Jim Hitt

Assistant Pastor
The Main Place Christian Fellowship
Orange, CA

I. INTRODUCTION

The question “Did Jesus primarily speak Greek?” is crucial in its implications for the inerrancy of the Scriptures. If the only teaching language of Jesus was Aramaic, the Greek NT must be a translation from Aramaic to Greek. But translations by their very nature are mere approximations. As such they all but rule out the existence of the ipsissima verba (the very words) of Christ.¹ In fact, only Aramaic quotes could remain exact. The independence view of the Synoptic Gospels is rendered precarious by this question, for as Tresham writes, “How likely is it that three independent witnesses would make the same translations from Aramaic into Greek?”²

To be sure, correctly estimating Jesus’ language preference involves almost a thousand years of language history. Historians have tried to solve this puzzle for over a century. In particular, the three languages, Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek, all have a claim to this distinction, each in its own way.

II. THE ARAMAIC VIEW

One of the key events that shaped the linguistic world of first century Palestine was the Babylonian captivity. “[T]he deportation of Palestinian Jews to Babylonia in the early sixth century [BC] began a gradual but distinctive shift in the language habits of the people of Palestine.”³ In Babylon, Aramaic began to replace Hebrew among the Jews and became “the lingua franca from Egypt to Asia Minor to Pakistan.”⁴ Porter states,

The widespread use of Aramaic is substantiated, according to this hypothesis, not only by the Aramaic portions of the biblical writings of Daniel and Ezra and by noncanonical 1 Enoch, but also by a large amount of inscriptional, ossuary, epistolary, papyrological and literary evidence, especially now from Qumran but also from the other Judaean Desert sites (e.g. Murabba’at, Masada and Nahal Hever).⁵

The scholarly consensus of the first part of the twentieth century held that the dominant language of first century AD Palestine was Aramaic.⁶ Thus Aramaic would be the language spoken and taught by Jesus. Porter adds, “While it is likely that Jesus’ primary language was Aramaic, this position is argued primarily by logical and historical inference, since Jesus is not recorded as using Aramaic apart from several odd quotations.”⁷

Two examples of such phrases are Mark 5:41 and 7:34. The first contains the words “talitha, cumi,” which mean, “Little girl, I say to you arise.” The latter contains the word “ephphatha,” which means “be opened.” Birkeland observes, following Abbott, that these examples disprove rather than prove the Aramaic hypothesis:

They were cited in Aramaic precisely because this was not the normal language used by Jesus. When Jesus spoke, as He usually did, in Hebrew, His words were straightforwardly translated into Greek; when they did not translate into Greek this was for the special reason that His words were, exceptionally, in Aramaic.⁸

This criticism also supports the Greek hypothesis.

III. THE HEBRAIC VIEW

According to the Aramaic view, Hebrew had become a dead language, understood for the most part only by scribes and rabbis. Among nineteenth century scholars, this view of Hebrew as a dead language was derived in part from observing in post-exilic Judaism the growing use of the Targums—Aramaic translations and interpretations of the OT—read in the synagogues to people who could not understand it in Hebrew.⁹ It was believed that in order to write the Mishnah—the “great corpus of Jewish legal discussion”¹⁰—in the second century AD, “an artificial scholastic jargon, an artificial hybrid of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, was created.”¹¹

However, after examination of its grammar, M. H. Segal found that Mishnaic Hebrew is dependent on Biblical Hebrew, not on Aramaic. It arose “through the spread of one spoken dialect or the mixture of several dialects.”¹² It is “rightly considered the linguistic evolutionary offspring of biblical Hebrew, and much in evidence in the rabbinic writings as independent of Aramaic.”¹³ The view that Mishnaic Hebrew continued as a spoken language is less contended today.

