Collectanea Christiana Orientalia 21 (2024): 39-60

Jordan Lavender

Quinsigamond Community College

The issue of Jesus’ multilingualism and Mark-within-Judaism

Introduction

The issue of Jesus’ multilingualism is a topic of understandable curiosity among a variety of

scholars. The quest to uncover the linguistic proficiency of Jesus is almost as studied as the

identity of Jesus himself. While certain assertions might be made and defended about Jesus vis-

a-vis the available historical data and through comparison with known details about the region

and economic classes of the time, a more fruitful investigation might be had into the portrayal

of Jesus as a multilingual person, particularly by the Gospel of Mark, explicitly in

contradistinction to the other Synoptic Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

It is within this linguistic portrayal of Jesus that the nature of Mark’s Gospel can be

understood within Judaism. While the Gospel of Mark is often assumed to be anti-Torah and

confrontational with Judaism, this is more a meaning assigned to the text, rather than what the

text actually says. The Temple and the Torah’s purity regulations

were regarded as central

pillars of Second Temple Judaism and neither of these is replaced in Mark.

Hillel reads certain

parables, such as the Parable of the Vineyard, as evidence of the Markan Jesus’ respect for the

Temple and its sacrificial system. Jesus’ instructions to the leper in 1:40–44 also indicate the

author’s attitude towards the Temple, in addition to Jesus’ interaction with the scribe in 10:18–

19.

The often cited example of Mark 7:1–23 and its treatment of Jewish customs is paralleled

in Aristeas 305–306. Crossley sees the statement in this section, ‚all foods clean‛ as referring

to only Torah-permitted foods and sees this as a halakhic debate about the nature of how

impurity is transmitted from the hands through food or liquid.

The same could be said for the

Markan Jesus’ approach to the Sabbath, where his interlocutors hold to a stricter definition of

Ant 12.2.13; Sib. Or. 3:591–94; Jud 12:5–7; etc

John van Maaren, ‚The Gospel of Mark within Judaism: Reading the Second Gospel in its Ethnic Landscape."

PhD diss., 2019, p. 290-316; Eyal Regev, The Temple in Early Christianity: Experiencing the Sacred. (Yale University

Press, 2019), p. 126.

Vered Hillel, ‚A Post-Supersessionist Reading of the Temple and Torah in Mark’s Gospel: The Parable of the

Vineyard‛, Religions 14, no. 4 (2023), p. 487.

m. Peah 2:23–8; Lev 23:22; c.f. James G. Crossley, ‚The Date of Mark's Gospel‛, Journal for the Study of the New

Testament Supplement Series 266 (2004), pp. 1-256.

Jordan Lavender

the Sabbath against his lenient views.

All of these readings of Mark points to the possibility of

a post-supersessionist reading of the text that situates the author within Second Temple

Judaism, albeit still opposed to the Pharisaic party within the spectrum of Jewish camps of the

time.

This article explores the portrayal of Jesus’ proficiency in multiple languages from the

perspective of the separation between Judaism and Christianity. Edrei and Mendels offer an

important reading of the development of rabbinic Judaism and Christianity as the result of a

linguistic separation between Greek-speaking Jews of the Diaspora in the West and Semitic-

speaking Jews of Israel and the East. This reading will be explored in further detail in the body

of the article but serves as an important interpretive lens through which Mark can be read as

presenting Jesus as a figure on par with the Pharisees and scribes. This article proposes that the

Aramaic sayings of Jesus of Mark are meant to portray Jesus as a counter-figure to the

Pharisaic Torah teacher. The nature of the Pharisees as a group must be fleshed out, consulting

Josephus as a source and in understanding their portrayal in Mark. Josephus describes the

Pharisees as knowledgeable and accurate in the ancestral customs of the people (Life 190–192;

War 2:162), showing camaraderie (War 1:166) and having considerable influence among the

people (Ant. 13:288). They are additionally representatives of the Judean temple-state that

sought to bring Galileans under Judean understanding of the Torah’s commandments and are

portrayed as a type of political group in the Gospels.

This stems from the Galilean history

separate from Judea since ancient Israel. This region was under separate administration until

the Hasmoneans conquered and incorporated it into their regime, including a forced

judaization, as with the Idumeans, to bring the ancestral Israelite customs of the Galileans into

compliance with Judean practice (Ant. 13:318). Administrative control was ceded to Herod

Antipas beginning 4 BCE and was attempted to be reclaimed by Judeans in the war with

Rome, beginning in 66 CE, where Pharisees were sent to establish governing councils in

Galilee (Life 190–196; War 2:628). The Jesus movement is portrayed as beginning in the

Galilean villages and is always in conflict with representatives of Judea, perhaps reflecting this

religious history. Horsley sees Mark was originating in the Galilee or Syria around this time.

Their function in the Gospels is found within the various controversy stories that almost

always revolve around a religious dispute that could be attributed to the religious differences

among them.

The differing religious and political contexts are likely reflected in the differing linguistic

contexts of the Galilee and Judea. In turn, these underlying conflicts can be felt in the Gospel

text itself. However, I do not propose to link any of the conflicts in Mark to the historical

Jesus, but, rather, to explore the portrayal of Jesus as a reflection of the religio-political

CD 10:22-23; Jub 2:29ff; Philo, Moses 2:22; y. Shab. 7:2; c.f. Michael J. Kok, The Gospel on the Margins: The

Reception of Mark in the Second Century. (Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2015).

Anthony J. Saldarini, Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees in Palestinian society: a sociological approach. (Wm. B. Eerdmans

Publishing, 2001), pp. 145-157.

