What Language Did Jesus Speak?
Dr. Gustav Dalman, Professor of Theology in the University of Leipzig, one of the most distinguished Orientalists of Europe, in a recently published work begins by setting forth the reasons for believing that Jesus spoke the Galilean dialect of the Aramaic language, and then proceeds to discuss from this point of view the meaning of the utterances attributed to Jesus in the synoptic Gospels. The evidence for the primary hypothesis is of several kinds. Professor Dalman adduces, for example, the custom which in the second century after Christ was represented as very ancient, of translating into Aramaic the text of the Hebrew Pentateuch in the synagogues of the Hebraists of Palestine. By Hebraists the author desires to distinguish from the Hellenistic Jews who spoke Greek, those who spoke, not Hebrew, but Aramaic. Attention is next directed to the Aramaic title for classes of the people in Palestine, and for feasts—titles that are attested by Josephus and the New Testament. Thus the words for pharisee, priest, high priest, Passover, Pentecost, and Sabbath used by Josephus and by the authors of the New Testament, are not Hebrew, but Aramaic. Then, again, there are traditions dating from a period considerably antecedent to Christ that John Hyrcanus heard in the sanctuary a divine voice speaking in the Aramaic language, and that in the temple the legends on the tokens for the drink offerings and on the chests in which the contributions of the faithful were deposited were in Aramaic. Moreover, there are old official documents in the Aramaic language.
These include, first, the “Roll Concerning Fasts,” a catalogue of days on which fasting was forbidden, first compiled in the time of the rising against the Romans, 66–70 A.D., and, secondly, the Epistles of Gamaliel II. (about 110 A.D.) to the Jews of South Judea, Galilee, and Babylon. Both of these documents were destined for the Jewish people, and primarily, indeed, for those of Palestine. A like inference as to the use of Aramaic in Palestine may be drawn from the language of the public documents relating to purchase, lease-tenure, debt, conditional betrothal, refusal of marriage, marriage contract, divorce, and renunciation of levirate marriage. The Mishna gives the decisive formulæ of these documents, which were important for securing legal validity for the most part, though not always in Aramaic, thus implying that this was the language commonly in use. Cumulative testimony is furnished by the unquestioned adoption, in the time of Jesus, of the Aramaic characters in place of the old Hebrew in copies of the Bible text. The change of character naturally presupposes a change of language. Stress is laid by Professor Dalman on the facts that the Judaism of the second century of our era possessed the Bible text only in “Assyrian,” i.e., Aramaic handwriting, and that even the Alexandrian or Septuagint translation had been based upon Hebrew texts in this character. It has further been observed by students of the Talmud that the syntax and the vocabulary of the Hebrew of the Mishna proved themselves to be the creation of Jews who thought in Aramaic. We observe, finally, that it was customary in the first century of our era for writers to call the Aramaic “Hebrew.”
Josephus, indeed, showed himself quite capable of distinguishing the language and written character of the “Syrians” from those of the “Hebrews.” Nevertheless, between Hebrew and Aramaic words he makes no difference. The “Hebrew” in which Josephus addresses the people of Jerusalem—the incident is recounted in his history of the Jewish war against the Romans—is even called by him his paternal tongue, though in the circumstances nothing but Aramaic can have been used. Again, in the Johannine Gospel, the Aramaic terms Bethesda, Golgotha, and Rabbouni are called “Hebrew.” Aramaic, too, must be meant by the “Hebrew tongue” in which Paul spoke to the people of Jerusalem (Acts xxi., 40; xxii., 2), and in which Jesus spoke to Paul (Acts xxvi., 14). Hellenistai and Hebraioi were the names, according to Acts vi., 1, of the two parts of the Jewish people as divided by language. But, if it were possible to characterize Aramaic as Hebrew, it is clear that Aramaic was the every-day speech of the Jewish people in the first century of our era; in so far, at least, as it was not Greek.
In Professor Dalman’s opinion the facts adduced do not justify us in drawing a distinction between Judea and Galilee, as if Hebrew was at least partially a spoken language in the former region. That Aramaic had at least a distinct predominance in Judea may be inferred with certainty from the place names in Jerusalem and its environs. The author of this book can find no ground for the belief expressed by another Orientalist that Hebrew was the language of the mother of Jesus, inasmuch as she belonged to South Palestine.
There is even less ground for supposing that Hebrew was the vernacular in Galilee. During the rising of the Maccabees the Jewish population in Galilee was so inconsiderable that Simon, about 163 B.C., had no other means of protecting them from their ill-disposed neighbors than by transporting them to Judea. John Hyrcanus (B.C. 135–105) appears later to have conquered Galilee and to have forced its inhabitants into conformity to Judaism; but, under the circumstances, the Hebrew language was not to be looked for. What is true of Galilee in general is true of little Nazareth in particular, to which has been wrongly attributed an isolation from intercourse with the outer world. As a matter of fact, Nazareth had on the one side Sippori (Sepphoris), the then capital of Galilee, and on the other, in close proximity, the cities of Yapha and Kesaloth, and it lay on the important highway of commerce that led from Sepphoris to the plain of Megiddo and onward to Cæsarea. Dalman points out that the actual discourses of Jesus in no way give the impression that He had grown up in solitude and seclusion. It is merely true that He, like the Galileans generally, would have little contact with literary erudition. The fact implies that from this side he did not come into contact with the Hebrew language. The Aramaic was the mother tongue of the Galileans, as of the people of Gaulonitis; and, according to Josephus, natives of Syria were able to understand it. From all these considerations the conclusion is drawn that Jesus grew up speaking the Aramaic tongue, and that He would be obliged to speak Aramaic to His disciples and to the people in order to be understood. Of Him, least of all, who desired to preach the Gospel to the poor, or, in other words, to people that stood aloof from the pedagogic methods of the scribes, is it to be expected that He would have furnished His discourse with the superfluous and, to his hearers, perplexing embellishment of the Hebrew form.