If Jesus spoke Aramaic, how did he speak to the Romans?
Eleftherios Tserkezis (Mind the gap between “spoke Aramaic” and “only spoke Aramaic.”) Scholarship has long established that early Roman Palestine was far from monolingual. As many as four languages were known and spoken in the region — Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin . The real question, of course, is how widespread each of them was and on what occasions they were used. A plurality of scholars believe the common language in everyday life was indeed Aramaic. For trans-regional and cross-communal communication, though, Greek was more useful; in fact, there’s even a growing minority of scholars who argue that Greek was the overall lingua franca. Hebrew was probably limited to a liturgical and educational context, and Latin was used in the army and administration. Jesus grew up in a Jewish family, so Aramaic was probably his mother tongue. However, his native Galilee, aptly nicknamed “Galilee of the Gentiles,” was home to a diverse population for centuries, partl...