Did Jesus speak Greek?

Apart from on a few occasions where Jesus’s words are given in Aramaic (for example Mark 5:41; 7:34; 15:34) all four Gospels report Jesus’s words in Greek. So did Jesus speak Greek, or do we only have his speech in translation?

Many scholars still maintain that Jesus spoke only Aramaic, but discoveries since the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in 1947 demonstrate the use of both Hebrew and Greek alongside Aramaic in Roman Palestine.

It may seem strange to ask whether Jesus, whom the Bible describes as the Word incarnate and creator of all things (John 1:1–14), could speak Greek. After all, given that the Bible claims he created language, couldn’t he speak any way he liked? Perhaps, but the character of Jesus’s divine knowledge is also mysterious: all four Gospels present Jesus as able to predict the future, and yet Jesus himself says that the Son does not know the day of his return (Mark 13:32), and Luke tells us that as a child Jesus grew in wisdom (Luke 2:40, 52).

The Gospels leave us wondering: did Jesus know absolutely everything, except for specific things like the time of his return, which he chose not to be actively conscious of? Or did he know most of what he knew through ordinary human learning, except for some particular things specially revealed to him by the Holy Spirit? 

We may not be able to resolve these questions, but we can at least ask what a typical person with Jesus’s life experience would have known, while bearing in mind that Jesus was very much not a typical person.

According to Matthew 2:13–21, Joseph took Mary and Jesus into Egypt to escape Herod. There Mary and Joseph would have needed to communicate in Greek for some time. They returned to Nazareth where Joseph was a “carpenter” (Greek tektōn, τέκτων), which can mean someone who works with wood or stone. But if, as scholars often suggest, Nazareth was a tiny hamlet, then clearly Joseph did not restrict his business merely to servicing the hamlet, but undertook work for those further afield.

One place nearby where we know there was lots of construction work was Sepphoris, Galilee’s capital until AD 19. The absence of mention of Sepphoris in the Gospels is hardly surprising since they relate so little about the area where Jesus grew up. There are, however, plenty of reasons to think that Jesus would have gone there. It was:

• Less than four miles away
• Visible from Nazareth
• On the main road north of Nazareth on the way to Cana, where Jesus had connections
• The traditional hometown of Mary (according to the sixth-century account of the Piacenza Pilgrim)

So Mary, Joseph and Jesus may have had extensive exposure to Greek in that city. It’s also interesting to note that Sepphoris had a theatre. Does Jesus’s use of the word “hypocrite” (Greek hypokrites, ὑποκριτής, meaning “actor”) stem from the fact that Greek plays would have been regularly performed just over an hour’s walk from his house?

John 7:3 and 7:10 present Jesus’s brothers as regarding attendance in Jerusalem during the Feast of Tabernacles as usual. Luke 2:42 presents Joseph, Mary and their wider family as customary attendees at a festival in Jerusalem, while Matthew and Luke present Jesus as one who had visited Jerusalem often (Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:34). Greek speaking is well attested in Jerusalem, and during festival time the proportion of Greek speakers would rise considerably because of the presence of Diaspora Jews on pilgrimage. It is not unreasonable to suppose that Jesus would have interacted with Greek speakers on these occasions.

In Galilee, Jesus is presented as an itinerant teacher who went through a wide range of towns and villages (Matthew 9:35; Mark 6:6, 56; Luke 8:1, 13:22), including the villages of  Caesarea Philippi (Mark 8:27), which was dominated by Greek culture. He also sent his disciples into different towns and villages (Matthew 10:11; Luke 9:6). If he really sent 70 (or 72) in pairs to “every city and place where he was about to come” (Luke 10:1), then presumably the teams went to several villages or towns each and we should not assume that they only talked to Aramaic speakers. Itinerant teachers by their very nature must adapt to the languages of their audiences.

Jesus had two disciples with Greek names: Andrew and Philip. In fact, Andrew, whose parents gave him a relatively rare Greek name, was one of the four men in a common fishing business from which Jesus selected his three innermost disciples, with whom Andrew could sometimes tag along (Mark 13:3).

The likelihood that Jesus had Greek-speaking disciples is highlighted in John 12:20–23, where a group of Greeks specifically approach Philip who then in turn approaches Andrew. Philip and Andrew then together approach Jesus about the Greeks.

In John 7:35 the crowd even speculates that Jesus might leave them and go and teach Greeks, which presumably means they thought he could speak Greek.

Greek in Matthew 5–7

However, I want to highlight some evidence that Jesus even taught in Greek, as suggested by the text of Jesus’s Lesson on the Mount (Matthew 5–7). This lesson, traditionally called a sermon, was given to people “from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judaea, and from beyond the Jordan” (Matthew 4:25). Given that people from the Decapolis, a group of about 10 cities on the eastern edge of the Roman Empire, generally spoke Greek, and Greek was the language of political power, it would be more likely that an Aramaic speaker would have to learn some Greek than that a Greek speaker would have to learn some Aramaic. When groups from so many different places came together we would therefore expect the teaching to be given in the language most likely to be recognised by all, namely Greek. This is, of course, unless the teaching were to be given in more than one language.

