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The Mediterranean 'highway' and the 'Fertile Cresent' are often referred to as being the cradle of cililization. IN many respects this true. Certainly there were some remarkable civilizations that at various times have occupied the lands from Morocco and the Iberian peninsula in the west to the Hindu Kush in the east. The names of these civilizations are echoed in the Bible; Nineveh, Ur, Ursk, Akkad, Assyria, Babylon and Persia. These city states rose and fell and some rose again only to lapse back into obscurity as the fortunes of war and trade took effect.

In the land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates (Mesopotamia or modern day Iraq) the most common language was Akkadian, which was a semetic language. Through a combination of trade and conquest this became the dominant langauge for many centuries. Running contemporary to Akkadian were all the other regional languages and dialects, including Hebrew. Hewbrew was a living language and its people largely nomadic. Abraham was familiar with the city of Ur, declaring it to be an den of inequity. However, the Hebrews moved from modern day Iraq into the area known as the fertile cresent, an area that stretches from modern day Anatolia to Egypt. As the Hebrews settled into cities they naturally began to trade and integrate with other peoples, such as the Philistines (palastenians),the Cannanites Phonecians (later Carthegenians). Although intermarriage with non-jews was not encouraged, it was not unknown, but it cannot be assumed that this was responsible for language development. Language changed primarily because of the demands of trade and politics. Their own language began to fossilise and became used only for religious purposes (recitation of the Talmud and Torrah). A more commononly spoken language was an evolved form of Akkadian that became known as Aramaic. This language of trade and politics was the most commonly spoken tongue at the time of the Christ. [for example the Akkadian god of the underworld, who was a blacksmith with a subterranean furnace, was Adad. The Aramaic word for blacksmith was adad and the current arabic word for blacksmith is hadad]
It should be noted that as a language it was informed by the influences of other dominant languages, afterall this area had been at various times part of the Egyptian, the Hitite, Persian, Greek and Roman empires and those languages had their part to play.
As part of the Helenic Greek empire, Greek was a language spoken across the cresent, and was at the time of the Christ still commonly spoken as a language of the educated (not so common for the ordinary people. Greek tenede to be the language of all intellectual endeavour during the life of the Roman empire (Luke wrote his Gospel in Greek, but Latin was to all intents and purposes the language of law and politics at the time of the Christ, though it would only have been spoken by a handful of the people (principally those who needed to know it; nobility, lawyers, ministers and some businessmen. It is recorded that Jesus spoke hebrew (he read at the temple as was expected of any Jewish man)and he spoke Aramaic.

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