Did Jesus speak Greek

Rhamiel

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Did He speak Latin with the Romans or did the Romans speak Greek also?

most of the Roman soldiers in Judea were probably originally from eastern provinces so they spoke Greek but might know latin

I think when Jesus addresses the crowds, especially in Jerusalem, He spoke Greek but when it was just Him and His disciples it was probably Aramaic
 
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Hawkins

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If Jesus loves to attend a church to call it home of His Father, then it's safe to assume that He can read and speak Hebrew, though Aramaic is a more common spoken language.

Greek is like today's English. It's a universal language. If Jesus' family chooses to flee to Egypt, it's also safe to say that the family can speak Greek.

Only Hellenistic Jews don't speak much Aramaic and don't read Hebrew Bible but use LXX as their Bible. However Aramaic/Hebrew speakers also quote LXX when they have to speak in Greek.
 
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dqhall

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most of the Roman soldiers in Judea were probably originally from eastern provinces so they spoke Greek but might know latin

I think when Jesus addresses the crowds, especially in Jerusalem, He spoke Greek but when it was just Him and His disciples it was probably Aramaic
I remember Cornelius a centurion of the Italian Regiment was stationed in the port city of Caesarea [Maritima] described in Acts 10. Caesarea had an artificial harbor built by Herod. It was the largest protected harbor in this part of the Mediterranean.

Aramaic and a Hebrew are NW Semitic dialects. Son is ben in Hebrew and bar in Aramaic. Aramaic was spoken in Israel and Syria.

According to Zondervan Greek was spoken in Israel for centuries and remained in the Decapolis during the time of Christ. The Decapolis was a group of ten cities with Damascus in the north and Amman (Philadelphia) in the south.
 
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mindlight

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Yes around 200 years later

Actually not true, The Septuagint was around for the apostles and even Jesus to quote from in the First Century.

"Modern scholarship holds that the Septuagint was written during the 3rd through 1st centuries BCE"

Septuagint - Wikipedia
 
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Jipsah

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DONT YOU KNOW?? Jesus was white and spoke common American english. He hated the idea of immigration and was all about white supremacy... haha
Funny, my grandmother insists He obviously spoke Korean. I take it you believe He spoke in leftist political argot.
 
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Carl Emerson

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Coptic Greek?

I studied under Prof. Blaiklock -Prof of Classics at Auckland Uni. He helped translate the NIV. I am no expert by any means but He called it Coptic Greek describing the trade language of the time.
 
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steppinrazor

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Funny, my grandmother insists He obviously spoke Korean. I take it you believe He spoke in leftist political argot.

I dont believe anything about the way he spoke. I think he probably just spoke the way people spoke back then
 
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WanderedHome

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Two of Jesus’ followers, Andrew and Phillip, had Greek names. Jesus went to the area of the Decapolis - Mark 7:31

The Decapolis were ten cities where Gentiles were influenced by the Greek culture remaining since the empire founded by Alexander the Great. One of these was Damascus on the other side of Mt Hermon from Caesarea Philippi ruled by Herod Philip. Another two were Hippos and Gadara near the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

This article shows evidence Jesus may have known Greek in addition to Aramaic and Hebrew.

Did Jesus speak Greek? — Wesley Huff


He's God. He gave men their languages. Surely He can speak them all.
 
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prodromos

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During the verbal confrontation between the Roman governor Pontius Pilate and Jesus Christ, which language did they use?
Pilate was from the Greek speaking region of Pontus so he would have known Greek, and as a Roman governor he would have known Latin. No clue if he had picked up any Aramaic along the way.
Jesus knew what was in people's hearts and minds before they even spoke. He is above all language.
 
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dqhall

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Pilate was from the Greek speaking region of Pontus so he would have known Greek, and as a Roman governor he would have known Latin. No clue if he had picked up any Aramaic along the way.
Jesus knew what was in people's hearts and minds before they even spoke. He is above all language.
I have been to Israel several times and spent four weeks there in the summer of 2006. I learned their basic greetings, menu items, their numbers, a basic alphabet font set, etc. I wanted to be able to ask how much something in a store costs in Hebrew. Some stores did not use price tags. Walked away from some deals as I knew the local prices too. Pilate probably learned some Aramaic.
 
