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The common language of Palestine at that time was Aramaic, a Syro-Chaldaic dialect. After the Babylonian captivity it supplanted the original Hebrew, although the latter continued in use for ecclesiastical documents. It is reasonable to believe that Christ used the Aramaic, as the people would not have understood him had he spoken any other language. Matthew is commonly believed to have been written in Aramaic and the other three in Greek. The commercial and literary language of the day was Greek. Neither Luke nor John was an uneducated man. Both would be likely to know Greek. Mark, too, as a young Jew of some standing, would probably know the language.
