Biblical scholars consort that Jesus of Nazareth , a Jewish man from a working - class ground in Judea , would have spoken Aramaic , a 3,000 - year - old language that divvy up linguistic deoxyribonucleic acid with Hebrew .
TheNew Testament , which memorialise the life and works of Jesus , was first written in Greek , but snipping of Aramaic live in the text . InMark 5:41 , for representative , Jesus raises a kid ( Jairus ' daughter ) from the deadened , saying " Talitha cumi , " which is Aramaic for " Little girl , I say to you , come up ! " And inMatthew 27:46 , Jesus shout out in excruciation from the hybridisation , enounce , " Eli , Eli , lama sabachthani ? , " mean " My God , my God , why have you forsaken me ? " in Aramaic .
Several languages were speak in Jesus ' time ( first century C.E. ) , when the Roman Empire ruled Judea , a Judaic kingdom . Aramaic was the"everyday " languageof conversation and Department of Commerce among Jews like Jesus and his followers . That ’s why most of the Aramaic words and phrase in the New Testament are direct quotes attributed to Jesus .
Jesus may have also understood and spoken some Greek , too . That ’s becauseGreek was the lingua franca of the Roman worldand was spoken by traders who plied their commodity throughout the ancient Mediterranean . Latin , meanwhile , was reserved for sound and military matters , so Jesus probably knew fiddling if any Latin .
What about Hebrew ? The Torah and most of the other book of the Hebrew Bible ( known to Christians as the Old Testament ) were originally written in Hebrew , although there are fragments of Aramaic here and there ( Genesis 31:47 , for example ) . The two spoken language do havesome commonalities , but also many differences .
In Jesus ' time , Hebrew was mostly read and save by spiritual student and scribal elite . Jesus may have been capable to quote the scriptures in Hebrew from memory , but as a member of the artisan form it ’s unlikely that he could actually read and publish in Hebrew orany other speech communication .
Aramaic is an ancient Semitic spit that originated with the Aramaeans , who subsist in the northern part of modern - daytime Syria . Aramaic was once spoken across the Middle East , carry by conquering armies of Assyrians and Persians into new territories . Most of the speakers were Christians and Jews in the Middle East who dispersed to other regions because of persecution and took up other languages .
Over the millennium , Aramaic splintered into150 dialectsand is still spoken today by pocket of Christians and Jews living in Iraq , Syria and Eastern Europe , although the modern tongue would beunrecognizableto Jesus .