Richard A. Horsley, The Pharisees and the Temple-state of Judea, (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2022).

The issue of Jesus’ multilingualism and Mark-within-Judaism

situation of Mark itself in the post-war environment as an intra-sectarian Jewish document,

perhaps reflecting the diverging Galilean and Judean forms of Second Temple religious

practice.

Languages in Greco-Roman Palestine

In order to understand the sociolinguistic values of the languages that Jesus speaks in Mark,

the linguistic profile of Greco-Roman Palestine must be examined within the broader

Hellenistic context. Three languages compete in the scholarly mind for the status as the main

vernacular of Jews in Palestine, including: Aramaic, Greek, and Hebrew. Additionally, the role

of each language in that culture might also be considered.

Aramaic is often thought to have been the vernacular, perhaps not in a literary form but as

a spoken vernacular,

as archeological finds seem to suggest.

However, literary remains in

Aramaic are less frequent than in Hebrew at Qumran, yet they do exist. Ossuary inscriptions

also appear in Aramaic.

Those who consider Hebrew as the vernacular are fewer but look to

rabbinic Hebrew as an example of a possible Hebrew vernacular of the time.

However, some

point to rabbinic Hebrew as an example of a somewhat artificial language, lacking the character

of a vernacular and perhaps revived as Christians and Jews separated linguistically.

contrast, Greek was spoken in the area, given that it was the language of prestige in Hellenistic

society. Additionally, Greek was the native language of some in the area. Some have suggested

that Aramaic had begun to recede in popularity at the time of Jesus and was reserved for

private, intimate spaces, such as among friends, family and in prayer.

A certain degree of bilingualism was probably common in Palestine among Jews, speaking

likely Aramaic and Greek, if involved in commerce or administration. However, there would

have been a certain continuum of bilingualism vis-a-vis Jewish proficiency in Greek within

Palestine.

Being the lingua franca of the Greco-Roman world, it held considerable cultural

importance, being the prestige language of that society, dominating the educational, political and

economic domains

and used by cultural and economic elites.

Many coins have been found

Birkeland Birkeland, The Language of Jesus. (Oslo: Jacob Dybward, 1954), p. 11, 39

Aaron Tresham, ‚The Languages spoken by Jesus‛, Master’s Seminary Journal 20, no. 1 (2009)., pp. 71-94.

Eric M. Meyers and James F. Strange, Archaeology, the rabbis, & early Christianity. (Abingdon, 1981), pp. 75-77.

Moses Hirsch Segal, ‘Mishnaic Hebrew and its Relation to Biblical Hebrew and to Aramaic’, Jewish Quarterly

Review 20 (1908), pp. 1-191.

Catherine Heszer, ‚Jewish Literacy and Languages in First-Century Roman Palestine‛ in Craig Morrison (ed.),

The Languages of Palestine at the Time of Jesus. Biblica et Orientalia 89:1 (2020), p. 58-77; S. Schwartz, ‚Language,

Power and Identity in Ancient Palestine‛, Past and Present 148 (1995), p. 14.

Hughson T. Ong, ‚An Evaluation of the Aramaic and Greek Language Criteria in Historical Jesus Research: A

Sociolinguistic Study of Mark 14, 32–65‛ fn 25 (2012), pp. 37-55.

Hughson T. Ong, ‚The Language of the New Testament from a Sociolinguistic Perspective,‛ Journal of Greco-

Roman Christianity and Judaism 12 (2016), pp. 163-190.

Stanley Porter, ‚Did Jesus ever Teach in Greek?‛ Tyndale Bulletin, 44.2 (1993).

Jordan Lavender

from the first century CE, beginning with the Hasmoneans, until exclusive Greek coinage

under the Herodians. A number of papyri have been found in Greek that were written by Jews.

Sacred literature such as the Greek versions of Daniel and Esther were composed around this

time, including the Septuagint, as well as non-sacred writers, such as Josephus, among many

others. Jerusalem was the locus of Hellenized native cities and the process of Hellenization

continued throughout the Hasmonean period until Greek had become the administrative

language by the first century CE.

In the broader Mediterranean world, archaeological remains

confirm the importance of Greek, with around 68% of all Jewish inscriptions being in Greek.

Jerusalem also housed an equal number of Greek and Semitic inscriptions.

Some differences seem to emerge when considering Judea and Galilee. In the south,

funerary inscriptions in Jerusalem show 32.5% in Greek, 27.8% in ‚indistinct Semitic‛, 21.8%

clearly in Armaaic and 7.7% in Hebrew, with the rest being some bilingual combination or

other possibilities. Indistinct Semitic here refers to terms that could be read as either Hebrew or

Aramaic, due to overlapping lexical similarities. Some have seen this evidence as suggesting

that Greek was widely spoken by Jews, at least in Jerusalem.

Additionally, the Bar Kokhba

letters can be consulted as a form of evidence by analyzing the signatures of the signatories.

25% of these were signed in Hebrew, suggesting that Jerusalem scribes, as members of the

cultural elite, were more proficient in Hebrew, perhaps more so than others in society. Some

see this as evidence of a Hebrew vernacular in Roman Judea, in contrast to Galilee and the

Diaspora, where Hebrew proficiency was lower. In particular, Michael Wise proposes that

Hebrew was spoken by a majority of Judeans, resembling Mishnaic Hebrew, with elites

proficient in the biblical variety.

It seems probable that Aramaic was the language of daily

writing in Judea, such as for signing legal documents. However, Wise proposes that Judean

elites probably lacked a strong proficiency in Greek, given the lack of signatures in Greek.

