LANGUAGE OF CHRIST
LANGUAGE OF CHRIST
some reason or other, was unwontedly moved, for it is said that ' he looked up to heaven and sighed. ' And, though it is not stated, the spectacle of Jairus' child-daughter lying cold yet beautiful in death, was calculated to touch profoundly the heart of the great Child-Lover.
The two main sources of direct evidence con- clusively proving the predominance of Aramaic as the popular language, are the Book of Acts and the Works of Joseplttis.
1. In Ac P'' it is said with reference to the suicide of Judas in the field which he had pur- claased 'with the reward of iniquity,' 'And it was known unto all the dwellers at Jerusalem ; inso- much as that field is called in their own tongue (ry 5La\€KTix) avrZv) Akeldama.' Now Akeldania is the Aram, xpi Spn, and points not only to the fact that Aramaic had superseded Hebrew as the ver- nacular, but that at the time of Christ it was the popular language, even of the inhabitants of Je- rusalem. Equally conclusive on the latter point are two other passages in the Acts. In describing his conversion to Agrippa, St. Paul said, 'And when Ave were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying, in the Hehreiu tongue ' (t^ 'E^patdi SiaXeVry), Ac 26". By ' He- brew ' St. Paul imdoubtedly meant Aramaic. The terms 'E^patdi and 'E^paia-rl, as is generally ad- mitted, are used both in the NT and by Josephus when not Hebrew but Aramaic is meant. Thus in Jn 19'^ it is said that 'Pilate sat down in the judgment-seat in a place that is called the Pave- ment, but in the Hebrew Gabbatha' ('E/S/jaio-rt 5^ Taj3l3add); and Ta^jSadd is not Hebrew, but Ara- maic. That the ascended Christ should have spoken to Saul in Aramaic is unintelligible except on the supposition that that had been the language which He had spoken when on earth, and that it Avas the prevailing language of Palestine.
Quite as significant is the circumstance men- tioned in Ac 22^ that Paul addressed the infuriated Jerusalemites in Aramaic, and that Avhen they ascertained irom his opening Avords that he Avas to speak to them in that language, 'they kept the more silence' {/xaXKov wapecrxov i]cnix'-o.v), the refer- ence being to the fact that Paul had not attempted to speak until by a gesture indicative of his desire to be heard he had stilled the uproar, and, as it is said, ' there Avasmade a gi'eat silence.' It does not necessarily folloAV, as has been maintained, that the people expected Paul to address them in Greek, and that the fact that they Avere prepared to give him a hearing Avhen they expected him to speak in that language, proves that they Avere familiar Avith it. The simple fact that, as his gesture indicated, Paul Avas going to address them Avas in itself sufficient to secure their quiet attention. And in any case, even though they had ex^sected to be addressed in Greek, the deeper silence into Avhich they settled Avhen they found that they Avere to be addressed in Aramaic, proves that they Avere more familiar Avith the latter language than the former, and that the latter Avas the language generally spoken by them.
2. The evidence of Josephus is as direct and con- clusive as that furnished by the Acts of the pve- dominance of Aramaic. In BJ V. vi. 3, Josephus records hoAV during the siege of Jerusalem the JcAvish Avatchmen Avarned their compatriots of the discharge of the Roman missiles by crying out in their native tongue {rfi Trarpiq) yXuKrari), 6 /6s ^pxerai. In the same Avork, VI. ii. 1, he tells hoAV in his capacity of intermediary during the same siege he communicated the proposals of Titus to the be- sieged in their native tongue (rfi Trarp/y yKihaari). In the preface to BJ he records hoAv that work was at first Avritten in Aramaic and afterAvards translated into Greek.
The passage runs : ' I have proposed to myself, for the sake of such as live under the government of the Romans, to translate these books into the Greek tongue, which I formerly composed in the language of our own country, and sent to the Upper Bar- barians,' i.e. to the Aramaic-speaking peoples, whom he describes in the following paragraph as ' the Parthians, Babylonians, the remotest Arabians, and those of our nation beyond Euphrates, with the Adiabeni.'
That a Palestinian JeAV such as Josephus, Avho Avas of a distinguished priestly family, Avho re- ceived a careful rabbinic education and studied in the various schools of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, should not only characterize Aramaic as ' the language of our OAvn country,' but should Avrite his first book in that language, is in itself conclusive proof that Aramaic had not then been materially driven from its position as the vernacu- lar of Palestine. Suggestive also in this connexion, and giving added Aveight to the case for Aramaic, is Josephus' OAvn confession of the difficulty he ex- perienced in acquiring such mastery of Greek as that Avhicli he ultimately attained. In the preface to his Antiquities he tells hoAv he found the writ- ing of that Avork a hard and Avearisome task, ' it being,' as he says, ' a large subject, and a difficult thing to translate our history into a foreign and to us unaccustomed language ' (e/s a.Wo5aTri)v riij.1v Kal ^efTjv SiaXiKTov (Tvvrjdeiav), and liOAv he Avas able to continue and accomi)lish the task only by the encouragement and help of a friend, Epaphroditus. To the same difficulty he refers in the closing paragraphs of the Antiquities :