course, by the side of the other. If Herod had everywhere his spies, the Jewish law
provided its two police magistrates in Jerusalem, the only judges who received
renumeration.21 22 If Herod judged cruelly and despotically, the Sanhedrin weighed most
deliberately, the balance always inclining to mercy. If Greek was the language of the
court and camp, and indeed must have been understood and spoken by most in the land,
the language of the people, spoken also by Christ and His Apostles, was a dialect of the
ancient Hebrew, the Western or Palestinian Aramaic.23 It seems strange, that this could
ever have been doubted.24 A Jewish Messiah Who would urge His claim upon Israel in
Greek, seems almost a contradiction in terms. We know, that the language of the Temple
and the Synagogue was Hebrew, and that the addresses of the Rabbis had to be 'targumed'
into the vernacular Aramæan - and can we believe that, in a Hebrew service, the Messiah
could have risen to address the people in Greek, or that He would have argued with the
Pharisees and Scribes in that tongue, especially remembering that its study was actually
forbidden by the Rabbis?25
21. Jer. Kethub. 35 c; Kethub. 104 b.
22. The police laws of the Rabbis might well serve us as a model for all similar
legislation.
23. At the same time I can scarcely agree with Delitzsch and others, that this was the
dialect called Sursi. The latter was rather Syriac. Comp. Levy, ad voc.
24. Professor Roberts has advocated, with great ingenuity, the view that Christ and His
Apostles used the Greek language. See especially his 'Discussions on the Gospels.' The
Roman Catholic Church sometimes maintained, that Jesus and His disciples spoke Latin,
and in 1822 a work appeared by Black to prove that the N.T. Greek showed a Latin
origin.
25. For a full statement of the arguments on this subject we refer the student to Böhl,
Forsch. n. e. Volksbibel z. Zeit Jesu, pp. 4-28; to the latter work by the same writer
(Aittestam. Citate im N. Test.); to a very interesting article by Professor Delitzsch in the
'Daheim' for 1874 (No. 27); to Buxtorf, sub Gelil; t o J. D. Goldberg , 'The Language of
Christ'; but especially to F. de Rossi, Della lingua prop. di Cristo (Parma 1772).
Indeed, it was a peculiar mixture of two worlds in Jerusalem: not only of the Grecian and
the Jewish, but of piety and frivolity also. The devotion of the people and the liberality of
the rich were unbounded. Fortunes were lavished on the support of Jewish learning, the
promotion of piety, or the advance of the national cause. Thousands of votive offerings,
and the costly gifts in the Temple, bore evidence of this. Priestly avarice had artificially
raised the price of sacrificial animals, a rich man would bring into the Temple at his own
cost the number requisite for the poor. Charity was not only open-handed, but most
delicate, and one who had been in good circumstances would actually be enabled to live
according to his former station.26 Then these Jerusalemites - townspeople, as they called
themselves - were so polished, so witty, so pleasant. There was a tact in their social
intercourse, a nd a considerateness and delicacy in their public arrangements and
provisions, nowhere else to be found. Their very language was different. There was a