However, there could have been two alternative literacy tracks for elites in Semitic and

Hellenic literacies with the benchmark being the ability to read the Hebrew Bible or Greek

literature. Of course, Hebrew literature existed in Greek translation and might have been

available in Judea in the first century CE as well.

Galilee was quite a bit different from Judea. First, there are relatively few archeological

remains from the region, making the task of summarizing its linguistic proficiency more

Lester Grabbe, Judaism from Cyrus to Hadrian (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), p. I:158.

M. Hengle, Judaism and Hellenism (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1981); S. Schwartz, ‚Language, Power and

Identity in Ancient Palestine,‛ Past and Present 148 (1995), pp. 3-47; Smelik, W. Smelik, ‘The Languages of

Roman Palestine’, in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine, ed. C. Hezser. (Oxford: Oxford

University Press 2010), pp. 122-141.

L.Y. Rahmani, A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in the Collections of the State of Israel. (The Israel Antiquities

Authority: Jerusalem, 1994), pp. 221-222

Nahman Avigad, Beth She’arim: Report on the Excavations During 1953-1958. Volume III: Catacombs 12-23 (New

Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1971).

Michael Owen Wise, Language and Literacy in Roman Judaea: A Study of the Bar Kokhba Documents (New Haven and

London: Yale University Press, 2015).

The issue of Jesus’ multilingualism and Mark-within-Judaism

difficult, albeit not impossible.

There was presumably more influence by Greek culture, as the

cities of the Decapolis, Caesarea, Tyre, and Sidon all lay close by, although this point is

debated. Some have used this point to suggest that some basic proficiency in Greek was more

common in the Galilee.

With regard to existing archaeological evidence, from around 200

BCE to the first century, there are only twelve pieces of evidence. Nine of these are in Greek,

one in Aramaic, and two in indistinct Semitic varieties. From the six pieces attributed to the

first century C.E. (including the thirty years after 70 C.E.), only one ostracon from Jotapata has

an unidentified ‚Semitic‛ inscription, the rest are in Greek.

There is also a noticeable lack of

Hebrew in non-literary writing from pre-70 CE Judea, when consulting ossuaries and

inscription evidence from the archaeological record. Additionally, knowledge of Greek was

useful (and perhaps necessary) for village elites to conduct business with non-Jewish traders.

All of the available data suggests that there might have been a different sort of linguistic

proficiency in Galilee and in Judea. In the south, it seems that Hebrew was more frequently the

prestige language around Jerusalem. In the north, Greek fulfilled that role. Understanding the

role of the competing elite languages will help to understand the context for the original Jesus

movement. Aramaic was probably known in both the Galilee and Judea, but it might be more

strongly associated with the Galilee.

Rabbinic Linguistic Proficiency in Greek

The relationship between the Rabbis and Greek is somewhat complex. One can contrast the

actual linguistic evidence and contrast that with the expressed attitudes of the rabbinic

community towards the language and see quite a different picture. The number of Greek

loanwords into Hebrew increased during the Rabbinic period, although Aramaic was the primary

language of rabbinic circles, with the Mishnah being primarily composed in Hebrew and the

Gemaras of Palestine and Babylon being composed in a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic. This

suggests a prolonged situation of language contact between rabbinic Hebrew and Greek in

order for the number of loanwords that exist to be borrowed into Hebrew.

The Mishnah is a multilingual text, even if the majority of the text is composed in Hebrew.

There are a number of passages composed in Aramaic.

There are aphorisms attributed to

early sages, such as the Hasmonean Rabbi Yose son of Yoezer, Rabbi Hillel, and Ben Bagbag.

Mark Chancey, Greco-Roman Culture and the Galilee of Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp.

122-165.

A.W. Argyle, ‚Greek Among the Jews of Palestine in New Testament Times,‛ «New Testament Sudies» 20,

(1973-1974), pp. 87-89, esp. 88.

D. Adan-Bayewitz and M. Aviam, ‚Iotapata, Josephus, and the Siege of 67: Preliminary Report on the 1992-

1994 Season,‛ Journal of Roman Archaeology 10 (1974), pp. 131-165; E. Eshel and D.R. Edwards, ‚Language and

Writing, Early Roman Galilee‛, in Religion and Society in Roman Palestine: Old Questions, New Approaches, ed. D.R.

Edwards (New York and London: Routledge 2004), p. 53.

m. Eduyot 8:4; m. Pirkei Avot 1:13, 2:6, 5:22-23; m. Ketubot 4:7-8; m. Sotah 9:15

Jordan Lavender

The other Aramaic material in the Mishnah are statements made by common people in court,

which are obviously not meant to be transcriptions of actual court proceedings, but imagined

scenarios and what common people might have said.

Several thousand Greek loanwords are found throughout rabbinic literature in the Mishnah,

Talmuds, etc. covering material culture, civil and legal administration, military, architecture,

including lexical categories that are easily borrowed, such as adjectives, adverbs, verbs, and

nouns. The type and frequency of borrowing suggests a prolonged multilingual contact

between languages.

Yehudah HaNasi called Greek a ‚beautiful language‛

and the collection baskets in the

Temple treasury used the Greek alphabet to organize the contents.

Later statements indicate

the Rabbis’ distancing from Greek, as the Babylonian Talmud proclaimed that there was

essentially no good time to learn Greek wisdom.

Even well within the rabbinic era, the

Mishnah shows that even by 200 CE, there was a presumption that a Jew would sign rabbinic

legal documents in Greek, presuming a widespread proficiency in and use of that language in

Israel.

