Biblical Hebrew Forum

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>===== Original Message From Sergio Saavedra <sesamox AT hotmail.com> =====
>The Watchtower literature endorses the hypothesis that in the first
>century, Jews spoke Hebrew instead of Aramaic.

To be fair, what the Watchtower actually says is:
"What Language Did Jesus Speak? On this question there is considerable difference of opinion among scholars. However, concerning languages used in Palestine when Jesus Christ was on earth, Professor G. Ernest Wright states: "Various languages were undoubtedly to be heard on the streets of the major cities. Greek and Aramaic were evidently the common tongues, and most of the urban peoples could probably understand both even in such 'modern' or 'western' cities as Caesarea and Samaria where Greek was the more common. Roman soldiers and officials might be heard conversing in Latin, while orthodox Jews may well have spoken a late variety of Hebrew with one another, a language that we know to have been neither classical Hebrew nor Aramaic, despite its similarities to both." Commenting further, on the language spoken by Jesus Christ, Professor Wright says: "The language spoken by Jesus has been much debated. We have no certain way of knowing whether he could speak Greek or Latin, but in his teaching ministry he regularly used either Aramaic or the highly Aramaized popular Hebrew. When Paul addressed the mob in the Temple, it is said that he spoke Hebrew (Acts 21:40). Scholars generally have taken this to mean Aramaic, but it is quite possible that a popular Hebrew was then the common tongue among the Jews."-Biblical Archaeology, 1963, p. 243.
It is possible that Jesus and his early disciples, such as the apostle Peter, at least at times spoke Galilean Aramaic, Peter being told on the night Christ was taken into custody: "Certainly you also are one of them, for, in fact, your dialect gives you away." (Mt 26:73) This may have been said because the apostle was using Galilean Aramaic at the time, though that is not certain, or he may have been speaking a Galilean Hebrew that differed dialectally from that employed in Jerusalem or elsewhere in Judea."
Insight on the Scriptures, Volume 1, 143-4 [Watchtower Bible and Tract Society]
-Heinz Schmitz

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