A Closer Look:

According to Hebrew historian Josephus, Greek wasn't spoken in first century Palestine. Josephus also points out the extreme rarity of a Jew knowing Greek.

 

According to Dead Sea Scrolls archaeologist, Yigael Yadin, Aramaic was the language of Hebrews until Simon Bar Kokhba's revolt (132 AD to 135 AD). Yadin noticed the shift from Aramaic to Hebrew in the documents he studied, which had been written during the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt. In his book "Bar Kokhba: The rediscovery of the legendary hero of the last Jewish Revolt Against Imperial Rome" Yigael Yadin notes, "It is interesting that the earlier documents are written in Aramaic while the later ones are in Hebrew. Possibly the change was made by a special decree of Bar Kokhba who wanted to restore Hebrew as the official language of the state"

 

The Hebrew Priest Josephus differentiated Hebrew from his language and that of first-century Israel. Josephus refers to Hebrew words as belonging to "the Hebrew tongue" while he refers to Aramaic words as belonging to "our tongue" or "our language" or "the language of our country." Below are some examples from Josephus' works.

 

Hebrew

Josephus refers to a Hebrew word with the phrase, "the Hebrew tongue": "But the affairs of the Canaanites were at this time in a flourishing condition, and they expected the Israelites with a great army at the city Bezek, having put the government into the hands of Adonibezek, which name denotes the Lord of Bezek, for Adoni in the Hebrew tongue signifies Lord."[11]

 

Aramaic

In this example, Josephus refers to an Aramaic word as belonging to "our language": "This new-built part of the city was called 'Bezetha,' in our language, which, if interpreted in the Grecian language, may be called 'the New City.'"[12]

 

Unlike the Hebrew Priest Josephus and other Hebrew priests at Jerusalem, the people of first-century Israel had no knowledge of Hebrew. This has been confirmed through New Testament. On several occasions in New Testament, Aramaic words are called Hebrew. For example, in John 19:17 (KJV), the gospel-writer narrates that Jesus, "bearing his cross[,] went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha." Even though the gospel-writer calls the word Hebrew, it is, in fact, an Aramaic word. The word "Golgotha" is a transliteration of an Aramaic word, because -tha in Golgotha is the Aramaic definite article on a feminine noun in an emphatic state.

 

Källa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_Jesus

 

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