There are also provisions for the Torah scroll to be written in Greek.

However, the Rabbis’ relationship to the Greek language is quite a bit more complex,

especially in traditions tied to individuals after 66 CE.

A prohibition is associated with the

time of the War of Quietus (116 CE), in which the Rabbis prohibited teaching one’s son

Greek. However, the text of the Mishnah uses the Greek word for ‚war‛ within the text of the

Mishnah itself.

m. Sotah 9:14

In the war

of Vespasian, they decreed upon the crowns of bridegrooms and upon drums.

In the war of Titus, they decreed upon the crowns of brides, and that a person shouldn’t teach

his son Greek.

The Gemara comments on this Mishnah and predates the prohibition of teaching Greek

wisdom to the first century BCE (65 BCE) during the siege of Jerusalem.

The Sages interpret

the Mishnah’s prohibition as arising from the Hasmonean civil war and the siege of Jerusalem

by Hyrcanus. Ultimately, there are extenuating circumstances regarding the study of Greek by

the rabbinic circle. For instance, those ‚close to the government‛, like Rabban Gamaliel, were

Mark Janse, ‘Greek Loanwords in Hebrew and Aramaic’, Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Language and Linguistics,

Vol. 2 (2014), pp. 122-123.

b. Sotah 49b

m. Shekalim 3:2

b. Menahot 99b; cf y. Peah 1:1:21

b. Gittin 87a

b. Megillah 9a

b. Megillah 9a; y. Shabbat 1:6, 3c

Πόλεμοσ in Greek

Josephus, Antiquities 14.25-28

The issue of Jesus’ multilingualism and Mark-within-Judaism

permitted to study Greek, presumably to facilitate communication with the Gentile authorities

who spoke that language.

b. Sotah 49b

[The Mishnah states] that a person should not teach his son Greek.

The Sages taught: When the kings of the Hasmonean kingdom besieged each other,

Hyrcanus was outside of [Jerusalem] and Aristobulus was inside. On each and every day, they

would low dinars in a box and [others] would send up daily offerings. A certain elder was

there, who was familiar with Greek wisdom. He communicated to [them] by Greek wisdom.

He said to them: As long as they are engaged in the [Temple] service, they will not be

delivered into your hands.

On the following day, they lowered dinars in a box and sent up a pig. Once it reached

halfway [up] the wall, it inserted its hooves and Eretz Yisrael shuddered four hundred

parasangs.

They said at that time: Cursed is the person who raises pigs, and cursed is the person who

teaches his son Greek wisdom…

Didn’t Rabbi say: ‚In Eretz Yisrael, why should people speak Syriac? Rather, either the

sacred tongue or in Greek.

And Rav Yosef said: In Babylonia, why Aramaic? Rather, in the sacred tongue or Persian.

Greek is discrete and Greek wisdom is discrete. And is Greek wisdom prohibited? But

didn’t Rav Yehuda say that Shmuel said in the name of Rabban ben GAmliel: What is [the

meaning] of that which is written: ‚My eye affected my soul, due to all the daughters of my

city‛ (Lam 3:51)? There were a thousand children in my father’s house. Five hundred learned

Torah and the other five hundred learned Greek wisdom, and there only remained of them,

me, here, and the son of my father’s brother in Asia Minor. The house of Rabban Gamliel is

different, as they were close to the monarchy.

The prohibition of learning Greek wisdom is preserved in other places in the rabbinic

corpus.

However, there are also positive feelings expressed towards the Greek language and

wisdom.

These contrary opinions indicate that the effect of the prohibitions was not

universally accepted. Even more so, there is indication that Greek was used liturgically by some

Jews associated with the rabbinic movement.

t. Avodah Zarah 1:20; b. Menahot 99b

m. Yadayim 4:6, ‚The Sadducees say: we complain against you, Pharisees, because you say that the Holy

Scriptures defile the hands, but the books of Homer do not defile the hands. Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai

said: Have we nothing against the Pharisees but this? Behold they say that the bones of a donkey are clean, yet

the bones of Yohanan the high priest are unclean. They said to him: according to the affection for them, so is

their impurity, so that nobody should make spoons out of the bones of his father or mother. He said to them:

so also are the Holy Scriptures according to the affection for them, so is their uncleanness. The books of

Homer which are not precious do not defile the hands.‛ c.f. Y Sanhedrin 10:1, 28a; Sotah 49b; M Megillah 1:8;

Esther Rabbah 4:12; Genesis Rabbah 16:4, 36:8

y. Sotah 7:1, 21b; b. Sotah 49b.

Jordan Lavender

In summary, it seems quite likely that the Rabbis, especially in the earlier part of the first

century, learned and spoke Greek. The nervousness of the later Gemaras towards the

association of certain Rabbis with the language points in the direction of their knowledge of

Greek being likely. All of the individuals associated with knowing Greek would have formed

part of at least an intellectual elite, if not an economic elite, which would follow the

expectations based on the previously mentioned studies of language use at that time.

Additionally, an examination of the literature of the period points to the prevalence of Greek,

even in religious literature. While there are certainly examples of Aramaic religious documents

being written, at Qumran for example, the majority of novel texts were written in Greek.

The issue of the linguistic proficiency of the Rabbis is of some importance to understand

the rift between rabbinic Judaism and Christianity which began in full swing in the second

century. Edrei and Mendels present a case that the linguistic divide between the eastern Rabbis

and Greek-speaking western Jews of the Diaspora was one of the reasons for the lack of a

strong presence of early rabbinic Judaism in Europe. This might have been due to the lack of

any translation of rabbinic materials into Greek and Latin and even a reluctance to allow such

moves by the rabbinic leaders themselves.

