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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
Jesus and his disciples spoke a form of Semitic speech known as Palestinian Aramaic. This does not preclude their acquaintance with other languages in use in first-century Palestine, such as Hebrew or Greek. It seems on the whole unlikely, however, that Greek was ever used by Christ as a teaching medium, but he may have used Hebrew as well as Aramaic, on such solemn occasions, for instance, as at the Institution of the Last Supper.
page 305 note 1 Cook, Cf. S. A., A Glossary of the Aramaic Inscriptions (C.U.P., 1898), pp. 3 ff.Google Scholar
page 306 note 1 An Aramaic Approach to the Gospels and Acts (2nd ed., Oxford, 1954), pp. 13 ff.
page 306 note 2 For a full and recent account of the various Targumim and their history, consult P. Kahle, The Cairo Geniza, pp. 117 ff.
page 306 note 3 Cf. An Aramaic Approach, pp. 17 ff.
page 306 note 4 For some recent work, see A. Diz Macho, Sefarad, XVI (1956), Estudios Biblicos, XV (1956).
page 306 note 5 In the so-called Fragment Targum (FT), Targum Pseudo Jonathan (P-J) and the new Geniza fragments published by Kahle, Masoreten des Westens, Band II. See The Cairo Geniza, l.c.
page 306 note 6 An Aramaic Approach, p. 21.Google Scholar
page 306 note 7 Ibid. pp. 140 ff.
page 306 note 8 I have supplied an English version of Dr Diz Macho's Spanish text.
page 307 note 1 Through the good offices of Professor Paul Kahle of Oxford; Dr Diz Macho is a pupil of Dr Kahle.
page 308 note 1 Cf. Kahle, , The Cairo Geniza, pp. 122 ff.Google Scholar
page 309 note 1 The Geniza Targum renders 
, a word normally used in the Targums in the sense to search out, and in this connection to let (a field) lie fallow; to render burn over is to give the word the meaning of the Hebrew original. In Neofiti, on the other hand, Heb. 
is rendered by 
(If a man sets a field or orchard alight).
page 309 note 2 See Barthlemy, D. and Milik, J. T., Discoveries in the Judaean Desert I, Qumran Cave I (Oxford, 1955), PP. 97, 147.Google Scholar
page 309 note 3 Ibid. pp. 84, 87.
page 309 note 4 Cf. M. Baillet, Fragments aramens de Qumran 2. Description de la Jrusalem Nouvelle, in Revue Biblique(April 1955), pp. 222 ff.
page 309 note 5 A Genesis Apocryphon, A Scroll from the Wilderness of Judaea, Description and Contents of the Scroll, Facsimiles, Transcription and Translation of Columns II, xixxxii, by Nahman Avigad and Yigael Yadin (Jerusalem, 1956).Google Scholar
page 312 note 1 Avigad and Yadin write (p. 29): During the Second Commonwealth and thereafter, the name Gebal was applied most frequently to a region in the land of Edom called in the Greek sources or . Josephus, too, states that the children of Esau dwelt in the part of Idumaea called (Antiquities, II, 1, 2).
Another example is cited by Avigad and Yadin at p. 35: the King of Zeboiim (Gen. xiv. 2, 8) is called 
, a form close to the Samaritan version. (Where in the Samaritan or other translations do we find the words and in the thirteenth year they rebelled against him? (line 27).) (Cf. Avigad and Yadin, loc. cit.)
page 312 note 2 For a similar contact between Targum tradition and New Testament, see An Aramaic Approach, p. 244.
page 312 note 3 A.V. After these things the word of the Lord (
) came unto Abram in a visionO. 
= P-J, FT 
.
page 313 note 1 Both poems are of some literary merit. The second (in Avigad and Yadin's English version) reads:
And I, Abram, dreamed a dream
and lo! I saw in my dream one cedar tree
and one palm
And men came and sought to cut down
and uproot the cedar and to leave the palm
by itself.
And the palm cried out and said, Cut not
down the cedar.
And for the sake of the palm the cedar was saved.
(The cedar is Abraham, the palm Sarah, through whose offer of herself, Abraham was saved in Egypt.)
These are the closest literary parallels we possess in Aramaic to the original (poetic) parables and poems of Jesus (for their date see the next paragraph).
See further An Aramaic Approach, pp. 240ff. Appendix D, The Aramaic Liturgical Poetry of the Jews, and above, p. 312.