A minority of scholars believe that Jesus spoke and taught in Hebrew, even though Aramaic was the language of the common man in Galilee. One intriguing argument for this view is expressed by James Barr who challenges Aramaic expressions such as “talitha cumi,” “abba,” and the phrase rendered “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt 27:46) as possibly being Hebrew. He admits the evidence tilts a bit more to the Aramaic view in this regard, however, “for some of them, such as ‘talitha cumi’ must be Aramaic, while those that are in some question can still probably be taken as Aramaic; there is none, so far as [he] can see, that can only be Hebrew and cannot possibly be Aramaic.”¹⁴

Regarding external evidence for the Hebraic view, Porter observes, “The Hebrew Judean Desert documents, including those from Qumran (which apparently outnumber those in Aramaic), but especially the Hebrew Bar Kokhba letters, have given further credence to the theory of vernacular Hebrew.”¹⁵ The Bar Kokhba letters, fifteen in all, from the uprising of that name, “employ Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. They show that Bar-Kokhba’s officers understood these languages and suggest the use of these languages among the people of Palestine at large.”¹⁶ James Barr was struck by the nature of Dead Sea Scrolls Hebrew:

Firstly, Hebrew of a kind akin to Biblical Hebrew was still in use for religious documents. Secondly, Hebrew was still also in use for secular documents such as letters and contracts, and sometimes documents of very similar content are found in Hebrew, in Aramaic and in Greek. Thirdly, some documents show linguistic characteristics very much akin to those of Mishnaic Hebrew. In general the Dead Sea Scroll evidence seems to have done for Mishnaic Hebrew what scholarship of those working directly on that language did not succeed in accomplishing, namely it convinced many that Hebrew was still alive as a language in some kind of general use in the time of Jesus.¹⁷

IV. THE GREEK VIEW

The Greek view of the spoken language of Palestine has a smaller burden of proof than either of the other two views. It attempts to prove that some Palestinians spoke Greek, not all. Aaron Tresham writes, “[e]vidence for the use of Aramaic in the areas where Jesus lived and taught is strong, but not necessarily strong enough to exclude His use of other languages.”¹⁸ Certainly, it is reasonable to assume that Jesus taught in a language His audience would understand. Even a partially Greek-speaking audience, then, makes Greek a highly plausible teaching language.

A. Greek as Lingua Franca

The argument for the view that Jesus spoke Greek rests, first, on the status of Greek as the lingua franca in the Roman Empire. “That Greek was the lingua franca of the Roman Empire is acknowledged by virtually everyone who has considered this issue,” writes Porter.¹⁹ The reason for this is partly because of its stability as a language, not degenerating into a series of related dialects, but into one standardized “common dialect.” Again, Porter states that during the spread of Greek across the empire, “startling consequences of foreigners speaking Greek [i.e. in corrupting the language] could have been expected, but these appear to have been ‘reasonably slight,’ virtually confined to enrichment of the lexicon and local variances in pronunciation.”²⁰

This, in part, accounts for Greek becoming so widespread and pervasive. In fact, it functioned as a “prestige language” in Palestine. Of the concept of a prestige language, Porter observes that this means that there would have been cultural, social, and especially linguistic pressure to learn Greek in order to communicate broadly within the social structure. In addition, the available evidence clearly supports

the idea that, besides there being a sizable number of first language Greek speakers, there were a large and significant number of bilingual Palestinians especially in Galilee who had productive (not merely passive) competence in Greek and may even on occasion have preferred their acquired language, Greek, to their first language, Aramaic.²¹

Martin Hengel also stresses the influence of Greek:

The bond which held the Hellenistic world together despite the fragmentation which began with the death of Alexander and continued thereafter, was Attic Koine. Its sphere of influence went far beyond that of Aramaic, the official language of the Persian kingdom. Greek merchants dealt in it, whether in Bactria on the border of India or in Massilia…[o]utside of the sphere of Judaism the principle could probably very soon be applied that anyone who could read and write also had a command of Greek. Aramaic became the language of the illiterate, who needed no written remembrances.²²

B. Palestinian Geography and the Rise of Greek

Geographical factors also come into play in the Hellenization of Galilee. Matthew 4:15 calls it “the Galilee of the Gentiles,” and it was surrounded on all sides by Gentile cities. Sevenster writes,

There were many regions of the Jewish land which bordered directly on areas where mainly or almost exclusively Greek was spoken. The obvious assumption is that the inhabitants of such regions at least understood Greek, often spoke it and were thus bilingual. This can probably be said of people from all levels of society, not merely the top social or intellectual layer. In all layers of the population, then, the rule was probably a certain familiarity with Greek.