Nearly the entirety of the rabbinic cast of characters are presented as from either Israel or

Babylonia and there are only a few number of rabbinic sages from the west, leading the

authors to conclude that the Mishnah was likely not studied in the west.

One of two sages

from the west was Todos ish Romi (or Theodosius) who instituted the practice of eating

roasted goat on Passover and was chastised by the sages in Israel.

One of the only teachings

preserved in his name has to do with martyrdom but he is known to have supported Torah

scholars.

The other Roman sage, Matya ben Heresh, was sent from Judea to establish a yeshiva

in Rome

and one of his aggadic teachings is found in Pirke Avot.

No rabbinic literature

mentions if he was successful in establishing a yeshiva in Rome or not.

The split between the west and the east was linguistic and cultural, with the western Jews

speaking Greek and the eastern Jews speaking Aramaic. This linguistic division led to

estrangement between the two communities according to Edrei and Mendels, who presume

that western Jews did not speak Aramaic or Hebrew and that all of their religious rituals were

conducted in Greek. The implication of this linguistic divide is that the Greek-speaking Jews of

Rome and surrounding areas did not participate in the religious innovations of the Rabbis,

Arye Edrei and Doron Mendels, ‚Why Did Paul Succeed Where the Rabbis Failed? The Reluctance of the

Rabbis to Translate Their Teachings into Greek and Latin and the Split Jewish Diaspora‛, Jesus Research: New

Methodologies and Perceptions (2014), pp. 361-396.

Edrei and Mendels, ‚Why Did Paul Succeed‛, p. 365

b. Pes. 53a; t. Bez. 2:15

b. Pes. 53b

b. Sanh. 32b

m. Av. 4:15

Edrei and Mendels, ‚Why Did Paul Succeed‛, p. 366

The issue of Jesus’ multilingualism and Mark-within-Judaism

such as in the establishment of the prayer service or other rabbinic modifications to biblical

ritual out of a lack of access because they did not speak the language.

This estrangement most likely resulted from the rabbinic reluctance to translate their work

into Greek, which the authors propose as a fear of universalization of their religious traditions.

This was due to the Torah becoming a possession of all peoples through its translation into

Greek. The Rabbis sought to maintain their unique traditions as the sole possession and

inheritance of the Jewish people and this was accomplished through maintaining the text in

Hebrew and Aramaic.

This linguistic chasm could have been used by early Christians to

spread their message in Greek among western Jewish communities. Edrei and Mendels place

this within Paul’s lifetime and claim that his success in the west was due to his perception of

the linguistic deficiencies among western Diaspora Jews to understand rabbinic innovation and

that Diaspora Jews understood him to be a teacher of oral law. Therefore, many western Jews

became Christians or Jewish Christians or even maintained biblical observance until much

later. From this perspective, the New Testament becomes an even more significant witness to

Second Temple Judaism as a member of the corpus of Jewish literature from the period, as New

Testament literature is an important record of Jewish practice in Greek.

Jesus as Teacher in Mark

The growing rift between Christianity and Judaism was only beginning at the time of Mark’s

writing, presuming the standard dating to the 70s CE. However, following Horsley's analysis,

there was a long-felt religious division between the Galileans and Judeans that might have

manifested itself in linguistic differences. In this reading of the historical context of Mark, the

religious opinions of Jesus reflect those who did not fall into the Pharisaic (proto-rabbinic)

scope of influence.

The following analysis will examine the Aramaic sayings of Jesus in the context of the

linguistic division between Christians and Jews, attempting to reach back to the beginning of

that shift. It will argue that Mark attempted to portray Jesus as a Semitic-speaking teacher to a

Greek-speaking audience. Mark presents Jesus as a teacher par excellence. The crowds are

‚amazed‛ at his teaching (1:21–22). He teaches his disciples through parables in secret (4:33–

34) and travels throughout Galilee teaching in synagogues, by the sea (2:13), in the villages

(6:6), to his disciples (9:31), to the priests and scribes (11:18) and in the Temple (14:49). Later

Gospel authors seemingly expand upon this presentation of Jesus as a teacher in the mold of

rabbinic figures from the era. Luke portrays Jesus as being able to read from the Haftarah.

Jesus is portrayed as being well-versed in the Hebrew Bible, enough to quote it verbatim

Edrei and Mendels, ‚Why Did Paul Succeed‛, p. 377

Edrei and Mendels, ‚Why Did Paul Succeed‛, pp. 384-385.

Lk 4:16-21

Jordan Lavender

throughout the Gospels.

In other cases, it is less clear that Jesus can read. In John, he is

questioned, ‚How does this man know letters since he was never taught?‛

However, in the

later interpolated passage in John, Jesus is portrayed as able to write, ‚Jesus bent down and

wrote with his finger on the ground… And once again he bent down and wrote on the

ground‛.

Perhaps the interpolated text was added with the subtle purpose of demonstrating

Jesus’ erudition through his ability to write, an even more specialized skill than reading in the

ancient world.

Other, roughly contemporaneous, sources portray Jesus as a teacher. Josephus describes

Jesus as a ‚wise man‛ (sophos anter), language echoed by some early Christian writers, even

though this language is not found in the New Testament, relying on current reconstructions of

the Testimonium Flavianum.

Josephus uses the same language to talk about Solomon and

Daniel,

making Jesus congruent with the tradition of Solomon and Daniel, ‚melding of

prophetic, apocalyptic and wisdom insights‛.

