In your opinion, what was the language Jesus used when He preached and taught: was it Aramaic or Greek? If it was Aramaic, why then are the gospels recorded in Greek (except for those few phrases in Aramaic - like "Eloi, Eloi, etc.)?

-- Anonymous, September 10, 1999

Answers

Response to ..........................................................................The Language Jesus spoke?

Didn't Jesus speaking the King James language???

-- Anonymous, September 12, 1999

Response to ..........................................................................The Language Jesus spoke?

A good guess would be that Jesus was tri-lingual. He spoke the international language of his day sometimes when it fit the audeince. Other times, he spoke his everyday heart language....Aramaic. In the synagogue he would have read the Hebrew text. My guess is he used all 3 as it fit his purpose.

-- Anonymous, September 11, 1999

I think those recorded phrases clearly indicate that Jesus usually spoke Aramaic. I would agree that he was trilingual. I don't think all the Jews living in Judea were tri- or even bi-lingual. Probably a majority of the uneducated were were monolingual, but I'm not certain. I think he spoke Aramaic most of the time because that is what the Jews in that local are spoke. As for Galilee, it would have been a little more hellenized and probably more people spoke Greek than those in Judea. Why were the gospels in Greek? Obviously because the language of the world at large was Greek-speaking teh gospels needed to be written in Greek. As for the local Jews, they needed an account, which they could understand. If Papias is to be believed and correctly understood (see Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3,39 [end]) Matthew wrote a gospel in Hebrew (= Aramaic). But this was a very small pocket of people; very significant in the eyes of the church because of it being the place of the crucifixion and muchof Jesus' minstry, but small none the less. After AD 70, teh Christians fled and Jewish Christians, according to our sources, largely kept to themselves (perhaps dueto language??), some becoming heretical and some remaining orthodox, but a little off in some teachings (see Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol 1, pp 564- 67; vol 2, pp 428-42, esp. pp 431-4.

-- Anonymous, October 07, 1999

I think that u r stupid to even think that jesus spoke greek. Just because some of his deciples spoke greek and written in it. Doesn't mean he did! His deciples were of mixed races, palastine was a boiling pot of races, and religions. He spoke aramaic, and so did his family. His parents came from asia minor, and that was his mother tongue. And his mother when she died went back to the caucasus, and u can go and see her grave until now.

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2001

Jesus spoke aramaic,and his family came from anatolia.

-- Anonymous, November 13, 2001

WHAT?

-- Anonymous, November 13, 2001

This sounds like some of Mark Hillyard's racist propaganda, that Jesus wasn't really a Jew, and that the Jews are a mongrel race. Sorry, I'm not buying it, and neither do all of the competent scholars on the planet.

-- Anonymous, November 13, 2001