If you asked people what the original language of Jesus was, what would they say? What would you say?

This question is important to me personally because my love for Yeshua of Nazareth, and my desire to know him better, is what originally drew me to Hebrew study. It's what still draws me, actually. And now moves me to share "Yeshua-centered Hebrew" with the world at holylanguage.com.

That's why I thought this article was great. It essentially explains that it isn't a question of Hebrew OR Aramaic. The answer is, Hebrew AND Aramaic.

You can read the whole article here http://goo.gl/1oMnMy, or at least read these takeaways.

"Any attempt to pin this first-century Judean holy man down to one language ends up concealing him and his world from us.

"Strikingly, they did not always even see Hebrew and Aramaic as two different “languages.”

"The New Testament mentions of “Hebrew” usually refer to what we would call Aramaic, but sometimes Hebrew, and should perhaps be understood as an ethnic term. The more relevant opposition for them may have been ethnic and cultural: not Hebrew vs. Aramaic, but Jewish vs. Greek.

"The problem is not that Aramaic is tainted with Hebrew or vice-versa; mixture is what readers of Galilean inscriptions, the Palestinian Talmud, or early Midrash like Genesis Rabbah would expect. The real problem is the pretense of purity itself: the presentation of the languages of Palestine either as purely Aramaic or Hebrew.

"This view of Hebrew as confined to the synagogue avoids conclusive evidence for spoken Hebrew in this period, found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, Bar Kokhba documents, and early Rabbinic literature.

"But the reality of Jesus’ language and audience was vernacular and hybrid, reaching beyond existing loyalties to state or people. It wasn’t Jesus but his followers who translated his adventures and sayings into the cosmopolitan Greek, an aspirationally universal language that reached beyond the Levant. If his language had stayed Hebrew or Aramaic he would never have become Jesus."

Join Holy Language teacher and Messianic Israeli Elihana Elia right here for her next live modern Hebrew class this Monday night at 9EST/6PST! Learn conversational Hebrew, experience Israeli culture, hear firsthand news from the land, and live chat with the other students.