Josephus’ use of the term sophist is particularly

important, as it is the same term used for the Jewish Sages in his works, meaning that Jesus

was portrayed exactly as the Greek-speaking early Rabbis of the first century by a

contemporaneous source.

The possibility of Jesus’ literacy, even if only of a certain type, would suggest Jesus’ identity

as a member of the cultural elite, an assertion that has been considered. Focusing only on Mark,

we see Jesus identified as something like a contractor.

While there are a few sayings that might

reflect a lower-class background,

there are a great deal more that reflect an upper class

orientation, such as the parable of the landlord who leases his properties to tenants,

the

imagery of kings and courts,

Jesus’ interactions with the rich young ruler

or the Jewish

cultural elites.

Jesus does not object to being anointed with expensive oil, perhaps suggesting

his being accustomed to such luxuries.

Even Jesus’ disciples are portrayed as small business

C.f. Matt. 4:4, 7, 10; 5:21, 27; 9:13; 15:7-9; 21:16; 27:46; Mark 10:7-8; 12:29-30, 36; Luke 4:18-19; 7:27; 19:46;

23:46, c.f. Willmington, Harold, ‚Old Testament Passages Quoted by Jesus Christ‛, The Second Person File 71

(2017). https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/second_person/71

Jn 7:15

Jn 8:6, 8

Dave Allen, ‚Tres estratos redaccionales para el Testimonium Flavianum: Una propuesta‛, Revista Bíblica 85,

no. 1 (2023), pp. 211-232.

Josephus, Antiquities 8.2.7

Ben Witherington III, The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity

Press, 1997), p. 163

David Flusser, Jesus, (Magnes Press, 1998), pp. 30-32.

Mk 6:3

Mk 2:21

Mk 12:1-9

Mk 3:24-25

Mk 10:17-22

Mk 12:15-17

Mk 14:3-9

The issue of Jesus’ multilingualism and Mark-within-Judaism

owners themselves, having hired employees to take over their work when they join Jesus.

Jesus is certainly portrayed in the Gospel as being accustomed to good food and drink.

This

might imply his status as elite. However, others have disagreed and argued for a lower

socioeconomic status for him and his followers.

Still, others argue for a middle option

between ‚elite‛ or ‚poor‛ for Jesus’ status that would explain his possible exposure to Greek.

The Aramaic Sayings of Jesus

Still, there are certain phrases of Jesus preserved in Aramaic, often assumed to be remnants of

Jesus’ original words. The narrative function of these sayings, leaving behind any assumptions

of veracity, would be to provide evidence that Jesus did know Semitic languages.

Mark’s use of Aramaic in the body of his Greek text reflects the ways in which Hebrew

words are transliterated in the Septuagint.

In that translation, many Hebrew words are loaned

into Greek and new lexical items are created. However, at the same time, many words are

simply transliterated, particularly as they relate to the religious lexicon. However, the use of

Aramaic here should not be considered a Semticism because it reflects transliteration of actual

Aramaic phrases, rather than any influence upon the Greek itself.

Kuziej explores why the Aramaic phrases were included in the Gospel accounts. There are

two possibilities. First, presuming the Gospel authors were not native Greek speakers, which is

not necessarily a valid assumption, they could be instances where the authors did not have a

proper Greek translation for their native lexicon. However, the words in this list of Aramaic

sayings are quite quotidian and not overly specialist in any meaningful sense. The other option

is that they preserve something of an eyewitness account, as Kuziej reads it. However, this

could be a record of a received tradition in Aramaic or an attempt to appear more of an

Mk 1:19-20; c.f. George Wesley Buchanan ‚Jesus and the Upper Class‛, Novum Testamentum 7, no. 3 (1964),

pp. 195-209. https://doi.org/10.2307/1560312.

Matt 11:19; Mk 7:15; c.f. José Faur, The Gospel According to the Jews (Moreshet Sepharad: s.l., 2012), p. 113ff.

John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: Harper,

1992); Mark Bilby, The First Gospel, the Gospel of the Poor: A New Reconstruction of Q and Resolution of the Synoptic

Problem based on Marcion's Early Luke (2020). Accessed online 10.5281/zenodo.3927056.

Using rabbinic legislation around the lines drawn between those who needed help in the social safety net and

those who did not, c.f. B.Z. Rosenfeld and H. Perlmutter, ‚The Poor as a Stratum of Jewish Society in Roman

Palestine 70-250 CE: An Analysis‛, Historia 60,3 (2011), pp. 273-300; B.W. Longendecker, ‚Exposing the

Economic Middle: A Revised Economy Scale for the Study of Early Urban Christianity‛, Journal for the Study of

the New Testament 31,3 (2009), pp. 243-278.

Neil J McWleny, ‚Authenticating Criteria and Mark 7: 1-23‛, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly (1972), pp. 431-460.

Emanuel Tov, ‚Loan-words, Homophony and Transliterations in the Septuagint‛, Biblica 60, no. 2 (1979), pp.

216-236.

Following a somewhat common understanding of Semiticisms in NT Greek, c.f. Max Wilcox, ‚Semitic

Influence on the New Testament‛, Dictionary of the New Testament Background. Craig A. Evans, Stanley E. Porter,

eds. Downers Grove (2000), pp. 1093-1098.

Jordan Lavender

eyewitness account.

Neither of these options seems overwhelmingly convincing. The latter

inches in the right direction but it is not necessary to consider these as eyewitness reports or

attribute them to oral tradition. Rather, the author’s intentions should be considered,

particularly vis-a-vis his religious context and the messages he intended to convey.