He reiterates the point: “Considering the close proximity to Greekspeaking regions in which large sections of the population of Galilee lived, it is scarcely conceivable that they remained hermetically sealed off from the penetration of the Greek language throughout the centuries.”²³

Nazareth, the town of Jesus’ boyhood, was such a town. It was small in population (1,600 to 2,000), and agricultural in its economy, but it “was situated along a branch of and had a position overlooking one of the busiest trade routes in ancient Palestine, the Via Maris, which reached from Damascus to the Mediterranean.”²⁴ The town of Capernaum, where Jesus possibly had a home (Mark 2:1), was a prosperous fishing village. The fishermen among his disciples would have used Greek to conduct their business. Matthew, a tax collector there, would have done the same.

A large influx of Jews came often to celebrate various feasts in Jerusalem, traveling from surrounding cities and countries. As many as 2,700,000 are estimated by Philo to have attended one Passover.²⁵ Yet these probably included a large percentage of Greek speakers. Sevenster makes a logical inference:

That almost certainly also meant that Greek must have been spoken regularly in Jerusalem and its surroundings. For it is an established fact that, as a rule, the Jews outside Palestine spoke and wrote Greek and almost always thought in that language, particularly in the centuries around the beginning of the Christian era.²⁶

There is also evidence of a resident contingent of Greek-speaking Jews in Jerusalem; in Acts 6:1, Luke writes, “Now at this time while the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint arose on the part of the Hellenistic (Hellēnistōn) Jews against the native Hebrews (Hebraious) because their widows were being overlooked in the daily serving of food.” Porter explains that the term Hellēnistōn refers to Jews who spoke mainly Greek, as opposed to Hebraious, Jews who “spoke mainly Aramaic or also Aramaic [i.e. as a second language].”²⁷

C. External Evidence for the Greek View

Early evidence of Greek usage in Palestine dates to before the Babylonian exile. Mussies points to Greek pottery from the sixth century BC and Greek coins from the fifth. Ostraca (pottery used as writing tablets) occur from the third century at Khirbet el-Kôm.²⁸ Two of the eight ostraca there contain Greek messages, and one of the two is bilingual. Hengel observes that knowledge of Greek in aristocratic and military circles of Judaism can already be demonstrated on the basis of the Zeno papyri, around 260 BC, in Palestine.²⁹

In 217 BC, a pillar was inscribed to honor Ptolemy IV Philopator in his victory over Antiochus III of Seleucia.³⁰ There is also “the fragment of an inscription from the Idumaean town of Marisa in the same year, commemorating another victory of Philopator.” An inscription from the first century AD, probably before the year 70, bears witness to Theodotus, the builder of a synagogue. As Sevenster points out, “the terminus ad quem of 70 relates to the impracticability of building a synagogue in Jerusalem after the Roman destruction of that date.”³¹ Another inscription involves the prohibition of nonJews in certain parts of the temple. The significance of the message has been played down somewhat, because it is Jewish readers we are specifically interested in. Another inscription, however, is more apropos to the point. It is an edict against robbing tombs, posted in Galilee in the first half of the first century AD, and obviously pertains to persons of all religious affiliations.³²

The available inscriptional evidence points very clearly toward Hellenization in Palestine. Porter points out, however, that “the quantity of material is simply too large to refer to in anything close to comprehensive terms.”³³

A number of papyri written in Greek have been found in Palestine. These include marriage contracts, commercial transactions, fiduciary contracts and philosophical writings. Two letters from Simon bar Kokhba, written shortly before the Bar Kokhba rebellion in AD 132, shed an interesting light on the question of language preference. He writes, “egraphē d[e] Helēnisti dia t[o hor]man mē heurē/th[ē]nai Hebraesti g[ra]psasthai”(“[the letter] was written in Greek because the desire was not found to write in Hebrew [or, possibly, ‘Aramaic’]”). In other words, it took a special effort to write in Hebrew or Aramaic which did not apply to writing in Greek. This letter is supplemented by another Greek letter regarding the everyday topic of maintaining a supply of vegetables. In both letters the unstated message is that the language of everyday affairs is Greek.

