During the centuries immediately preceding the birth of Jesus, Hebrew, as a spoken language, gradually fell into disuse, being displaced by the more colloquial dialect known as Aramaic. Evidence of this gradual change is to be found even in the days of Nehemiah, who lived about 450 B.C., for when the Book of the Law was published, it is supposed by scholars that it was first read in Hebrew, but that when the readers "gave the sense, and caused [the people] to understand the reading" (Neh. 8:8), they were translating it into Aramaic, for the benefit of those who were unfamiliar with the more literary language. In the book of Acts (1:19) the typically Aramaic place name "Aceldama"—given to the field purchased by Judas—is said to be in the "proper tongue" of "all the dwellers at Jerusalem;" and if Jerusalem itself, the very center of Jewish orthodoxy, deigned to accept Aramaic thus wholeheartedly, its use throughout Palestine may surely be taken for granted.
Aramaic, then, was the mother tongue of Jesus, and the greater part of his teaching was undoubtedly delivered in that language, though the fact remains that the Gospels as they have come down to us are written in Greek. Scholars have long sought a rational explanation of this phenomenon. Some contend that these Gospels, whether in whole or in part, were originally composed in Aramaic and later rendered into Greek; though others, while admitting that the Master ordinarily spoke Aramaic, feel that his sayings were first recorded in Greek, since that tongue was understood by many living in Palestine, while, farther afield, it was used almost everywhere, and so would form the natural medium for the propagation of a universal gospel. Jesus himself doubtless used Greek in his occasional interviews with Gentiles (Mark 7:26; John 12:2Off.), but Aramaic remained his basic mode of expression.
Fragments of the original Aramaic employed by the Way-shower are still to be found in the Gospels, and these brief records of the very words of the great Teacher are of not a little significance, since it would seem that in each instance they are incorporated in the Gospel story at a particularly dramatic moment, or as expressing some especially deep emotion. When Jesus raised Jairus' daughter from the dead he cried: "Talitha cumi!" ("Little girl, arise!"—Mark 5:41); while after sighing deeply on being confronted with one who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, the Master cured him with a word: "Ephphatha!" ("Be opened!"— Mark 7:34).