This places Mark within the linguistic divide that could have caused the separation between

rabbinic Judaism and proto-orthodox Christianity. However, in this case, Mark intends to

semiticize the Jesus narrative in order to bolster the claims of Jesus’ authority as a teacher of

the law. Perhaps more interesting is the fact that Matthew removes Mark’s Aramaic sayings of

Jesus. The explanation for this editorial change is perplexing. However, viewed from the

religio-linguistic separation between rabbinic Judaism and proto-orthodoxy, it makes sense,

especially given that Matthew is understood by scholars to post-date the publication of Mark

and, therefore, would be further along in the rift between Judaism and Christianity. In this

regard, Matthew does not need to present Jesus as a competent Aramaic speaker because that

would have begun to be associated with rabbinic Judaism, i.e. the Pharisees.

The following phrases are preserved:

1. Abba (Mark 14:36), ‘father’

2. Talitha Kum[i] (Mark 5:41), ‘little girl, rise’

3. Ephphatha (Mark 7:34), ‘be opened’

4. Corban (Mark 7:11), ‘sacrifice’

5. Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani (Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34), ‘My God, my God, what

have you forsaken me?’

Relying on methods

established for analyzing linguistic corpora, we can analyze the

presence of Aramaic in the Gospel corpus rather easily in those cases where Jesus is quoted as

speaking Aramaic. This contrasts with the numerous lexical borrowings from both Hebrew

and Aramaic found in the Gospels, which will not be addressed here. In these cases, we are

dealing with language mixing

with the frame of the text existing in Greek, with the transliterated

Aramaic word appearing within the larger frame. The Aramaic used by Jesus is divided

between four noun phrases and four verb phrases, with the phrase in Mark 15:34 being the

longest, but also a quotation from Psalms 22:1.

In 62.% of the cases, the Aramaic is

preserved by Mark, with 25% occurring in Matthew and, in one case, both Matthew and Mark

Kenneth Kuziej, ‚The Aramaic Logic of Jesus in Mark and Matthew‛, Consensus 2, no. 3 (1976), pp. 5.

Mary Ann Beavis, ‚The Resurrection of Jephthah’s Daughter: Judges 11: 34-40 and Mark 5: 21-24, 35-43‛, The

Catholic Biblical Quarterly 72, no. 1 (2010), pp. 46-62.

C.f. J. Lavender, ‚Polylanguaging and bivalency in the Ecuadorian linguistic landscape: An analysis of public

signs in Azogues, Ecuador‛, Spanish in Context (2021); J. Lavender, ‚English in Ecuador: A look into the

linguistic landscape of Azogues‛, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development (2019) DOI:

10.1080/01434632.2019.1667362; J Lavender, ‚Comparing the pragmatic function of code switching in oral

conversation and in Twitter in bilingual speech from Valencia, Spain‛, Catalan Review, 31 (2017), pp. 15-39.

M Sebba, S Mahootian, and C Jonsson, (Eds.). Language Mixing and Code-Switching in Writing: Approaches to

Mixed-Language Written Discourse (1st ed.). Routledge (2012). https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203136133

             (Eli, eli, lamah azabtani in Hebrew).

The issue of Jesus’ multilingualism and Mark-within-Judaism

preserve an Aramaic phrase, with variations between the two. Luke preserves no words of

Jesus in Aramaic. This makes sense from Edrei and Mendels and Horsley’s readings, especially

if coupled with various considerations of the dating of Luke as the latest of the Synoptic

Gospels around 100 CE. Mark, being the earliest Gospel, would be most inclined to want to

situate Jesus within Judaism, with diminishing interest in doing so with each iteration of the

Synoptic narrative.

1. Abba (Mark 14:36), ‘father’

In the first example, the word Abba, ‘father’ is found in Jesus’ prayer at Gethsemane, where he

prays to God, saying, ‚Ἀββᾶ ὁ Πατήρ,‛

with the superfluous repetition of abba and pater in

Greek. The reference to God as abba is found in Paul’s letters as well.

The lexical item shows

no morphological or phonological adaptation into Greek, suggesting it should be interpreted as

a code switch, and as presenting the actual words of Jesus, as understood by Mark. It is an

Aramaic-Greek intersentential switch at a clausal vocative boundary. Its use in Paul’s letters

could be regarded as a specialized borrowing, meaning it was only borrowed among Jesus

movement followers to imitate his own words. The Peshitta maintains the superfluous

repetition in Syriac, with Jesus saying, ‚ ‛ (abba abi, ‘father, my father’), which is not

present in the Old Syriac. In general, the Syriac versions of the Gospel show a pattern with

how they deal with the Aramaic phrases in the Greek. The Old Syriac version eliminates the

codeswitching, whereas the Peshitta maintains them (in most cases), revealing the conservative

character of the Peshitta.

This, perhaps, reflected earlier Jewish practice, as there was rabbinic

legislation that permitted praying in any language,

although there was debate around if the

angels understood Aramaic or not!

The narrative context for Jesus’ utterance of this phrase in the Gospel is found within the

scene at Gethsemane. Grassi draws a comparison between this scene and the Akedah, the

moment in which Abraham is willing to sacrifice his only son to God. Isaac calls out to

Abraham, his father, and, as a faithful son, obeys the voice of his father. In the same way, Jesus

calls out to God, his father, and obeys the divine will. Grassi sees this as Mark’s attempt to

draw a narrative comparison between the two accounts and to highlight the father-son

relationship between Jesus and God and perhaps the sacrificial nature of Jesus’ death.

