ARAMAIC AND HEBREW
The Languages spoken in Judea during the 1st Century AD
by
Camilo Ezagui Menashe
English and Spanish
Versions
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Aramaic and Hebrew
The Languages spoken in Judea during the 1st century AD
Dnd Heb
" Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad", Deut 6, 4
By Camilo Ezagui Menashe, studious of the Jewish roots of early Christianity and Pilgrims Guide in Galilee and Jerusalem.
Hebrew is one of several northwestern Semitic languages such as Phoenician, Moabite and Amonean wich all share strong influences of Canaanite. We know that the Old Testament (Torah or Pentateuch) of the Bible was originally written in archaic Hebrew using the characters of the Phoenician Alphabet.
The Torah or Pentateuch of the Bible
In the second book of Kings, chap. 18, 26 and in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah chap. 36, 11 (8th century BCE) there is a clear mention about the difference between Aramaic and the language spoken in Judea at the time of the Sanaquerib invasion when the advisers of King Hezekiah in Jerusalem told the emissary of the king of Assyria: "Please speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand it; do not speak to us in the Judaean language within earshot of the people on the ramparts."...
Inscription of the 10th century BCE Ancient Hebrew writting of the 10th century BCE
Khirbet Qeiyafa Ostracon - Mibtzar Haela
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On returning to Judea from the Babylonian Exile (6th century BCE) the
"Targumim" in Aramaic were used to teach Torah to the people. The Hebrew alphabet adopted the square characters of the Caldean calligraphy. Five hundred years later things had changed, such that by the 1st century AD, Hebrew had already been spoken for a long time.
The Hebrew Alphabet
Professor Sara Lipkin, a specialist in Hebrew, in her study: "The Hebrew, story in chapters" (1992) tells us that the archaic Hebrew of the Mikrá, spoken in the time of King Solomon as it appears in the Pentateuch, Chronicles and Prophets, was replaced about 300 years BCE by a spoken Hebrew using words, idioms, pronunciation and expressions somewhat different known as "Lashon Chazal" or the Language of the Sages. This Hebrew was spoken in Judea until 200
AD. Professor Sara Lipkin remarks that during that period Aramaic was an international language that was spoken and written from India to Kush (Sudan). At this time, Sara Lipkin concludes, Jews spoke three languages: Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. There were those who spoke the three and others who spoke only one of them".
Papyrus written in ancient Hebrew, 7th century. B.C.
Professor David Flusser of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem concludes that: "After the discovery of the Book of Ben Sira in Hebrew among the Dead Sea Scrolls and the discovery of the Bar Kochba letters and in light of further study of the language of the Jewish Sages, it is accepted that most part of the people spoke good Hebrew". Professor M. H. Segal, an authority on Mishnaic Hebrew, thinks the same.
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Qumran. The Dead Sea Scrolls
It should be noted that among the Dead Sea Scrolls most texts of self expression such as hymns, commentaries on Scripture, correspondence, the community rule, the apocalyptic prophecy as well as Pesher Habakuk, among others, were written in what scholar John Meier called a "post-biblical Hebrew". Although the Catholic Bishop John Meier defended in “A Marginal Jew” the thesis that Jesus spoke only Aramaic and referred to Judea as Palestine, it has been shown that Hebrew was in use among the Jews during the 1st century AD.
Dead Sea Scrolls. Hymn in Hebrew dedicated to Jerusalem
The Book of Ben Sira in Hebrew was written between 190 and 180 BCE
at the time of the suffocating occupation of Judea by the Greeks. With this text, teachers and elders taught Mosaic wisdom and virtue to the young. It was translated into Greek by the grandson of Ben Sira who says in the introduction: "Because things originally expressed in Hebrew do not have the same strength when translated into another language." This book is considered a canonical text in the Catholic Bible (Ecclesiastes).
