On December 2, 2013, Pope Francis met Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Vatican. In a well publicized exchange, Mr. Netanyahu told Pope Francis that Jesus spoke Hebrew, however Pope Francis corrected him, saying instead that Jesus spoke Aramaic. It is well known that modern secular scripture scholars like to assert that Jesus spoke Aramaic. However, I am of the opinion that the language Jesus spoke is better called Hebrew. In this essay, I will detail the reasons for my opinion. 

 

First, we need to understand what “Hebrew” is, and why we call it that. When Abraham left Ur, he spoke the language of the area, the common language that all mesopotamians of the time spoke. It was, however, not the only language spoke on earth. As the bible notes, at the time of the tower of Babel (the Ziggurat of Ur, built by the Sumerians), all the land spoke the same language. Then the languages were confused, likely related to the wars that began to happen after the ascendance of Eridu (Nimrod in the bible) and his descendants to the Sumerian throne. This is the language of Abraham, the language spoken by all of his offspring that were of the chosen people to the time of Jesus. At the time there were other languages, most prominently the Egyptian language, but Abraham’s language came to be preserved, and was the language of all Hebrews to the time of Jesus. 

 

This doesn’t mean that Hebrew has not changed over time. Indeed, the Hebrew in Genesis is slightly different from the Hebrew in Exodus, which is slightly different to the Hebrew at the time of the Judges, which is slightly different from the Hebrew at the time of David and Solomon, which is slightly different to the Hebrew at the time of the falls of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah, which was slightly different to the Hebrew that Jesus spoke. However, the traditional understanding of a language as used in the bible, is that it is what a group of people speak. Jesus was of the Hebrew people, so he spoke Hebrew. There are multiple times in the New testament where the language that Jesus spoke is mentioned, and it is always called Hebrew (“Hebraisti” in Greek). When Jesus’ sentence was written on the cross, it was written in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. 

 

Now, since the time of Solomon, there was a language known as Aramean. The people of Aram lived in what is now Syria, and where the bible names the people of Aram, that is usually translated as “syrian” in the old testament. However, they were Arameans, and they spoke Aramean. When the Assyrians conquered the kingdom of Israel, and were besieging Jerusalem, the Assyrian envoys are said in Hebrew that they spoke Aramean. However, they also spoke Hebrew, which they announced on the walls to try to have the people surrender. So the Assyrians also spoke Aramaic, which is to say, Jesus and the New testament authors knew what Aramaic was, and if that was the language Jesus spoke, they would have said that is what he was speaking. 

 

After the exile, the Hebrew people preserved Hebrew, and Jesus was among the Hebrew people who preserved it. Sure, maybe the other people that lived in Galilee spoke a slightly different dialect (as we understand it now), but Jesus and His people spoke Hebrew, and it is right to call his language that, because the New Testament authors told the truth, and they said that is what the language is called. There are differences between the Hebrew Jesus used and the Hebrew of other times, but the Hebrew Jesus used still uses the same words as the Hebrew used by Abraham, and it is still closer to that language than it is to the Aramean used by the Assyrians on the walls of Jerusalem. Of note, the book of Daniel is predominantly written in Aramean. Still, the languages are so close you could almost consider them the same language. But the bible doesn’t, Jesus and the New Testament authors don’t, so I argue that we shouldn’t. 

 

Now, this idea that the language of Jesus is Aramaic is actually a protestant invention, invented by the protestant scholar Johann Wilhelm Hilliger in 1679. Hilliger lived in Chemnitz, a city named after a prominent protestant reformer. Before then, no one called Jesus’ language Aramaic (because it was obvious from the bible itself that this is wrong). So even though the “consensus” of modern scholars is that Jesus spoke Aramaic, they are still wrong.