Aramaic Peshitta
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page XIb
II.-PROOF
THAT VERY FEW ISRAELITES IN THE TIME OF CHRIST UNDERSTOOD GREEK.
Some have supposed that the language of Palestine in the time of Christ was
either wholly, or in part, Greek. Professor A. Neubauer, Reader in Rabbinical
Hebrew in Oxford University, published in "Studia Biblica, 1885," an
essay "On the Dialects spoken in Palestine in the time of Christ." He
says that Isaac Voss, who died in 1689, was the first who supposed that
"Greek was the only language spoken in Palestine after Alexander," the
Great; that Diodati in 1767, closely followed Voss, and sought to prove that
"Greek was the mother language of the Jews in the time of Jesus;" that
Professor Paulus, of Jena, in 1803, held that an Aramaic dialect was then the
current language of the Jews in Palestine, but that Jesus and his disciples had
no difficulty in using Greek in their public speeches when they found it
convenient to do so; that Dr. Alexander Roberts, Professor of Humanity in St.
Andrew's University, and a Member of the Company of Revisers of the New Covenant
Scriptures, published in 1881, contends that "Christ spoke for the most
part in Greek, and only now and then in Aramaic," (pp. 39-41). Dr. Roberts
published in 1859 a work in which he discussed the question relating to
"The language of Palestine in the time of Christ." At pg. 62, he said
that he thought he had "proved that Greek, and not Hebrew, was the common
language of religious address in Palestine in the days of Christ and his
apostles." He said, at pg. 63, "Christ spoke in Greek, and his
disciples did the same, when they reported what he said. Their inspiration
consisted, not, as some have deemed, in being enabled to give perfect
translations, either of discourses delivered, or of documents written in the
Aramaic language, but in being led, under infallible guidance, to transfer to
paper, for the benefit of all coming ages, those words of the Great Teacher
which they had heard from his lips in the GREEK tongue." Few at present are
of Dr. Roberts' opinion. The question does not affect the inspiration of the
Greek text, but it has a very important bearing on the value of the Peshito-Syriac
books of the New Covenant.