What language did Jesus speak? No, I’m not going to Bible juke you and say he spoke all languages because he was God. I’m talking about Yeshua, the Jewish craftsman from Nazareth. What language did He speak when he was on this earth? If you’re like me and you went to Bible college, you probably already know the answer. Aramaic, right? The academic community will dogmatically state that Jesus spoke Aramaic. If you Google it right now, “What language did Jesus speak?”, undoubtedly Aramaic. But is it the full truth? I’m here to tell you that I think Jesus spoke Hebrew.
Now, I’m not saying Jesus didn’t speak Aramaic as well. He most likely did, and we’ll dive into the evidence that proves Jesus spoke Hebrew. But first I have a question for you: Why is it that the church and the academic community is so resistant to the idea of Jesus speaking Hebrew? He was Jewish, right? We saw this happen in real time in 2014 when the Pope was visiting Israel and interviewed prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu said Jesus was here in this land. He spoke Hebrew. His statement was jarring. Even Yahoo News reported that the Pope looked unhappy at his comments quickly correcting the Prime Minister. The Pope responded, he spoke Aramaic. Realizing this was probably a fruitless debate, Netanyahu conceded and said he spoke Aramaic, but he knew Hebrew. Now, why was this major Christian leader so apprehensive to the idea that Jesus spoke Hebrew? The long and short of it: I think it’s because Jesus being Jewish makes many people uncomfortable. It’s easier for people to accept a pale skinned Jesus found in many paintings or an Aramaic speaking, middle easterner confronting religious elites. But man, do we struggle with a Jewish Hebrew speaking, Torah reading Son of Israel.
There’s no question that antisemitism has been a major part of church history and been an unfortunate black stain on the church for years. Whether it was the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Holocaust, or hundreds of other examples, terrible things have happened and been done to the Jewish people in the name of Jesus. It should be extremely puzzling for us how all these atrocities have been done to Jewish people in the name of a Jewish Messiah. But the thing is, if we’re honest, we’ve tried not to think about that part. We like the fact that Jesus can be the first Christian, not the Messiah and savior of the Jews. We’ve tried to de-Jew Jesus for centuries, whether it’s through stained glass windows of a blue eyed Jesus or through the poor carpenter who spoke Aramaic in Palestine. Either way, it feels like we don’t want to confront the Jewishness of Jesus or that the enemy is trying very hard to conceal the idea to the church. If something doesn’t sit well with you, when you hear Jesus spoke Hebrew as a Jew from Israel, it’s possible that you might have some antisemitism in your heart that the Lord wants to reshape.
Now, let’s talk about why we feel pretty confident to claim that Jesus spoke Hebrew. We have to remember that this region and culture that Jesus lived in was multicultural and multilingual. Jesus was most likely speaking or at least understanding three languages: Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew. But most of theologians will tell you that he spoke Aramaic because Hebrew was a dead language, only spoken in the synagogues or for really religious reasons. Kind of like how we see Latin in the history of the Catholic church, Latin being spoken in the church, but not in the grocery store. It’s kind of how we are portraying Hebrew in the ancient world. The academic community would say Jesus may have understood Hebrew, but really he spoke Aramaic. But this isn’t convincing. We believe Jesus most likely spoke Greek because he had a discussion with a Roman centurion in Matthew 8:5 and later an in-depth conversation with Pontius Pilate in John 18. And Greek or as is often referred to as Koine Greek, which means common Greek, was simply the common language for all the Mediterranean world. In the first century, in order to do business or trade throughout the ancient world, you had to speak common Greek. This is why the writers of the New Testament chose to write the gospel letters/epistles in Greek. They knew that it would have the furthest possible reach throughout the world. We believe Jesus most likely spoke Aramaic because Aramaic was the lingua franca, which means common tongue of the Eastern Mediterranean from about 700 BCE to 200 CE. Most of the Middle East spoke Aramaic and even many Jews.