Jewish literature produced in Greek in roughly the time period of Jesus’ life includes certain parts of the deuterocanonical additions to the book of Daniel, such as the Prayer of Azariah, the Song of the Three Children, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon. It also includes certain additions to the book of Esther, the apocryphal books of 1 Esdras and 2 Maccabees, and a number of books of the Septuagint, including Esther, 1 Maccabees, Chronicles, and more.³⁴

The historian Josephus gives a window on his own study of Greek. He writes, “I have also labored strenuously to partake of the realm of Greek prose and poetry, although the habitual use of my native tongue has prevented my attaining precision in the pronunciation.”³⁵ He adds, “For our people do not favor those persons who have mastered the speech of many nations, or who adorn their style with smoothness of diction, because they consider that not only is such a skill common to ordinary freemen but that even slaves who so choose may acquire it.” This analysis incidentally confirms not only the production of Greek literature by the Jews, but the prevalence of Greek throughout the social strata.³⁶

Bilingual coins minted in the first century BC have been found in Greek and Hebrew. Similar ones were minted by Mattathias Antigonus, the last king of the Hasmonean dynasty, in 40-37 BC. The Herodian dynasty also saw the minting of coins in Greek, including by Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee in Jesus’ day.³⁷ During the two Jewish revolts (AD 66–70 and AD 132–35), Greek was not used on coins minted by the rebels. This, however, was not because they could not read Greek or for other mundane reasons. “To the contrary, their use of Hebrew on the coins indicates that they were attempting to make a political statement that the populace would understand, not abandoning their linguistic ties to Greek.”³⁸ Thus, the language of coins was a significant cultural element, not chosen lightly, and a clear indicator of language preference.

In ossuaries throughout Palestine, funeral inscriptions indicate a preference for Greek. In Jerusalem, approximately 50% of Jewish burials have Greek inscriptions. At Beth She’arim, in western Galilee, the number is closer to 80%, with 100% of the earliest tombs inscribed in Greek. The overall number for Palestine is 55–60%. Porter writes,

These data are not to be underestimated. Since Hebrew may still have been the predominant Jewish religious language, at least of the devout, it is easy to account for the Semitic inscriptions. But it is less easy to account for the Greek ones unless Greek was simply a commonly used language by many Jews.³⁹

The ossuary evidence for Greek in Palestine, so significant as an indicator of language, is not without its detractors. However, the dating of the Palestinian ossuaries, as explained by Sevenster, is clearly determined to be early by factors such as the type of earthenware used and the shape of the Greek characters. Further evidence for this is found in the mortuary at Talpioth, where a coin of Herod Agrippa I dates from the sixth year of his reign as king, (AD 42-43).⁴⁰ This evidence, dating from the mid-first century, qualifies as representing Palestine during the life of Christ.

This key point is challenged by Chancey. Sevenster’s main source for this data, Archaeology and Rabbi Jesus, by Meyers and Strange, is faulted for dating the Beth She’arim tombs to the late first or early second-century. “In the excavation report itself,” Chancey writes, “the sole inscription in Catacomb 6 is undated, and those in Catacomb 11 are dated to the third century.”⁴¹ It seems a valid point. However, the ossuary evidence Sevenster gives is not just based on a pronouncement by Meyers and Strange. It has to do with the three criteria mentioned: pottery type, writing analysis, and a coin. Chancey himself bases one of his main refutations of Sevenster on just such coin evidence.⁴² Moreover, the ossuary evidence for the Greek view is so widespread over such a long time frame that it appears to dwarf specific criticisms such as this one by Chancey.

Horsley makes another criticism, finding it noteworthy on the one hand that so many of the ossuary inscriptions are in Greek, but insisting they are only people in the wealthy class. He writes of Beth She’arim, for example, that it “became a privileged burial site where the bones of thousands of (presumably well-off) Jews from the diaspora were taken for reinterment.”⁴³ Sevenster maintains, however, that,

the often very poor Greek [writing]…very obvious in the numerous Greek funerary inscriptions of Jaffa and Beth She’arim, does not support the theory of craftsmen being commissioned by the relatives who themselves were entirely ignorant of the language, so much as the formulation of that Greek by the relatives themselves, who had some command of the language.⁴⁴

(Horsley’s contention fails to mention the quality of the inscriptions themselves.)

