Lamsa Bible:
Aramaic Peshitta Bible Repository
page XII
Professor
Neubauer's familiarity with the Jewish writings of that time, enables him to
discuss the subject with much fulness and force. He gives the following
probabilities as the result of his own examination of the subject:- That in the
time of Christ, the Galileans understood their own Syriac dialect only, together
with a few current expressions in ancient Hebrew; that in Jerusalem a modernised
Hebrew, and a purer Syriac dialect than that of Galilee, were in use among the
majority of the Jews; and that the small Jewish-Greek colony there, and a few
privileged persons, spoke a Judeo-Greek jargon, (pg. 50). He says that the
Syriac dialect of Galilee was "the popular language;" and that it is
the language which is called in the New Covenant, "Hebrew," (John v.
2); and is called by Josephus, and in the Apocrypha, the language of the
country; that "it was in this dialect that Josephus at first wrote his
historical work" on the war; that the Syriac words which are recorded in
the Greek New Covenant Scriptures, prove that this was "a distinct dialect
in some respects" from the Syriac of the Syrians, and yet was so like it,
that "Josephus says the Jews could understand the Syrians," (pg. 53).
Prof. Neubauer has no doubt that the language used by Jesus was the popular
Galilean Syriac dialect, and that in the Greek text we have only a Greek
translation of the words which he uttered. He says, "Jesus, as is now
generally admitted, addressed himself to his disciples and to his audience in
the popular dialect. This appears, not only from the Aramaic words left in the
gospels by the Greek translators, but more especially from his last words on the
cross, which were spoken under circumstances of exhaustion and pain, when a
person would naturally make use of his mother tongue; and from the fact that it
is mentioned that he spoke to Paul in Hebrew, Acts xxvi. 14," (pp. 53, 54).
"The Jews so little knew Greek and so much less cared to know it, that
Paul, in order to gain a hearing, was obliged to speak to them in their Aramaic
dialects." "How would the Medes, Elamites, and Arabians have
understood Peter at Pentecost, if he had spoken Greek to the 'men of Judea, and
all who dwelt in Jerusalem,'" (pg. 54).