07-09-2012, 07:11 AM
I don't believe Paul wrote Hebrews, it seems to be missing a lot of Paul's signatures (such as the usual Pauline greeting used in his known Epistles). Hebrews and Matthew are the two Books I believe could have been written in Aramaic, Matthew especially. They have found a first century manuscript of Mark in Greek. All of the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament are written in Greek. Also, I doubt that Paul was speaking to the Gentiles in Greece in the Aramaic language, much less writing to Gentile churches in this. The isolated Aramaic phrases in the Scriptures don't prove much other than that the author and the people the author wrote of had knowledge of Aramaic. I don't have a problem with the NT being written in Aramaic, but I just don't think it is so. The international language back then was not Aramaic, but Greek. Sure, the Jewish people and other Semitic people spoke Aramaic as their common language, but I'm sure most of them could speak Greek too. Archeology shows that Greek was also widely spoken in Palestine (Caiaphas' tomb's inscription was written in Greek). Think about this also, when the Jewish people in Europe wouldn't listen to Paul, who did he go to afterward? The Syro-Phenician woman Jesus spoke to is also identified as a Greek, so Jesus would have most likely spoken to her in Greek! I'm sure the Romans didn't converse in Aramaic very well, so I'm sure Jesus spoke with the Roman soldiers He met during His ministry in Greek.