# Ancient language question **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 13, 2014, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-language-question/685981 "2014-04-13T01:58:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Psychnurse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/fbc32d/32.png) [@Psychnurse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Psychnurse)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2014, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-language-question/685981/1 "2014-04-13T01:58:55Z")
I just had my 21st A.A. sobriety birthday. In order to commemorate it I would like to get a tattoo. I want the words to be in a language Christ would have spoken. I am pretty sure He would have been exposed to Latin, but I understand His language is “lost” or no longer spoken. I want the words to say “In the garden of life I will always love you”. Yeah I know it’s a quote from the song Inna Godda Davida. But to me it’s the closest way of describing what I think God feels for me. Does anyone out there know what that phrase would be in Christ’s language? Thanx ! ---
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2014, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-language-question/685981/2 "2014-04-13T01:59:46Z")
Hebrew. ---
**Author:** ![Folly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/folly/32/3219_2.png) [@Folly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Folly)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2014, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-language-question/685981/3 "2014-04-13T02:04:05Z")
A Jew in that time period would probably have used Aramaic day to day and might have also spoken or been familiar with Hebrew. Might be tough to get a translation into old Aramaic though. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2014, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-language-question/685981/4 "2014-04-13T02:35:31Z")
Yes, Jesus and his disciples almost certainly spoke Aramaic. Hebrew might have been used in the Jewish temple and synagogues, but the language of the wealthy and educated people (including educated Jews) in his culture was Greek (Jesus and most of his disciples were, of course, poor, and little educated). The _New Testament_ was, for that reason, written in Greek, so any recorded sayings of Jesus were first written down in Greek. Latin, in that region, was probably only spoken by a handful of Roman officials, and perhaps the legionaries. For those reasons, _New Testament_ Greek might well be the most authentic language for your purposes (assuming you are thinking of a Bible quote), and finding a copy of the Bible in the original Greek is not at all difficult. Although Jesus probably actually said whatever he said in Aramaic, we have no knowledge of what his exact words may have been; at best we have only a Greek translation and paraphrase. Aramaic is not “lost” though. Nobody speaks it in everyday life now, but there are people who study it. It would not be impossible to get something translated into Aramaic (although finding a person able and willing to do it might take some work). ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2014, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-language-question/685981/5 "2014-04-13T02:43:34Z")
Wasn’t _ **The Last Temptation of Christ** _ filmed in Aramaic? Or have I been misinformed? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2014, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-language-question/685981/6 "2014-04-13T03:02:59Z")
> [@terentii](#): > > Wasn’t _ **The Last Temptation of Christ** _ filmed in Aramaic? Or have I been misinformed? :dubious: It was. Aramaic would be the language Jesus spoke in everyday conversation. it is not a lost language even though it is no longer a much-spoken language. There are pockets of Aramaic-speaking cultures still extant (probably don’t speak the exact dialect of 2000 years ago though). I think an Aramaic tattoo is a lovely idea. Try finding a professor of ancient middle-eastern languages to make a translation for you. Biblical studies departments would be a good place to start. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2014, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-language-question/685981/7 "2014-04-13T03:10:03Z")
It was _The Passion of the Christ_ that was filmed with most of the dialogue in Aramaic. _The Last Temptation of Christ_ was filmed with everyone speaking English. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2014, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-language-question/685981/8 "2014-04-13T03:24:24Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > It was _The Passion of the Christ_ that was filmed with most of the dialogue in Aramaic. _The Last Temptation of Christ_ was filmed with everyone speaking English. Aha! I stand corrected! ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2014, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-language-question/685981/9 "2014-04-13T03:25:09Z")
Aramaic is still used in some Orthodox Jewish rituals. For example, I attended an Orthodox Jewish wedding a few years ago in Omaha. My brother, who is much more familiar with such things, was there too. The ritual includes having a wedding certificate with traditional vows inscribed on it, in fancy calligraphy of course, and requires a witness to observe it. My brother was the witness. He pointed out to me that the certificate was all in Aramaic, not Hebrew. Aramaic is rather similar to Hebrew (in the same sense that modern French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese are “similar”), and is written with the Hebrew alphabet. The popular Jewish song “Chad Gadya” (One kid, one kid, my father bought for two zuzim . . . ) is Aramaic. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2014, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-language-question/685981/10 "2014-04-13T03:58:18Z")
Aramaic actually refers to a group of closely related languages. Ethnologue (generally a pretty good source on such things), says that the Aramaic languages as well as Hebrew and the various languages generally referred to as Arabic are all in the Central sub-branch of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. The Aramaic languages are in the Aramaic sub-sub-branch of the Central sub-branch, while Hebrew and the various Arabic languages are in the South sub-sub-branch of the Central sub-branch. I’m no expert on this, but I suspect that Aramaic and Hebrew are not quite as closely related as French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese are to each other: [http://www.ethnologue.com/subgroups/central](http://www.ethnologue.com/subgroups/central) ---
