Did Jesus speak Greek?

[Publisher]

That may be what Quakers believe, but just to clarify for anyone who’s unaware, the official Catholic doctrine is that the Gospels were written by St Matthew the Apostle, St Mark the secretary of St Peter, St Luke the Physician the close collaborator of St Paul, and St John the Apostle. And that all of the letters of the New Testament were written by Apostles. And that at least the first 3 Gospels and all of the letters of St Paul were completed and published before the martyrdom of Sts Peter and Paul in 64 AD.

The gospels are “anonymous” i.e. the authors do not name themselves bgecause they regard their identity as less imoortant than the truth of swhat they are writing. In the case of St John, as the author invariably refers to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” and strikingly never mentions the name of St John the Apostle, it is obvious even to the casual reader that the author is asserting that he is St John the Apostle.

Unlike the mid-first century New Testament books, historians are unanimous that the so-called “Gospel” of Thomas", “Protoevangelium of James” and “Gospel of Peter” were first written in the mid-second century at the earliest and possibly much later.

Scholars are not unanimous concerning the GoT…some scholars believe it may predate John and may be one of the earliest recordings of Jesus’ sayings.

You may find some Catholic scholars that disagree with you concerning the authorship of the NT…but I bow to your belief that the Catholic church may "officially’ endorse the belief of NT authorships as you outline…but the majority of NT scholars disagree…it is a nice clean religious tradition…but it is not based on scholarly evidence…it is more “faith based” than anything else.

 

[Randy_Carson]

Can anybody make a case as to whether or not Jesus spoke Greek? It seems generally accepted that he spoke Aramaic. Does it seem reasonable that he was multi-lingual?

Would it be more likely that Jesus spoke Greek or that Pilate spoke Aramaic?

Otherwise, how did they communicate?

 

[Soldier_X]

Jesus made our mouths and minds. He knows all things before they come into existence, and his divinity is never diminished. Pretty sure he speaks any language that the situation requires.

 

[Catherine_D]

Jesus is GOD. He could speak ANY human language, couldn’t He?

 

[Byzantine_Wolf]

Jesus is GOD. He could speak ANY human language, couldn’t He?

That summarizes it nicely.

 

[The_GreyPilgrim]

As far as the difficulty of Greek I recall St. Augustine in his “Confessions” talking about how much he hated Greek, how hard it was to learn, and how he preferred Latin to Greek.

 

[Byzantine_Wolf]

As far as the difficulty of Greek I recall St. Augustine in his “Confessions” talking about how much he hated Greek, how hard it was to learn, and how he preferred Latin to Greek.

IIRC, he lived during that time when the west was transitioning to mostly Latin-only, while the east was transitioning to Greek-only. Before then, as his statement suggests, both sides generally understood both languages.

 

[Petergee]

Scholars are not unanimous concerning the GoT.

OK. to deal with your quibble, I’ll restate that the overwhelming consensus of historians is that the so-called “Gospel” of Thomas" was first written in the mid-second century at the earliest and possibly much later. I note you don’t dispute that this is true of the other false Gospels you mentioned.

You may find some Catholic scholars that disagree with you concerning the authorship of the NT…but I bow to your belief that the Catholic church may "officially’ endorse the belief of NT authorships as you outline

Well yes, with any Catholic doctrine you can name it’s possible to find some “Catholic” scholars who disagree with it.

…but the majority of NT scholars disagree.

Don’t confuse a few strident and well-publicised voices with a majority.

 

[Alcrusader]

Agreed…I don’t think he was fluent in Greek…but living in the “Crossroads of the world”…he probalby had some rudimentary vocabulary of both Greek and Latin…but he spoke Aramaic an or Hebrew on a daily basis…the scriptures he read were Hebrew…the writers of the NT used LXX so they were fluent in Greek.

Yes Greek at the time when the Bible was written was like English in our days. It was like an universal language, the language of science and philosophy… etc.
But his don’t make Jesus a Greek speaker.

 

[Petergee]

Yes Greek at the time when the Bible was written was like English in our days. It was like an universal language, the language of science and philosophy… etc.
But his don’t make Jesus a Greek speaker.

