What language did Jesus speak

When the ten tribes were carried away, the colonists who took their place brought the Aramaic language with them. The Jews who returned from Babylon also brought many words of the same language. It doubtless went through various changes. Still, this was the language commonly spoken in Palestine when our Lord was on earth, and it is the language the New Testament calls HEBREW.

At the time of our Lord, this was the native language of Palestine. It appears in our Testaments in the words Ephphatha, Talitha Cumi, Eli Eli lama Sabachthani, and others. This was also the language of the inscription on the cross, and of Paul's speech recorded in Acts 22. Both places mention Hebrew, but without doubt they mean the modern language, not the ancient one.

Impossible to doubt that a divine person speaks out from the brightness beyond that of the sun at midday. If everyone was lying on the ground and heard only a sound, Paul could not mistake the voice from His lips, saying to him (and in the Hebrew language), "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?"

It is a matter of discussion whether our Lord and His apostles spoke Greek or Aramaic, and it does not seem possible to give a decided verdict on the question. It is likely enough that all the people of Palestine, except the most isolated or the most ignorant, understood and used both forms of speech. So the inscription on the cross had three languages. Aramaic and Greek were for the people, just as public documents in Wales might be in Welsh and English. Latin was there because it was the official language of Pontius Pilate and the government servants.

The only solution of the difficulty is to suppose the Lord and His immediate followers were bilingual, speaking both Aramaic and Greek; using the one language among the less cultured part of the community, the other often in parts of the country such as Galilee, or in dealings with Greek-speaking Jews… Who could suppose that in Luke 2 the angels addressed the shepherds in any language but Aramaic?… On the other hand, when Peter spoke in the judgment hall, he must have used Aramaic, because of the reference to his regional accent!

Mark alone gives us four utterances of our Lord in the actual language in which He spoke. Outstanding among them is the cry from the cross, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani" (Mark 15:34).

The cry of our Lord appears in Aramaic form, the "Eli" becoming "Eloi." One explanation would be this: in Matthew we have the Hebrew quotation from Psalm 22, while in Mark we have the form in which the blessed Sufferer actually made the exclamation.

Greek was the current language of the world at the time Christianity appeared — the language with which a man might travel from one end of the Roman Empire to the other. There appears a special providence in this: the gospel was sent out at the very time when there was such a universal language to convey it.