Sevenster observes,

[s]ome of these inscriptions were probably made by members of the family. Many of them are executed technically in such a clumsy and primitive manner that they could easily have been made by persons not skilled in this craft, but if they could afford little expense and the work had to be carried out as cheaply as possible, then the persons employed would certainly have been unable to correct the Greek in the text ordered or to formulate it flawlessly themselves.⁴⁵

In fact, he maintains, “the simultaneous occurrence of tidy, correct and clumsy, primitive inscriptions in Greek proves that this language was used in widely divergent layers of the Jewish population in Palestine. In any case it was not restricted to the upper classes.”⁴⁶

Porter also makes an observation about the significance of the ossuary evidence:

At the most private and final moments when a loved one was finally to be laid to rest, in the majority of instances, Jews chose Greek as the language in which to memorialize their deceased. Greek was apparently that dominant, that in the majority of instances it took precedence over the Jewish sacred language, even at a moment of highly personal and religious significance.⁴⁷

A final word should be addressed to another argument of Horsley, namely an extremely low literacy rate in Galilee, as in the entire Roman Empire, which negates most if not all epigraphic evidence. One contrary bit of evidence among many might be this quote from Mark Antony as recorded by Josephus:

M. Antony, imperator, to the magistrates, senate, and people of Tyre, sendeth greeting. I have sent you my decree, respecting which I will that ye take care that it be engraven in the public tables, in Roman and Greek letters, and that it stand engraven in the most conspicuous places, so as to be read by all.⁴⁸

In other words, if there was a study on low literacy rates in Tyre (and by extension, Palestine), Antony had apparently not heard of it.

D. Internal Evidence for the Greek View

An obvious piece of evidence in considering Jesus’ spoken language is the fact that the NT itself is written in Greek.⁴⁹ If the book is in Greek, surely its main character can be assumed to speak the language. As Alexander Roberts put it:

Here we possess, in the volume known as the New Testament, a collection of writings, composed for the most part by Jews of Palestine, and primarily intended to some extent for Jews of Palestine, and all of them written…in the Greek language. Now what is the natural inference? Is it not that Greek must have been well known both to the writers and their readers, and that it was deemed the most fitting language, at the time, in which for Jews of Palestine both to impart and receive instruction?⁵⁰

One would certainly think so. At the very least, the burden of proof is on the scholar who attempts to prove differently.

A second very strong piece of evidence is the fluency of James, the half-brother of Jesus. The book of James was written less than two decades after the death of Christ, and yet is a fine example of Greek writing. It seems unlikely James could gain such fluency in those few years. Rather, it appears to demonstrate “the advanced knowledge of Greek in the family.”⁵¹ Abbott writes, “James’s knowledge of Greek and even his use of the Septuagint shown in his epistle are confirmed by the report of his behavior in the Council of Jerusalem, where he bases an argument on the Greek version of Amos, where it differs from the Hebrew.”⁵²

Peter and John were called “uneducated and untrained men” (Acts 4:13), yet they too wrote parts of the Greek NT. This certainly argues for the kind of familiarity we should expect from the external evidence. Peter’s speech on the day of Pentecost most likely was delivered in Greek, because of the mixed nature of the holiday crowd—people “from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5).

The Sermon on the Mount was delivered to a large crowd of people who “were amazed at His teaching” (Matt 7:28). This crowd, however, we find (in Matt 4:25) had “followed Him from Galilee and the Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and from beyond the Jordan.” But as we have seen, these cities were probably primarily Greek-speaking. Jesus would likely have to teach them in Greek to be understood. He probably also spoke Greek with the Syrophoenician woman in Tyre (Mark 7:24-30). She is called a “Hellēnis” by Mark. This is a form of the word we saw earlier, which refers to “someone who speaks mainly Greek.”

Another example of likely Greek usage is Jesus’ trial before Pontius Pilate. It occurred just before the Feast of Passover, when the crowds would include those visiting Israel for the holiday. Yet in such a diverse group, a common language beyond even Aramaic was necessary, for Pilate probably did not speak it. Regarding this, Roberts writes:

No one will venture to maintain that the Roman governor either understood or employed Hebrew, nor will many be inclined to suppose that Latin was used by our Lord or the Jews in their intercourse with Pilate. The only other supposition is that Greek was the language employed by all the parties in question; unless, indeed, it be assumed that an interpreter was employed between them. And it must be allowed by all who are inclined to adopt this view, that it involves, at least, quite a gratuitous assumption. There is not the slightest trace of any such personage in the narrative.⁵³

Instead, we have clear exchanges between Pilate, Jesus, the chief priests, the rulers and the people, with repeated phrases such as “he said to him.” So Jesus and Pilate do converse directly and at length, as in their extended dialogue of John 18:33-38. The knowledge of Greek, once again, is required.