Excerpts from the book of Ben Sira in Hebrew found at Masada - 1st century AD
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During the reign of the kings of the Hasmonean dynasty (141 to 63 BCE) currencies, with few exceptions, were minted with inscriptions in Greek and Hebrew.
Coins of King Alexander Jannaeus - 103 to 76 BCE
The Jewish historian Yosef Ben Matityahu (37-100 AD) or Flavius Josephus in his book "The War of the Jews against the Romans"
(Volume 6, chap. 2) relates how General Tito sent him to the walls to negotiate a surrender with the people besieged in Jerusalem in the year 70 AD. In some doctrinal biased translations it appears that he did so in the “language of their ancestors” which according to scholars of the Church is Aramaic. Josephus wrote literally that he spoke to the people in Hebrew and thus appears in the 1824 English translation of William
Whiston in "The Genuine Works of Flavius Josephus" (see below) and in the 1923 Hebrew translation of Dr. Yaacob Naftali Simjoni, further confirmed by the English historian Desmond Seward in his book
"Jerusalem's Traitor ", 2009. Josephus who wrote his works in Koine makes a clear distinction between Hebrew “Ebraisti” and Aramaic which he calls "Συριστί = Siristi or Syriac " .
From the 1824 Translation of William Whiston:
The Jewish rebels who defended the fortress of Masada were defeated by Roman legions in the year 73 AD. Among the archaeological finds were fragments of pottery with some fighters names written in Hebrew.
Among the names listed was the name of the commander ELEAZAR
BEN YAIR mentioned by Jewish historian Flavius Josephus in his account of the fall of Masada in his book "The Jewish War against the Romans".
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Masada Ostraca, 1989 Archeological Report
The Letters of Shimon Bar Kochba or Bar Kosiba (see translation below) found in 1960 in the Judean Desert and exposed in the Archeological Museum in Jerusalem-Israel were written in every day Hebrew during the second revolt of the monotheistic Judea against pagan Rome between 132 and 135 AD. Those letters have shown that 100 years after Jesus Crucifixion, Hebrew was still spoken in Judea. However, a generation or more later, following the overwhelming defeat of Judea, the Jews of Galilee gradually came to speak more Aramaic and Hebrew ceased to be a spoken language about the year 200 AD.
The Letters of Bar Kochba
Incidentally, it was after the year 135 AD when the roman emperor Hadrian renamed Judea as “Syria Palaestina”. That's why the name Palaestina does not appears in the Gospels.
Vespasian Roman coin 71 AD with the inscription JUDEA CAPTA (not Palestine) Professor David Flusser said in his book "Judaism and the roots of Christianity" that the Parables (Mashal in Hebrew) of Rabbinic literature were recounted to the people by the rabbi-teachers only in Hebrew at all
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times. And Jesus' parables were no exception. Dr. Brad Young specialist in this subject agrees with Professor Flusser's assertions.
Professor David Flusser also alludes the text of Acts of Apostles 21, 37
to 40 as evidence of the use of Hebrew among Jews which reads how Paul addresses the people "in the Hebrew language" when he was arrested by the Romans on the steps of the Antonia Fortress of Jerusalem . Paul said , " I am a Jew and a citizen of the well-known city of
Tarsus in Cilicia. Please give me permission to speak to the people . The
man gave his consent and Paul, standing at the top of the steps, raised his hand to the people for silence. A profound silence followed, and he started speaking to them in Hebrew (Ebraisti) : “My brothers, my fathers, listen to what I have to say to you in my defence. When they realised he was speaking in Hebrew, the silence was even greater than before.”
(Bible of Jerusalem) .
And again in Acts 26, 14 when Jesus appears to Paul (Saul) on the road to Damascus, Paul said: "We all fell to the ground, and I heard a voice (Jesus) saying to me in Hebrew (Ebraisti): "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you, kicking against the goad" ... (Bible of Jerusalem) .
Some ‘old school’ scholars claim that Hebrew was spoken only among the Sages but both Paul and Josephus spoke in Hebrew to the people.