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Daniel Marsh

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He probably spoke Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek, with different levels of fluency. He most likely could also understand Latin. During the verbal confrontation between the Roman governor Pontius Pilate and Jesus Christ, which language did they use?

As far as that conjecture goes, when the Pharisees were calling for Christ's crucifixion and made the point that Pilate would be no friend of Caesar if he didn't give the order, I wonder what language they used, just to diplomatically make the point crystal clear?

Most of his peers would also have been multi-lingual, as Greek was the lingua fraca of the time, as English is today (it might be Chinese or Arabaic in a hundred years...); Hebrew was the religious language and Aramaic was the common language of Jews in Israel.

So much for the ancients not being as "smart" as modern Western man - most of Christ's contemporaries most likely spoke three languages. I wonder how many of us do so on a regular basis?

They also lived under the Roman banner, with Latin the official Roman language. It's a matter of history that the Catholic Church later spread the Latin alphabet as the underlying script of Western European languages, and the Byzantine Church (later the Orthodox Church) the Greek alphabet for most Eastern European languages, including Russian for example which looks like Greek.

When He was speaking to ordinary Jews in Israel, which was almost all of the time, He'd have been speaking Aramaic.

Which is the reason the allegedly different senses of "rock" in His declaration of Peter as the "Rock" is a load of tripe. He'd have been speaking Aramaic at the time, and the word He would have used was Kepha, with no differentiation in either use of the word.

It was only the rules of Greek grammar which caused the change, when the Gospels were years later penned in Greek.

To elaborate on this, using an example from my own life, I did German at school. I've forgotten most of it.

But to use a simple example, "the table" in English becomes "der Tisch" in German, with a masculine gender. Now when I translated the English "table" into the German "tisch", in no way did I feel a masculine sense. As far as I was concerned, the table was still just an "it", of neutral gender in English. But I had to obey the German rules of grammar.

How a native German speaker "feels" when confronted with the masculine gender for a table, I have no idea. I would need a German speaker to tell me. But as an English speaker translating the word "table" into "tisch" I still had my native English (or Australian) sense of the table as purely neutral - it was just a thing.

The same thinking would have applied to the translators who transcribed the oral tradition of Christ's Aramaic speech into written Greek text years later. They'd have had a singular sense of the word "Kepha", and not some variegated Greek sense due to it's grammatical rules.

Your Kepha thing is way out dated.

But later in Queries & Comments," Biblical Archaeology Review 19.3 [1993], 70 fitzmyer refutes the kepha kepha reading based on the fact that it does not account for the greek play on words.


 
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Bob Crowley

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Your Kepha thing is way out dated.

But later in Queries & Comments," Biblical Archaeology Review 19.3 [1993], 70 fitzmyer refutes the kepha kepha reading based on the fact that it does not account for the greek play on words.

Funny how we had to wait nearly 2000 years for a commentator in an archaeological magazine to tell the Church fathers they were all wrong. I don't suppose his own bias would have anything to do with his assertion?

What the Early Church Believed: Peter as Pope
 
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prodromos

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Funny how we had to wait nearly 2000 years for a commentator in an archaeological magazine to tell the Church fathers they were all wrong. I don't suppose his own bias would have anything to do with his assertion?

What the Early Church Believed: Peter as Pope
Your link is an example of cherry picking those quotes which you think support your claim, while ignoring the context of some of those quotes and the many quotes which dispute it. The majority of the fathers state that Peter's confession of Christ was the rock on which the Church was built.
 
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timothyu

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The majority of the fathers state that Peter's confession of Christ was the rock on which the Church was built.
As the previous verse stated, truth comes from the Father, not man. An excellent foundation.
 
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Bob Crowley

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Your link is an example of cherry picking those quotes which you think support your claim, while ignoring the context of some of those quotes and the many quotes which dispute it. The majority of the fathers state that Peter's confession of Christ was the rock on which the Church was built.

The Link I quoted was What the Early Church Believed: Peter as Pope

As far as I could tell the quotes in that link all stated that "... Peter's confession of Christ was the rock on which the Church was built."
 
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yeshuaslavejeff

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As the previous verse stated, truth comes from the Father, not man. An excellent foundation.
Yes, good. The Sovereign Creator and Jesus are solid, perfectly sure, more sure, than anyone's confession, throughout Scripture. The Sovereign Creator and Jesus can always be trusted.
 
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