A final example is John 7:35, “Then the Jews said among themselves, ‘Where does He intend to go that we shall not find Him? Does He intend to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks?’” The question implies knowledge that Jesus spoke Greek.

E. Implications of the Greek View

If Christ did indeed speak Greek, certain implications arise. First, the possibility of ipsissima verba of Christ in the NT increases significantly.⁵⁴ Second, the need for an underlying Aramaic version of Jesus’ teachings diminishes.⁵⁵ In view of a body of teaching at least partially in Greek, it becomes more probable the Gospel writers simply selected, word for word, passages from the actual teachings in Greek, even if these were outnumbered numerically by teachings in Aramaic.⁵⁶ Third, the source of inspiration in the NT documents themselves is not relegated to a more deeply inspired Aramaic version behind it. Fourth, the independence view of Synoptic Gospel origins is vindicated,⁵⁷ since the likelihood of the three Synoptic Gospel witnesses agreeing on the wording of an identical set of teachings is high.

V. CONCLUSION

Stanley Porter observes regarding the lingua franca status of Greek in the first century Greco-Roman empire:

I find it interesting, if not a bit perplexing, that virtually all biblical scholars will accept that the Jews adopted Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Persian empire, as their first language, with many if not most Jews of the eastern Mediterranean speaking it in the fourth century BCE. Many of these same scholars, however, will almost categorically reject the idea that the Jews adopted Greek, the lingua franca of the Greco-Roman world, as their language, even though the social, political, cultural and, in particular, linguistic contexts were similar in so many ways, and the evidence is at least as conclusive.⁵⁸

The benefit of the doubt Porter argues for should be extended to this study for the same reason. In fact, a goal of this article has not been to prove that Greek is the sole language of Palestine, just that it is one of three, alongside Aramaic and Hebrew. The argument is not that Jesus spoke or taught only in Greek, but that He both could and did on occasion. Having established this plausibility, it appears beyond reasonable doubt that Jesus both spoke and taught in Greek.

____________________

¹ Aaron Tresham, “The Languages Spoken by Jesus,” The Master’s Seminary Journal 20, no. 1 (Spring 2009): 72.

² Ibid.

³ Joseph A. Fitzmyer,“The Languages of Palestine in the First Century AD,” in The Language of the New Testament: Classic Essays, ed. Stanley E. Porter, Journal For the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 60 (Worcester: JSOT Press, 1991), 126.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Stanley E. Porter, “Did Jesus Ever Teach in Greek?,” Tyndale Bulletin 44, no. 2 (1993): 199.

⁶ Ibid., 200.

⁷ Ibid., 201.

⁸ H. Birkeland, as quoted in James Barr, “Which Languages Did Jesus Speak?—some Remarks of a Semitist,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 53, no. 1 (Autumn 1970): 15. This paper, however, will argue that Jesus did not speak primarily in Hebrew.

⁹ Shemuel Safrai et al., Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum Ad Novum Testamentum, section 1, vol. 2, The Jewish People in the First Century: Historical Geography, Political History, Social, Cultural and Religious Life and Institutions (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1974-76), 1022.

¹⁰ Barr, “Which Languages Did Jesus Speak?,” 12.

¹¹ Tresham, “The Languages Spoken by Jesus,” 74-75.

¹² Safrai, Compendia, 1023.

¹³ Stanley E. Porter, “Jesus and the Use of Greek in Galilee,” in New Testament Tools and Studies: Evaluations of the State of Current Research, eds. Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans, vol. 19 (Boston, MA: Brill, 1998), 127.

¹⁴ Barr, “Which Language?,” 17.

¹⁵ Porter, “Use of Greek,” 127.

¹⁶ Robert H. Gundry, “The Language Milieu of First-Century Palestine,” Journal of Biblical Literature 83 (1964), 406.

