Endnote 22 – Did Jesus Speak Greek?

See H. J. Leon, The Jews of Ancient Rome (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1960), pp. 75. Cf. Henri Leclercq, “Note sur le grec neotestamentaire et la position du grec en Palestine au premier siecle,” Les Etudes Classiques 42 (1974), pp. 243–255; Gerard Mussies, “Greek as the Vehicle of Early Christianity” NTS 29 (1983), pp. 356–369; “Greek in Palestine and the Diaspora,” in The Jewish People in the First Century; Historical Geography, Political History, Social, Cultural and Religious Life and Institutions, ed. S. Safrai and M. Stern, Compendia rerum iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum 1–2 (Assert, Neth.: Van Gorcum; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), pp. 1040–1064.

Eric M. Meyers and James F. Strange (Archaeology, the Rabbis & Early Christianity [Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1981], pp. 62–91) go so far as to say, “It appears that sometime during the first century BCE Aramaic and Greek changed places as Greek spread into the countryside and as knowledge of Aramaic declined among the educated and among urban dwellers … Aramaic never died, though it suffered a strong eclipse in favor of Greek.” This eclipse was not characteristic, however, of the first century A.D.