When the Jewish people were in captivity in Babylon, many stopped speaking Hebrew and spoke Aramaic. That’s why parts of the book of Ezra and much of Daniel are written in Aramaic because those books were written in captivity. But when the Jewish people returned to Jerusalem 70 years later, Nehemiah says in Nehemiah 13:23, half of their children spoke the dialect of Ashdod, or the language of other peoples. This is Aramaic. But none of them understood the language of Judah, Hebrew. To combat this, Nehemiah instituted Torah readings, prayers, hymns that are done on the Sabbath, many that are still done today. Lastly, we feel very confident that Jesus and the Jewish people of the second Temple period primarily spoke Hebrew. It was not a dead language, only done in religious services, and there is a mountain of evidence. So let’s start with the evidence in scripture.
Jesus reads from the Hebrew Torah in the synagogue, Luke 4:16, and even uses the analogy while teaching that not one jot or tittle will fall away from the law, in Matthew 5:17. These are Hebrew markings used in the Hebrew dialect. We see Jesus knowing traditional Hebrew blessings and prayers and hymns in Matthew 26:26. Jesus spoke to the apostle Paul on the road to Damascus in Hebrew, Acts 26:14. But most importantly in Luke 22:38 and John 19:20, Pilate chooses three languages to write “King of the Jews” on the cross. What languages did he choose? Well, Luke 23:38 says, and his superscription also was written over him in letters of Greek and Latin and Hebrew. If Aramaic was the common language of the Jewish people at this time, then wouldn’t pilot write the inscription in Aramaic so His people could read it. And for clarity, the Greek word translated as Hebrew is Hebraisti, which literally means Hebrew. It cannot be translated as any other word. Now, this hasn’t stopped Bible translators from swapping out Hebrew with Aramaic, often with a little footnote in your Bible that says may also be translated Hebrew.
Now, some people argue, what about all the Aramaic words found in the New Testament? For example, in Mark 5:41 it says, “Talitha koum”, which means little girl, I say to you, get up. This is Aramaic. Mark 7:34: looking upon heaven, he sighed and he said to him, “ephphatha”, which means to be open. That’s Aramaic, and I’m probably butchering it. And other Aramaic words like Abba and Golgotha. However, this debate is usually one-sided. If the Aramaic found in scripture leads us to believe Jesus primarily spoke Aramaic, what do we do with all the Hebrew words in scripture? Luke 16:19, Jesus used the word Mammon, which is Hebrew for money. Mark 7:11, he uses Corban, which is a gift of God. Matthew 2:11, he says, Levonah, which is Hebrew for frankincense. These, along with a slew of other Hebrew words like Rabbi, Beelzebub, Satan, Raca, Amen, these are all Hebrew words. So again, we’re not saying Jesus didn’t also speak Aramaic. Many people did, and the languages are so similar. Aramaic and Hebrew are both Semetic languages. The two languages often borrow words from each other. Even to this day, Abba is an Aramaic word still used as Father in Hebrew. But there is also a slew of evidence outside the Bible like the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are ancient Jewish documents that were discovered in Israel near the Dead Sea community of Qumran in 1946. To date, there’s been roughly 25,000 fragments found containing every book of the Old Testament besides Esther, Biblical commentaries and certain communal laws specific to the Qumran community. These documents were written roughly 200 BCE to 100 CE, a time where Jesus and the other Jews were supposedly speaking Aramic. The problem with that is 90% of everything found in the Dead Sea Scrolls are in Hebrew. Obviously, the scriptures are in Hebrew, but so are most of the commentaries and the communal laws for their community. You would think that if you’re making commentaries and rule books meant for your community, you would do it in Aramaic if that was the common language. But 9 out of 10 are done in Hebrew. The Talmud has a story about an Aramaic speaking Jew from Babylon, having trouble communicating with his Jewish wife from Jerusalem who spoke Hebrew, showing both of these languages were spoken at this time. Many coins have been found in Israel from 200 BCE to 200 CE, and of the 215 coins that have been minted, 99 of them have the Hebrew inscription, and only one is an Aramaic. Hebrew was a vibrant spoken language at the time of Jesus, and the king of the Jews probably spoke the language of the Jews: Hebrew.