¹⁷ Barr, “Which Language?,” 20.

¹⁸ Tresham, “Languages,” 71.

¹⁹ Porter, “Use of Greek,” 129.

²⁰ Ibid., 131.

²¹ Ibid., 135.

²² Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine During the Early Hellenistic Period (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1974, 1981), 58-59.

²³ Jan Nicolaas Sevenster, Do You Know Greek? (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968), 99.

²⁴ Porter, “Use of Greek,” 135.

²⁵ Sevenster, Greek, 80

²⁶ Ibid., 82.

²⁷ Porter, “Use of Greek,” 136.

²⁸ Gerhard Mussies, “Greek as the Vehicle of Early Christianity,” New Testament Studies 29/3 (July 1983): 359, as cited in Tresham, “Languages,” 86.

²⁹ Martin Hengel, The ‘Hellenization’ of Judea in the First Century after Christ (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1989, 2003), 64.

³⁰ Sevenster, Greek, 100.

³¹ Ibid., 131-32.

³² Ibid., 117-18.

³³ Porter, “Use of Greek,”142. Porter lists additional sources: “For convenient reference to the variety of material, see Hengel, Hellenization, 64; Fitzmyer, ‘Languages of Palestine,’ 135-36 and passim; Meyers and Strange, Archaeology, 79-84; and Sevenster, Do You Know Greek?, 115 38.”

³⁴ Porter, “Did Jesus Ever Teach in Greek?,” 215-16.

³⁵ Josephus, Antiquities, XX: 262-65.

³⁶ Sevenster, Greek, 65.

³⁷ Porter, “Did Jesus Ever Teach in Greek?,” 213.

³⁸ Sevenster, Greek, 138.

³⁹ Porter, “Did Jesus Ever Teach in Greek?,” 222.

⁴⁰ Sevenster, Greek, 153-55.

⁴¹ Mark A. Chancey, Greco-Roman Culture and the Galilee of Jesus, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series, vol. 134 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 133.

⁴² Ibid.

⁴³ Richard A. Horsley, Archaeology, History, and Society in Galilee: The Social Context of Jesus and the Rabbis (Valley Forge, Pa: Trinity Press International, 1996), 168.

⁴⁴ Sevenster, Greek, 182.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 183.

⁴⁶ Ibid.

⁴⁷ Porter, “Did Jesus Ever Teach in Greek?” 222.

⁴⁸ Mark Antony, as quoted in Josephus, Antiquities, xiv. 12.5, in Alexander Roberts, Greek: the Language of Christ and His Apostles (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1888), 149-50.

⁴⁹ Robert Thomas, “Impact of Historical Criticism on Theology and Apologetics,” in Robert L. Thomas and F. David Farnell, The Jesus Crisis: The Inroads of Historical Criticism Into Evangelical Scholarship (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1998), 368.

⁵⁰ Alexander Roberts, Greek: The Language of Christ and His Apostles, 82 (emphasis in the original).

⁵¹ Thomas, “Impact of Historical Criticism,” 368.

⁵² T. K. Abbott, “To What Extent Was Greek the Language of Galilee in the Time of Christ?,” in Essays Chiefly On the Original Texts of the Old and New Testaments (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1891), 129.

⁵³ Roberts, Greek: The Language of Christ, 158.

⁵⁴ Tresham, “Languages,” 72.

⁵⁵ Ibid.

⁵⁶ Eta Linnemann, Is There a Synoptic Problem?: Rethinking the Literary Dependence of the First Three Gospels (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1992), 169. For example, if Jesus spoke four occasions in Aramaic to every one occasion in Greek, it would still leave hours and hours of teaching in Greek. Linnemann, Is There a Synoptic Problem, calculates at 2 hours per day of public teaching, 2,000 hours of total such teaching during Jesus’ ministry. At even a 20% ratio, that would yield 400 hours in Greek, which, at 7.5 single-spaced typewritten pages per hour (her metric), is 2800 pages. That is certainly enough from which to draw the Gospel writings.

⁵⁷ Tresham, “Languages,” 72.

⁵⁸ Stanley E. Porter, Journal for the Study of the New Testament. Supplement Series, vol. 191, The Criteria for Authenticity in Historical-Jesus Research: Previous Discussion and New Proposals (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 169.