Koine was a modality of Greek commonly used throughout the Roman Empire and was the language in which the Gospel spread. Aramaic in Koine is defined as Συριστί σ
υριστ ί (Siristi = in Syrian language) and in Greek is Αραμαικός - Αραμαίοι. The original text of the Acts of the Apostles in Koine says Ebraisti: Ἑ
ραιστί = in the Hebrew language.
Woodhouse's English-Greek Dictionary
Douglas Hamp is a graduate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a Master’s degree in the Hebrew Bible and Its World. He specialized in ancient languages including Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek. Hamp asks some key questions in his book "Discovering the Language of Jesus" (2005): "So, in spite of all the evidence that Hebrew was spoken, why do most scholars and certain Bible translators assume that Hebrew really means Aramaic?. The word for Aramaic in Greek is Συριστί, Syristi, which, however, never appears in the New Testament, though it does appear a few times in the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament). Since there was a way for the writers of the NT to express Aramaic if they had wanted to, why didn't they if Hebrew really means Aramaic?".
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The Mishnah is the compilation codified in Galilee by Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi around 200 AD wich summarizes the guidelines of the ancestral oral wisdom of the sages (Tannaim) for the correct practice of the commandments of The Torah. It was written in the Hebrew spoken in Judea during the 1st and 2nd centuries AD known as "Mishnaic Hebrew".
Józef Tadeusz Milik, Polish Bible scholar and former Catholic priest was part of the team of specialists who deciphered the Dead Sea Scrolls and stated in his book that “the Mishnaic Hebrew was the language spoken by the inhabitants of Judea” at the end of the period of the Second Temple (Ten Years of Discovery in the Wilderness of Judaea, 1959).
The Mishnah
In the Gospel of John (Bible of Jerusalem) there is a clear reference to the languages used in Judea referring to the sign placed by Pilate on the Cross (INRI). John 19, 19 says: "Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews.
This notice was read by many of the Jews, because the place where
Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the writing was in Hebrew, Latin and Greek.".
Sign with Hebrew inscription TO THE HOUSE OF TRUMPETS
found in the ruins of the Temple of Jerusalem – 1st century AD
Aramaic is an ancestral Semitic language such as the ancient Canaanite and the Ugaritic. It was used as the official language of the royal courts
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in Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Syria and Judea. All Semitic languages were influenced by each other. Aramaic was spoken in Judea during the Persian occupation since the 6th century BCE. The same happened in the 4th century BCE with the Greek when Judea was under the dominion of Ptolemaic and Seleucid kings of Egypt and Syria respectively. Then Hebrew reappears as a spoken language in Judea especially during the Jewish national renaissance fueled by the Hasmonean kings (Maccabees) in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE. To speak Hebrew, the native language, was one way of reaffirming the national identity in Judea to counter the overwhelming influence of Greek culture.
A foreign language as Aramaic that remembered the disastrous Babylonian Exile could not meet that ethnic purpose. It was since then that the Book of Ben Sira in Hebrew was used to teach wisdom and virtue to the young and that book was still in use during the 1st century AD. Both Aramaic and Greek-Koine were used in the 1st century AD to communicate with Jews who did not lived in Judea as well as with the foreign gentiles while a good majority of the Judea natives spoke Hebrew.
It is possible that Jesus who grew up in Galilee of the Gentiles on the border with Lebanon and Syria (Aram/Land of Pagans) also spoke Aramaic. That was how he could talk to the demoniac in the passage of the herd of pigs on the eastern shore of the Sea (Lake) of Galilee (Aram
= land of pagans) Matthew 8 and Mark 5. But Jesus used Hebrew to amaze the elders for his wisdom in the Temple at age 12, or to preach to the people in parables (Mashal), or arguing with the Pharisees, or reading and teaching in the synagogues of the Galilee, in the stairs of the Temple and also to speak to the Samaritan Woman at the Well of Jacob as Paul did shortly after on the stairs of the Antonia Fortress.
