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Palestine in the New Testament era was a culturally diverse place and as such there was a variety of languages in use in the area. This was a region that had long been the sight of many battles and invasions, Egyptians, Hittites, Greeks, Persians and Romans had all left their mark culturally and linguistically in the region. Hebrew was the original language of the inhabitants of the region but with the arrival of Alexander the Great roughly 300 years before Christ the area became part of the Greek-speaking world and the official language was a form of Greek called Koine. That is to say it was an imposed language used for all administrative and official business but the reality is that the language of the common man remained Hebrew.

To quote the Encyclopaedia Britannica ""Alexander's short reign marks a decisive moment in the history of Europe and Asia ... it spread Hellenism in a vast colonizing wave throughout the Near East and created, if not politically, at least economically and culturally, a single world stretching from Gibraltar to the Punjab, open to trade and social intercourse and with a considerable overlay of common civilization and the Greek "koine" as a lingua franca. It is not untrue to say that the Roman Empire, the spread of Christianity as a world religion, and the long centuries of Byzantium were all in some degree the fruits of Alexander's achievement."

By the time the New Testament came to be written down the Koine Greek had become an amalgam of Greek letters and Hebrew structures and so it was in this form that the original writings saw light of day in written form. The common spoken language had evolved into what is known as Aramaic and this is the link between the original Hebrew and the later Arabic, which came to dominate the Middle East in the seventh century with the rise of Islam.

Into this melting pot you have to add Roman Latin since just prior to the birth of Christ Judah had become a roman province, though Latin was probably reserved for official Roman business and administrative usage. It's even probable that many of the Roman troops didn't speak Latin as their first language depending on what part of the vast and ever expanding empire they had been conscripted from. Evidence of the three languages being in use at that time is found in the New Testament itself in the Gospel of John 19:19-20:(NIV)

"Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: JESUS OF NAZARETH, The King of the Jews. Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek."

That isn't even the full extent of the linguistic mix, Judah at the time was also an important trade cross roads between the Roman controlled Egypt to the west, the spice trade from Saudi Arabia in the south, the Persian trade routes which head eastern towards India and beyond and the northern roads heading into Europe. This would bring other diverse mixes into the area with the floods of traders moving through the land.

As is often the case with linguistics, the picture is a lot more complex and ever evolving than you first expect it to be.

Learn more about this author, Dave Franklin.
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