Okay, the question that we have now is what language did Jesus speak and then
we have other questions. What language was the New Testament written in and what
language was the Old Testament written in? So, all of these are important
questions in the history of Christianity and for Christians today and for other
people too. So, well at the time of Jesus the common language in the Roman Empire,
and Palestine was part of the Roman Empire, was actually Greek. There was
Latin in the background, the language of the state and of the legal
system was Latin but then the language spoken by the people in the marketplace,
the language of education was Greek because when the Romans conquered
the Greek-speaking world of the east of the side of the Mediterranean, the Middle
East, which had been Hellenized by Alexander the Great,
they were actually Hellenized themselves because they brought the Greek educated
man into their homes to teach their children and so the Greek education in
the Greek language, Greek philosophy, the sciences and all of those things that
were common for the Greek-speaking world of the time were brought into the
homes of the Romans and eventually the Romans spoke Greek everywhere. So, the
question is what language did Jesus speak. Did he speak Greek?
We're not sure but the common language perhaps of the people in Palestine was
Aramaic. Why wasn't it Hebrew, that's a good question. It's because Hebrew had
discontinued to be used for a long time by now, by the time of Jesus.
In fact Hebrew stopped being used officially and the people, the Jewish
people that were scattered around the area, even in Palestine didn't
really use Hebrew, they spoke Greek mostly or Aramaic or the local languages
where they were to the point that -- about 150 years before Christ -- in Alexandria
Egypt which was a Greek speaking city and a third of the population was Jewish,
we have the Jewish community wanting the Bible, the Old Testament in their
language that they speak. So they get together seventy scholars who
translated all the Hebrew books of the Old Testament into Greek. Greek was
the language that they used in worship and it was the language that they
read the scriptures in. So this is the Jewish people now even 150 years before
Christ is born. So at the time of Christ, the common text of the Old Testament
used by Jews around the Roman Empire was actually that Greek text which the seventy
scholars of Alexandria Egypt produced which we call it today the Septuagint,
the text of the seventy scholars, the Jewish scholars. So in the Orthodox
Church we still use that as the official text of the Old Testament and
in the Greek Orthodox Church we still read the Psalms in that and we
recite a lot of the Psalms and also the readings of the Old Testament in that
particular version of the Septuagint. So, did Jesus be Greek, were not sure. He
probably used Aramaic but he probably also spoke Greek.
Of course, He's God and He can speak all the languages but that's another story.
But the Apostles spread the gospel in Greek. So what language was the
New Testament written in is another question and the answer is Greek, all of the New
Testament was written in Greek and it was all of the books of the New
Testament were written in the first century before the Year 100. Scholars
today have figured out and they kind of they can point out exactly when
everything was put together and when everything was published in that
way and we know a lot of things about the dating of the texts and all of those
things and there are all the New Testament texts are from the first
century. They were all in Greek. There is a theory that there was
one ... the Gospel of Matthew was probably also written in Aramaic but we don't have
a text and therefore we cannot claim that there is an Aramaic text. So,
another point that I make in this particular, when I'm asked this question
about the language of the Bible is that we know for example that Greek was used
everywhere because when Saint Paul wrote to the Romans he wrote to them in Greek,
not in Latin but in Greek because Greek was the official
language that they used everywhere especially among the educated people who
were able to read and write at that time.