This is also the opinion of Professor Shmuel Safrai professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Presumably Jesus spoke Hebrew in the peculiar guttural "accent" of Galileans referred to in Matthew 26, 73
when Peter denied Jesus before the cock crows: "I do not know the man. A little later the bystanders came up and said to Peter, surely you too are one of them for even the way you talk (accent) gives you away." .
Yemenites Jews spoke Hebrew in the same accent as Peter did for centuries afterwards.
The ruins of the Capernaum Synagogue
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Jesus often went up to the Temple (in Hebrew Aliah) as a child (Luke 2, 41) so he was familiar with those crowded meetings of Jews in Jerusalem who gathered with joy after making the holy pilgrimage not only from the villages and cities of Judea and Galilee, but also many came from Cappadocia, Cilicia, Syria, Cyrenaica, Babylon and Egypt to fulfill the commandment of Deuteronomy 16, 16. During those days of religious holidays Jews spoke Aramaic, Greek or Hebrew according to their occupation and place of origin. To speak with Pilate Jesus could do it in Koine (colloquial Greek) who may have learned in his childhood with the Jewish community of Alexandria when the Flight into Egypt (or in Sephoris-Tzipori the mixed city close to Nazareth), although it is more likely that this was done through a translator into Hebrew at the service of the Roman Prefect to communicate with the native population.
The Lord's Prayer in Hebrew and Aramaic
Pater Noster Church, Mount of Olives, Jerusalem
English has been influenced by Latin, French and German remaining nevertheless an unique language. The same is true for Hebrew.
Obviously the Hebrew spoken in the time of Jesus was influenced in the form of words and expressions by Aramaic and Greek alike. Words such as "Abba" (father), "Ima" (mother), "Bar Mitzvah", "Agab",
"Agada", "Barnash", "Bar - Bish Mazal" Adraba, Katin, Kushia, the names of the months ... and many other words derived from the Aramaic. So It is not surprising to find Aramainisms in the Gospels.
The same happened with the Greek. Words like "Sanhedrin" (Council of Elders), Traklin, Diukan, Hediot, Katedra, Heguemon, Namal and even names like Horcanus, Aristobulus, Agrippa, Ptolemy were used in every day Hebrew during that period (300 BCE to 200 AD).
Let us focus now on those years of linguistics transition from Hebrew to Aramaic in 2nd Century Syria Palaestina after the Second Jewish Revolt against Rome. It was then that the Syrian Tacianus composed the
"Diatessaron" (165-170 AD) which was a Gospel that integrated the others in a single version and without contradictions. This Syrian
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Gospel was in use in the Aramaic Church that obviously favored aramaic a posteriori as the language spoken by Jesus. On the other hand, the oldest Greek versions of the New Testament are the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus of the IV century AD that were subject to certain modifications by copyists. It had been nearly 300 years since the Gospels were written. This would explain the apparent contradiction in the text of the first century Gospels that clearly mentions some words as Hebrew words (Ἑ
ραιστί = Ebraisti) although the II to IV century AD
copyists phonetically transcribed them into Aramaic (Akeldama, Rabbuni, Gabbatha, Mammon, Sikera, Cephas, Talitha Qumi, Ephphatha, Eli Eli Lema sabachthani, Raca, Gethsemani, Golgotha…) backed by the fact that the Palaestina Jews of their time no more spoke Hebrew but Aramaic. Like in John 19, 17: "And carrying his cross by himself, he went out to the so-called Place of the Skull, which is called in Hebrew
Golgotha". Or John 19,13: "When Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus outside and sat on the judge's bench at a place called The Stone Pavement, or in Hebrew Gabbatha".
