Not only was Hebrew the most prevalent spoken language in the land of Israel during the first century, it was also the language in which most literary works were written.
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“And” or “But”—So What?
Writings that were originally composed in Greek tend to have a higher ratio of de to kai than writings that have been influenced by a Semitic language.
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Spoken Languages in the Time of Jesus
Professor Safrai presents an overview of the three languages used in the land of Israel during the days of Jesus, and concludes that Hebrew was the primary language spoken by the Jewish residents at that time.
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The Bar-Kochva Letters
Documents discovered in the Judean Wilderness near the Dead Sea provide some insight into the use of Hebrew in the land of Israel not long after the time of Jesus.
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Matthew’s Aramaic Glue
Knowledge of the different ways of joining stories in Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic can help us understand the history and relationships of the Synoptic Gospels.
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Book Review: Michael Sokoloff’s A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period
Professor Sokoloff’s A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period limits itself to the best and most reliable sources of JPA
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The New Testament in Modern Hebrew
In this series Dr. Ray Pritz, head of the Bible Society in Israel, describes the challenges faced by the Society’s translation committee in rendering the synoptic Gospels into modern Hebrew, and some of the solutions it found.
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“Son of Man”: Jesus’ Most Important Title
There is a common thread uniting the views of those who think that Jesus signaled Daniel 7 by using the Aramaic bar enash in the middle of Hebrew speech. Anyone who holds this view must assume that Jesus spoke or taught in Hebrew much of the time. That Jesus used Hebrew a significant amount of the time is a sociolinguistic conclusion that has a growing number of supporters in New Testament scholarship, but one that is still a minority opinion.
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The Queen of Teman
Why didn’t Jesus say “Queen of Sheba,” which is found in the Bible, instead of “Queen of the South”?
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The Syndicated Donkey
Randall Buth may have discovered a significant idiom in the Greek text of Luke. This idiom could help us in determining the original language of Jesus’ biography. In Luke 19:33, did the donkey that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday have more that one owner as the Greek text states?
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