The structure of the lesson

The lesson has a striking opening, which looks like it has been composed in Greek. There are signs of Greek wordplay throughout, but here I will focus only on the so-called Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3–10).

3 Μακάριοι οἱ πτωχοὶ τῷ πνεύματι, ὅτι αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν.

makarioi hoi ptōchoi tō pneumati hoti autōn estin hē basileia tōn ouranōn

blessed the poor in spirit because theirs is the kingdom of the heavens

4 Μακάριοι οἱ πενθοῦντες, ὅτι αὐτοὶ παρακληθήσονται.

makarioi hoi penthountes hoti autoi paraklēthēsontai

blessed the mourning because they will be comforted

5 Μακάριοι οἱ πραεῖς, ὅτι αὐτοὶ κληρονομήσουσιν τὴν γῆν.

makarioi hoi praeis hoti autoi klēronomēsousin tēn gēn

Blessed the meek because they will inherit the earth

6 Μακάριοι οἱ πεινῶντες καὶ διψῶντες τὴν δικαιοσύνην, ὅτι αὐτοὶ χορτασθήσονται.

makarioi hoi peinōntes kai dipsōntes tēn dikaiosunēn hoti autoi chortasthēsontai

blessed the hungering and thirsting for righteousness because they will be filled

7 Μακάριοι οἱ ἐλεήμονες, ὅτι αὐτοὶ ἐλεηθήσονται.

makarioi hoi eleēmones hoti autoi eleēthēsontai

blessed the merciful because they will obtain mercy

8 Μακάριοι οἱ καθαροὶ τῇ καρδίᾳ, ὅτι αὐτοὶ τὸν θεὸν ὄψονται.

makarioi hoi katharoi tē kardia hoti autoi ton theon opsontai

blessed the pure in heart because they God will see

9 Μακάριοι οἱ εἰρηνοποιοί, ὅτι αὐτοὶ υἱοὶ θεοῦ κληθήσονται.

makarioi hoi eirēnopoioi hoti autoi huioi theou klēthēsontai

blessed the peacemakers because they sons of God will be called

10 Μακάριοι οἱ δεδιωγμένοι ἕνεκεν δικαιοσύνης, ὅτι αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν.

makarioi hoi dediōgmenoi heneken dikaiosunēs hoti autōn estin hē basileia tōn ouranōn

blessed the persecuted for righteousness because theirs is the kingdom of the heavens

The first four Beatitudes begin with the Greek letter π (p). The first Beatitude (verse 3) intensifies this alliteration because both ptōchoi (“poor”) and pneumati (“spirit”) begin with π (p). The second Beatitude (verse 4) also has a double alliteration: penthountes (“mourning”) and paraklēthēsontai (“they will be comforted”), both beginning with π (p). The fourth Beatitude (verse 6) gives us dipsōntes tēn dikaiosunēn (“thirsting for righteousness”), in which the two main terms begin with δι (di). The fifth Beatitude (verse 7) involves the repetition of the element ἐλεή (eleē-). The sixth Beatitude (verse 8) gives us katharoi tē kardia (“pure in heart” ­­­­­­— ­­the words are related to catharsis and cardiology, respectively), with two words beginning with κα (ka). The eighth Beatitude (verse 10) has dediōgmenoi heneken dikaiosunēs with δ (d) as the beginning of both main words in the first clause and the root of the verb beginning with δι (di), also repeated in the main noun. This leaves only the seventh Beatitude (5:9) with no obvious assonance. However, greek οι (oi) and υι (ui) are both thought by scholars to have been pronounced the same way. Though we have no ancient recordings, we do know the spellings scribes often interchanged. This means that the final two syllables of eirēnopoioi (“peacemakers”) sounded identical to huioi (“sons”). Thus, all eight Beatitudes contain striking repeated sounds in Greek.

We have to add to this that five of the others end with ονται (-ontai), four specifically θήσονται (-thēsontai). Plurals ending in ς (s) (which aren’t particularly common in Greek) are clustered into Beatitudes 2–5, and plurals ending in οι (oi) are found in 1 and 6–8. Attempts to render the Beatitudes into Aramaic or Hebrew simply don’t produce a fraction of the quantity of sound play. 

It might be tempting to suggest that these sound constructions are simply a creation of the writer and don’t go back to Jesus, but this ignores the rather important fact that this Gospel clearly presents Jesus as speaking with Greek word play. The simplest conclusion is that it intends to show Jesus, at least on this occasion, as teaching in Greek.

In one sense it doesn’t matter at all what languages Jesus spoke. Whether he taught in Aramaic, Hebrew or Greek, most Christians in the world today will be reading his lessons in translation anyway. But the understanding that it is perfectly plausible that Jesus may have spoken Greek helps us to understand his life a little more clearly — not as someone who lived in an isolated rural outpost, but as a member of a vibrant and cosmopolitan community. It also encourages us that there is no need to imagine a gulf between what Jesus originally said and what is recorded in the Gospels.