**Author:** ![Ramira](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ramira/32/344_2.png) [@Ramira](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramira)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2014, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-language-question/685981/11 "2014-04-13T12:18:02Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Aramaic actually refers to a group of closely related languages. Ethnologue (generally a pretty good source on such things), says that the Aramaic languages as well as Hebrew and the various languages generally referred to as Arabic are all in the Central sub-branch of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. The Aramaic languages are in the Aramaic sub-sub-branch of the Central sub-branch, while Hebrew and the various Arabic languages are in the South sub-sub-branch of the Central sub-branch. I’m no expert on this, but I suspect that Aramaic and Hebrew are not quite as closely related as French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese are to each other: > > [http://www.ethnologue.com/subgroups/central](http://www.ethnologue.com/subgroups/central) [I think this is not correct The Ethnologue seems very divergent in this](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Aramaic). “Biblical Aramaic is closely related to Hebrew as both are in the [Northwest Semitic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Semitic_languages) language family”. Certainly it is strange to put Arabic and Hebrew more closely together than Aramaic, and the way which the Ethnologue present sArabic looks like nothing that is normally used. They go to great extreme in dividing up dialects or languages. Never have I seen such a division except with them, and as I speak this, I can not recognize some of their differences they claim. ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2014, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-language-question/685981/12 "2014-04-13T14:04:19Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > It was _The Passion of the Christ_ that was filmed with most of the dialogue in Aramaic. _The Last Temptation of Christ_ was filmed with everyone speaking English. Whoops. Poor reading comprehension skills strike again. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2014, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-language-question/685981/13 "2014-04-13T15:04:58Z")
Thanks, Ramira. So it appears that other sources say that Arabic and Hebrew are part of the same subgroup of the Semitic languages, while Aramaic is part of a different subgroup. I wonder if we can get hold of a linguistics professor who’s a specialist in Semitic languages for a statement of what the majority opinion on the relationships are. I would also be interested in knowing if it’s true that Aramaic and Hebrew are really as close as French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, so I would like a definitive statement on that. It’s true that Ethnologue tends to be a splitter rather than a lumper on languages and dialects. Of course, the real problem is that there isn’t really an absolute distinction between languages and dialects. Yes, it’s possible to say in most individual cases that two varieties are distinct languages because they are mutually unintelligible and they are two dialects of one language because they are mutually intelligible, but there are too many cases of dialect continuums to make this easy to do: > **[Dialect continuum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum)** > > A dialect continuum or dialect chain is a series of language varieties spoken across some geographical area such that neighboring varieties are mutually intelligible, but the differences accumulate over distance so that widely separated varieties may not be. This is a typical occurrence with widely spread languages and language families around the world, when these languages did not spread recently. Some prominent examples include the Indo-Aryan languages across large parts of India, varieties... These are cases where there are a continuous spectrum of varieties A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, . . ., where A and B are mutually intelligible, B and C are mutually intelligible, etc., but A and I aren’t mutually intelligible. This is true for Arabic, for instance. It’s also true for Chinese. In fact, the Chinese officially try to deny how much the various Chinese languages are different from one another. They insist on calling them dialects, rather than languages. Ethnologue says that there are fourteen distinct languages in this group, one of which isn’t spoken in China but in Kyrgyzstan, and that’s about typical for the guess of most linguists. Some linguists think that there may be more like forty different Chinese languages if one actually went by mutual intelligibility. However, the Chinese try to prevent outside linguists from visiting rural villages so that they won’t notice how different the varieties spoken there are. Ethnologue has chosen for some reason to err on the side of splitting rather than lumping. Of course, they don’t consider every dialect as a language. For instance, they only recognize Scots as being so different that it should be considered as a different language from English. They do split up languages more than most linguists do. They consider Arabic to be thirty-five different languages. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2014, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-language-question/685981/14 "2014-04-13T18:08:02Z")
The common ancestor of French and Italian was about 1500 years ago, while the common ancestor of Hebrew and Aramaic was _more_ than 1500 years _before the time of Christ_. > [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > It’s true that Ethnologue tends to be a splitter rather than a lumper on languages and dialects. I think most would agree Ethnologue is inconsistent at the highest levels, splitting a hypothetical “South Amerindian” into 30+ families (not including isolates), but with a single Nilo-Saharan family often considered at least as tenuous as Amerindian! AFAICT, this “inconsistency” is deliberate, reflecting a starting point of standard usage, right or wrong, without the confusion of redefining highest-level families. [Glottolog](http://glottolog.org/) is more consistent (and more conservative), dividing _each_ of “South Amerindian” and “Nilo-Saharan” into 30+ families. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2014, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-language-question/685981/15 "2014-04-13T19:25:38Z")
Thanks, septimus. I wasn’t aware of Glottolog. So Ethnologue thinks there are 225 language families and 7,105 languages presently spoken (or signed) in the world while Glottolog thinks there are 434 families and 7,876 languages. I guess this means that Glottolog is even more of a splitter than Ethnologue is. I just checked a couple of language groups. It appears that Glottolog thinks there are about as many Chinese languages - 14 - as Ethnologue thinks there are. It appears that Glottolog thinks that there are about twice as many Arabic languages - at least 70 - as Ethnologue thinks there are. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2014, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-language-question/685981/16 "2014-04-13T19:59:28Z")
Just for the record, I will mention that there are languages spoken today that are called Aramaic: See [Neo-Aramaic languages - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Aramaic_languages). They are spoken in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and “Assyrian diaspora”. They bear the same relation to classical Aramaic that the Romance languages do to Latin. But Aramaic was the language of Jews in Jesus’s day. I did not know that the marriage agreement was in Aramaic (I wonder whether my ketsuba was), but the prayer for the dead, the kaddush is in Aramaic, I know. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2014, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ancient-language-question/685981/17 "2014-04-14T00:47:45Z")
The native language, and home language, of Jesus was almost certainly Aramaic. Greek was somethign of a lingua franca in the region, and it’s likely that Jesus had at least some Greek. Anyone working as a jobby carpenter/handyman would have used a bit of Greek with some customers or potential customers. The gospels record Jesus reading from the Torah which was, of course, in Hebrew. An ability to read Hebrew was common among Jewish men. Literacy was comparatively high among Palestinian Jews, at least by comparison with their neighours. Every synagogue was supposed to have a school attached where boys were taught enough Hebrew to read the scriptures and to pray. While literacy wasn’t universal, nor was it confined to an educated elite. It was fairly common. So, Aramaic, Greek, Hebrew; take your pick. Jesus certainly heard them all, and could probably speak and understand all of them to at least some extent.