Actually it was a bit more than that. It was the language of trade and probably was spoken as a first or second language by the majority of people in the Eastern Mediterranean. Remember that the area had been ruled by Greeks for 250 years before the Romans took over shortly before Christ was born. The Gospels report Jesus travelled to the great trading cities of Tyre and Sidon in Phoenicia (modern Lebanon) and there was apparently no language barrier between Him and the local inhabitants. He spoke to the Roman centurion who probably spoke little or no Aramaic. It would be surprising if somebody who travelled around as much as Jesus did, did not speak Greek.

Greek was so all-pervasive that the New Testament frequently uses the word “Greeks” to refer to **all **non-Jews.

 

[melekali]

Can anybody make a case as to whether or not Jesus spoke Greek? It seems generally accepted that he spoke Aramaic. Does it seem reasonable that he was multi-lingual?

I think it might be reasonable to assume in that world Jesus would speak at least some Greek.

 

[Bob_Crowley]

Ignoring his divine nature, which meant he could read people’s minds (as the Gospels state) let alone understand their words, and restricting ourselves to his purely human nature, my guess (and that is all it is) is that he’d have spoken Aramaic as his native tongue, Koine Greek when he spoke with non-Aramaic speakers, Hebrew when he needed to read or hear the Scriptures in the synagogues, and probably had a working knowledge of Latin.

To a greater or lesser extent, this would have been true of all his contemporaries, depending on their natural gifts for languages. After all Pilate had the sign on the cross in three languages.

 

[Padrej]

Can anybody make a case as to whether or not Jesus spoke Greek? It seems generally accepted that he spoke Aramaic. Does it seem reasonable that he was multi-lingual?

How many times did Jesus use the word “hypocrite?” The word hypocrite is a GREEK word and cannot be found in either Aramaic nor Hebrew.
When he was establishing the Primacy of Peter, Jesus said “blessed are you Simon bar Jonah” ONLY Aramaic, then he said, “from now on you shall be called Peter and upon this rock…” Peter- Petros in Greek and petra for church. This would be Kaifa both times in Aramaic; however this does not show in the original Greek manuscripts but the Aramaic words do. Thus we can deduce that Jesus spoke Greek.
FURTHER, in John’s Gospel Greek speaking Jews approach Phillip and Andrew asking to speak to Jesus and he responds to them about a grain of wheat falling into the ground rather philosophical in his speaking. Greek speakers of the day would have understood this, Aramaic speakers probably not.

 

[Petergee]

When he was establishing the Primacy of Peter, Jesus said “blessed are you Simon bar Jonah” ONLY Aramaic, then he said, “from now on you shall be called Peter and upon this rock…” Peter- Petros in Greek and petra for church. This would be Kaifa both times in Aramaic; however this does not show in the original Greek manuscripts but the Aramaic words do. Thus we can deduce that Jesus spoke Greek.

I deduce from this that Jesus was speaking Aramaic when He said this. Even St Paul, writing in Greek, refers to St Peter only as “Cephas” - a Greek-ised form of the Aramaic “Kepha”, rather than a translation into Greek (Petros).

 

[James_Least]

Jesus spoke in whatever language necessary to communicate.

Interestingly: the NT was written in Koine Greek, not Latin. The Koine, or Common, was the language of the people, not necessarily the aristocracy. The military, soldiers of the Roman Empire, also used Koine as the official language. The nuances of language are in the Greek, not the Latin. The Romans borrowed (some would say stole) most everything from the Greeks, including religion: pagan idolatry; philosophy: Aristotle. i.e. Pilate: “What is truth?”

Curiously, Constantine the Great, the Roman Emperor who chaired the Council of Nicea, moved his seat of government and religion from Rome to Constantinople in the 4th century. The West and East still have a serious rift regarding who might have the heavenly keys.

Then there are those other: “separated brethren”.

Food for thought.

Peace,

James Least

 

[Eutychus123]

How many times did Jesus use the word “hypocrite?” The word hypocrite is a GREEK word and cannot be found in either Aramaic nor Hebrew.
When he was establishing the Primacy of Peter, Jesus said “blessed are you Simon bar Jonah” ONLY Aramaic, then he said, “from now on you shall be called Peter and upon this rock…” Peter- Petros in Greek and petra for church. This would be Kaifa both times in Aramaic; however this does not show in the original Greek manuscripts but the Aramaic words do. Thus we can deduce that Jesus spoke Greek.
FURTHER, in John’s Gospel Greek speaking Jews approach Phillip and Andrew asking to speak to Jesus and he responds to them about a grain of wheat falling into the ground rather philosophical in his speaking. Greek speakers of the day would have understood this, Aramaic speakers probably not.

