nature of Galilee in the First Century,” Jerusalem Perspective (2010) [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/4452/]—JP]. ↩
  28. Shmuel Safrai, “Literary Languages in the Time of Jesus,” Jerusalem Perspective 31 (1991): 3-8 [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/2563/], esp., 7. ↩
  29. For surveys of Greek use in the land of Israel, see G. Mussies, “Greek in Palestine and the Diaspora,” in The Jewish People in the First Century (2 vols.; ed. Shmuel Safrai and Menahem Stern, CRINT I.1-2; Amsterdam: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 2:1040-1064, and Joseph Fitzmyer, “Did Jesus Speak Greek?” Biblical Archaeological Review (1992). ↩
  30. Cf. Randall Buth, “Hebrew Poetic Tenses and the Magnificat,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 21 (1984): 67-83. ↩
  31. Some things may never be known. What was connected with Psalm 22:1-2 in the synagogal midrashic and targumic tradition in the first century? The Psalms midrash (recorded in the second half of the first millenium A.D.) lists eighty-six different scripture references in rabbinic comments on these verses, and a written midrash on Psalms appears to have existed quite early (cf. Genesis Rabbah 33:3 and the the story about Rabbi Hiyya engrossed in that book, early third century A.D.). Particularly common associations may have been to Isaiah 60:1-2, Micah 7:8, Esther 3:13, or Song of Songs 6:10. But was Mark alluding to any such traditions by recording Jesus’ words in Aramaic? He may have been, if he consciously excluded the scripture quote recorded by Luke from Psalm 31:6. (On a possible Markan substitution see Shmuel Safrai, “Spoken Languages in the Time of Jesus,” Jerusalem Perspective 30 (1991): 3-8, 13 [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/2551/].) [See now Randall Buth, “The Riddle of Jesus’ Cry from the Cross: The Meaning of ηλι ηλι λαμα σαβαχθανι (Matthew 27:46) and the Literary Function of ελωι ελωι λειμα σαβαχθανι (Mark 15:34),” in The Language Environment of First-century Judaea: Jerusalem Studies in the Synoptic Gospels 2 (JCP 26; ed. Randall Buth and R. Steven Notley; Leiden: Brill, 2014), 395-421—JP.]

    Another ‘extraordinary’ aspect of Aramaic is that it was often explicitly mentioned as being used by the bat qol (‘heavenly echo’, ‘the audible voice of God’) during the late second temple period. (t. Sotah 13:5-6 records two examples from around 100 B.C. and A.D. 41.) Such language use by the ‘divine voice’ seems to have been taken by the Rabbis as indicating something of a lowering of holiness and divine acceptance for the nation (cf. t. Sotah 13:2-7 and Safrai, “Literary Languages in the Time of Jesus,” 6). Perhaps a cry of unfathomable rejection (Mark 15:34 was rhetorically underlined by being in Aramaic (not Hebrew) and was used by Mark as a kind of Aramaic bat qol. Notice the centurion’s ‘Son of God’ (Mark 15:39), over against the Lukan centurion’s ‘righteous man’. ↩

  32. Cf. Harris Birkeland, The Language of Jesus (Avhandlinger utgitt av Det Norske Videnskaps-Akademi i Oslo, 2. Hist kilos. Klasse, No. 1. Oslo: Norske Videnskaps-Akademi, 1954). Birkeland initiated an aspect of current scholarly debate by arguing that Jesus taught in Hebrew. ↩
  33. Grimes, “Language Choice in First Century Christianity,” 25. ↩
  34. See now Randall Buth, “Where Is the Aramaic Bible at Qumran? Scripture Use in the Land of Israel,” Jerusalem Perspective (2004): [https://www.jerusalemperspective.com/4679/]—JP. ↩
  35. Elisha Qimron, The Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 117-118. ↩
  36. J. M. Grintz, “Hebrew as the Spoken and Written Language in the Last Days of the Second Temple,” Journal of Biblical Literature 79 (1960): 32-47. Grintz argues strongly for Hebrew and includes a discussion on ebraisti and Josephus. ↩
  37. See now, Randall Buth and Chad Pierce, “Hebraisti in Ancient Texts: Does Ἑβραϊστί Ever Mean ‘Aramaic’?” in The Language Environment of First-century Judaea: Jerusalem Studies in the Synoptic Gospels 2 (JCP 26; ed. Randall Buth and R. Steven Notley; Leiden: Brill, 2014), 66-109—JP. ↩
  38. Cf. Randall Buth, “Edayin/tote: Anatomy of a Semitism in Jewish Greek,” Maarav 5-6 (1990): 33-48. ↩
  39. Grimes, “Language Choice in First Century Christianity,” 28, quoting Klem. ↩
  40. See now Randall Buth, “Distinguishing Hebrew from Aramaic in Semitized Greek Texts, with an Application for the Gospels and Pseudepigrapha,” in The Language Environment of First-century Judaea: Jerusalem Studies in the Synoptic Gospels 2 (JCP 26; ed. Randall Buth and R. Steven Notley; Leiden: Brill, 2014), 247-319—JP. ↩
  41. Bendavid, Leshon miqra ulshon hakhamim, 160. ↩
  42. The original article included this additional conclusion, which although we do not dispute, does not follow from the foregoing argument: “(6) The Holy Spirit is interested in communicating a message, and he inspired translation.”—JP ↩

  • Randall Buth

    Randall Buth

    Randall Buth is director of the Biblical Language Center and a lecturer at the Rothberg International School of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Home for Bible Translators. He is a member of the Jerusalem School of Synoptic Research. Buth received his doctorate in…
    [Read more about author]

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