According to Professor David Flusser: "There are teachings and sayings of Jesus that can be translated to both Hebrew or Aramaic, but there are some that can only be translated into Hebrew. None can be translated only into Aramaic. Furthermore, the Hebrew origin of the Gospels can be shown translating them into Hebrew ", especially the Gospel of Matthew that was originally written in Hebrew according to eight of the early Fathers of the Church from II to IV century AD. Among them Hierapolis, Papias, Hegesippus, Irineus, Cyril of Jerusalem, Epiphanius, Origen and Jerome. Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History, VI, XXV, 3-6, quotes early third century AD Origenes who said that "the first to be written was the Gospel of Matthew ... who composed it in Hebrew and published it for the faithful coming from Judaism". Papias according to the same source asserted that: "Matthew recorded Jesus' words in the Hebrew language ...". This was also affirmed by researcher Jean Carignac based on the same sources in "Studies of Jewish history in the Synoptic Gospels," Swedish Theological Institute Annual 7 (1968-69), p.
88.
During many centuries Christian Church scholars excluded the Hebrew as an every day spoken language in the first century AD Judea and developed his own theory about the exclusive use of Aramaic in their drive to distance Jesus from his cultural and religious context. All this because the term "Hebrew" is immediately associated with "Jew." For example, in the Bible of Jerusalem, the Catholic Church added a note to the text of Mark 7, 11 explaining that the Hebrew word "Korban" used by Jesus and that appears several times in the Torah-Pentateuch, is "an
Aramaic word that means offering".
Inscription with the Hebrew word "Korban" from the 1st century AD
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Some Christian scholars have called the language spoken then in Judea: "Western Spoken Aramaic" although in Acts of Apostles 6 at the official Catholic Bible of the Spanish Episcopal Conference reads on the Judeo-Christians of the Jerusalem Church: "About this time, when the number of disciples was increasing the Greek-speaking disciples complained against the Hebrew-speaking disciples because in the daily distribution their own widows were being overlooked.". Acts 6 says
ραιστί = in the Hebrew tongue. And not Συριστί = Siristi, which is Koine for Syriac or Aramaic.
Scholars of the ‘Old School’ are the same people who refer to 1st century AD Judea with the name "Palaestina" although this name given by Hadrian is only from the 2nd century AD and therefore does not appear in the Gospels. They even go so far as to ignore the archaeological evidence (manuscripts and inscriptions) found in the last decades in the Judaean Desert and the Temple Mount. But not all ignore that evidence.
The 1st. 1958 edition of the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church curtly stated that speaking Hebrew ceased in the 4th century BCE.
Following the archaeological findings they corrected their text and the 3rd 1997 edition of the Dictionary states that "the Hebrew continued to be used as written and spoken language after the classical period and is found in texts from Qumran and in the Mishnah".
The film The Passion of Mel Guibson spoken in Aramaic is a clear example of the stubbornness of certain reactionary Christian factions in denying to this day the Hebrew and Jewish ties of the Nazarene.
The researchers David Biven and Roy Blizzard have shown in their study "Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus", 1995, p. 53, that
"the Hebrew background (in the Gospels) is revealed not only in the structure of sentences but also in many present idioms and literalisms that are specific of the Hebrew language". "The Gospels are plagued by confusion because translators in general were unable to recognize the Hebrew thinking, idioms and sentence structures that are behind the Greek texts" explained Biven and Blizzard. ... "If Church had been provided with a proper understanding of Hebrew in the words of Jesus, most of the theological controversies would never have arisen since the beginning", Biven and Blizzard claimed (p. 67).
The previously spoken Hebrew in Judea became after centuries a sacred language used only to pray in the synagogues of the "Diaspora" as well as to study The Torah. The Jews scattered around the world adopted
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the language of the land they inhabit. Almost two thousand years after the Destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 AD, the Jews returning to Zion-Israel, spontaneously choose Hebrew as its national language. They could have chosen Aramaic but the call of the "mother tongue" was more powerful. It is a modern Hebrew who had to be updated and to which new words were added but which is based on the Hebrew spoken by Bar Kochba in 132-135 AD. Israeli Jews today read newspapers, learn, talk and write in the language of their ancestors enriched by everyday use.
Hebrews again speak Hebrew in their Land.
