Bible Concepts

Most religious scholars and historians agree with the statement of Pope Francis that Jesus principally spoke a Galilean dialect of Aramaic. Through trade, invasions and conquest, the Aramaic language had spread far afield by the 7th century B.C. and would become the common language in much of the Middle East.

In the first century it would have become 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.

But Netanyahu was partially correct as well, since Hebrew was also in common use in Jesus’ day. It was the chosen language for religious scholars and the holy scriptures, including the Bible. Jesus likely understood Hebrew, though his everyday life would have been conducted in Aramaic. 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.

In addition to Aramaic and Hebrew, Greek and Latin were also common in Jesus’ time. After Alexander the Great’s conquests, Greek supplanted other tongues as the official language in much of the region. In the first century A.D., Judea was part of the eastern Roman Empire, which embraced Greek as its common language and reserved Latin for legal and military matters. Some suggest that Jesus probably didn’t know more than a few words in Latin, but probably knew more Greek. Since it was not a common language among the people with whom he spoke regularly, he may not have been too proficient. 

So while Jesus’ most common spoken language was Aramaic, he was familiar with—if not fluent, or even proficient in—three or four different languages. As with other multilingual people, the one he spoke probably depended on the context of his words and the audience with whom he was speaking at the time.