Are you saying that the Petros/Petras verse appears as Aramaic in the Greek text?

 

[Hesychios]

Jesus spoke in whatever language necessary to communicate.

Interestingly: the NT was written in Koine Greek, not Latin. The Koine, or Common, was the language of the people, not necessarily the aristocracy. The military, soldiers of the Roman Empire, also used Koine as the official language. The nuances of language are in the Greek, not the Latin. The Romans borrowed (some would say stole) most everything from the Greeks, including religion: pagan idolatry; philosophy: Aristotle. i.e. Pilate: “What is truth?”

Curiously, Constantine the Great, the Roman Emperor who chaired the Council of Nicea, moved his seat of government and religion from Rome to Constantinople in the 4th century. The West and East still have a serious rift regarding who might have the heavenly keys.

Then there are those other: “separated brethren”.

Food for thought.

Peace,

James Least

Good questions.

One slight distinction, Constantine called the Council of Nicea, but he did not chair it. That would be Saint Ossios.

 

[Padrej]

Are you saying that the Petros/Petras verse appears as Aramaic in the Greek text?

NO the preceding line Simon bar Jonah— Aramaic for Simon son of Jonah, That line would not be used that way were it written in Greek. The Petros/Petra is in Greek.
Paul used Cephas to refer to Peter which is the Greek form of the Aramaic Kepha as Petergee points out. The point is Jesus was changing an Aramaic/Hebrew name to one of Greek. similar to Abram to Abraham. The change denoted something spiritual.

Jesus would use Greek Phrases when they were more pointed in the message He wanted to get across. Take the title hypocrite that he called the pharisees, this word is only used in Greek dramas to denote one who wears one kind of face one minute and another face the next. You see this in the logo of thespians where you have one sad face and one happy. There would not be an equivalent in Aramaic or Hebrew for this word.

 

[Jim_Dandy]

Jesus read Greek in the synagogue from the Septuagint, for example, Luke 4:16-21.
The Greek Septuagint was considered “Scripture” and was used in the first-century synagogues of Palestine where Jesus and the Apostles were trained and later taught, but it was eventually rejected by the Jews (and even later by the Protestants). We assume Jesus understood what he was reading. Therefore, he probably spoke Greek.

 

[FrJohnB]

NO the preceding line Simon bar Jonah— Aramaic for Simon son of Jonah, That line would not be used that way were it written in Greek. The Petros/Petra is in Greek.
Paul used Cephas to refer to Peter which is the Greek form of the Aramaic Kepha as Petergee points out. The point is Jesus was changing an Aramaic/Hebrew name to one of Greek. similar to Abram to Abraham. The change denoted something spiritual.

Jesus would use Greek Phrases when they were more pointed in the message He wanted to get across. Take the title hypocrite that he called the pharisees, this word is only used in Greek dramas to denote one who wears one kind of face one minute and another face the next. You see this in the logo of thespians where you have one sad face and one happy. There would not be an equivalent in Aramaic or Hebrew for this word.

Although Koine Greek was one of the common languages of Jesus’ day it is not unreasonable to think of Jesus speaking multiple languages. If one thinks about it, Greek was the language of commerce of that day so Peter and Andrew being fisherman would certainly have understanding of the language. Phillip being from Bethsaida would make him more of a Greek speaker as that area had more Greek speakers. Matthew being a tax collector would have to know multiple languages to do his profession. Why would it be a stretch to think of Jesus then speaking in ways understandable by MANY rather than a limited few who could only Speak Aramaic?

Excellent post above Padre, this is one place where the Greek translations leave the Aramaic Phrases in like “Simon bar Jonah” and then use the Greek for emphasis on the name change.
As was pointed out by another that St Paul referred to Peter as Cephas which is the Greek version of his Aramaic name. However, the name Cephas does not appear in the Primacy of Peter portion of scripture so it is reasonable to deduce that Jesus did speak his new name in Greek.