![]() After Alexander the Great’s conquest of Mesopotamia and the rest of the Persian Empire in the fourth century B.C., Greek supplanted other tongues as the official language in much of the region. In addition to Aramaic and Hebrew, Greek and Latin were also common in Jesus’ time. Alexander the Great Brought Greek to Mesopotamia ![]() Of the first four books of the New Testament, the Gospels of Matthew and Mark records Jesus using Aramaic terms and phrases, while in Luke 4:16, he was shown reading Hebrew from the Bible at a synagogue. Jesus likely understood Hebrew, though his everyday life would have been conducted in Aramaic. Similar to Latin today, Hebrew was the chosen language for religious scholars and the holy scriptures, including the Bible (although some of the Old Testament was written in Aramaic). Hebrew, which is from the same linguistic family as Aramaic, was also in common use in Jesus’ day. In the first century A.D., it would have been the most commonly used language among ordinary Jewish people, as opposed to the religious elite, and the most likely to have been used among Jesus and his disciples in their daily lives.īut Netanyahu was technically correct as well. and would become the lingua franca in much of the Middle East. Through trade, invasions and conquest, the Aramaic language had spread far afield by the 7th century B.C. Most religious scholars and historians agree with Pope Francis that the historical Jesus principally spoke a Galilean dialect of Aramaic.
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