Mk 14:36

Gal 4:6; Rom 8:15

Alfredo Delgado Gomez, ‚The Reception of the Codeswitches of the Syriac Versions in the Gospel of Mark‛,

Collectanea Christiana Orientalia 19 (2022), pp. 25-43.

b. Sota 33a

Joseph A. Grassi, ‚‘Abba’, Father (Mark 14: 36): Another Approach‛, Journal of the American Academy of Religion

50, no. 3 (1982), pp. 449-458.

Jordan Lavender

Further, the use of Father to describe God is found in the Hebrew Bible, which is developed

through the redemptive activity of God to Israel in the Exodus, in which Israel is elevated to

his son (Ex 4:22). This theme is reiterated in later prophetic discourse (Isa 63:16). God’s

identity as Father in his role in shaping Israel is also highlighted (Deut 32:6–7; Isa 64:7–8; Mal

2:19).

Josephus sparingly refers to God as Father and his use of the term might be influenced

by Roman pater patriae ideology.

Additionally, Philo refers to God as Father, perhaps

influenced by currents in Greek philosophy.

Early Rabbinic literature includes a number of

references to God as the father in heaven in the earlier strata of the Mishnah and Tosefta.

All of this suggests a reliance on biblical motifs to construct a story of Jesus’ last days that

portrays his role as one fulfilling Scripture, perhaps relying on the story of the Akedah, as a

guide for the presentation of this narrative. Additionally, the use of Aramaic might serve to

further link Jesus to this tradition and current within Second Temple Judaism.

2. Talitha Kum[i] (Mark 5:41), ‘little girl, rise’

The second phrase is found in Jesus’ healing of the synagogue leader’s daughter in Mk 5:41,

where Jesus says, ‚ταλιθα κούμ,‛ in Codex Sinaiticus or ‚Tαλιθά, κοῦμι‛ in later manuscripts.

The Greek translates this phrase as ‚Little girl, I say to you, get up.‛ This is translated in the

Syriac Peshitta as, ‚  ‛ and is left untranslated. The Greek variation in kum vs. kumi

reflects the writing of the Aramaic versions but with the feminine imperative form not being

pronounced in spoken Syriac, the older Greek manuscript traditions reflect the pronunciation

of spoken Syriac. Chilton et al. describe the influence of Aramaic throughout the Gospel as

‚sporadic‛ but highlight how here its use is concentrated because of the issues of ritual purity

and women, both concerns of sources from the time.

The synagogue leader had begged Jesus to come and heal his daughter before that

encounter and Jesus accompanied him, but a crowd formed around him. A woman with a

hemorrhage approaches Jesus and touches his cloak, seaking healing. Jesus addresses the

crowd and the woman with the hemorrhage in unmarked speech (which can be presumed to

be Greek). However, when turning to the young girl, he switches to Aramaic. The little girl

See for a helpful summary: Svetlana Knobnya, ‚God the Father in the Old Testament‛, European Journal of

Theology 20, no. 2 (2011).

Mladen Popovic, ‚God the Father in Flavius Josephus‛, in The Divine Father (Brill, 2014), pp. 181-197.

Scott D. Mackie, ‚Seeing God in Philo of Alexandria: The Logos, the Powers, or the Existent One?‛, Studia

Philonica Annual 21 (2009), pp. 25-47.

Cf. m. Ber. 5:1; m. Kil. 9:8; m. Yom. 8:9; m. Ros.Has. 3:8; m. Sot. 9:15; t. Peah 4:20; t. Dem. 2:7; t. Chag. 2:1; t.

Chul. 2:6, etc.

Bruce D. Chilton, Alan J. Avery-Peck, Darrell Bock, Craig A. Evans, Daniel M. Gurtner, Jacob Neusner,

Lawrence H. Schiffman, and Daniel Oden, A comparative handbook to the gospels of Matthew and Luke: comparisons

with pseudepigrapha, the Qumran scrolls, and Rabbinic literature, vol. 2, (Boston-Leiden: Brill, 2021), p. 202–203.

The issue of Jesus’ multilingualism and Mark-within-Judaism

would have lacked any formal education and knowledge of Greek, unlike the synagogue leader,

for example, who could have had knowledge of Greek.

Kubiś presents a symbolic analysis of the characters in Mark 5:21–43 as both

representatives of Israel. Both are representatives of different aspects of Israel’s society, which

is read as showing the religious marginalization of certain people to show how Israel needed

the Messiah to right the wrongs of the religious establishment of the time.

Wolmarans reads

the raising of Jairus’ daughter as a representation of Jesus’ power, the role of faith in Israel’s

salvation, the exhortation of believers to care for each other and to attack the levitical purity

laws as inapplicable in the Christian assembly.

From a narrative perspective, the story shows

elements of comedy and amusement at the ambiguous elements in the story. Jesus reportedly

heals the hemorrhaging woman but it is implied that she might have healed herself by touching

Jesus’ talit. Additionally, the elements surrounding the raising of Jairus’ daughter are also

ambiguous because it is not clear that the girl had died and Jesus might have only woken her.

The passage has been linked to Judges 11:34–40 and the story of Jephthah’s daughter. Both

stories share a focus on a father and daughter whose death is imminent and who dies. The men

in the stories are leaders of Israel and the texts show similarities in vocabulary and the ordering

of the plot. The purpose of the story in Mark’s narrative is to show that Jesus has the unique

power to bring back the dead to life and foreshadows his own resurrection.

The lexical

similarities are between the LXX version of the narrative and Mark. However, Beavis’s analysis

did not consider any possible overlap between the Aramaic in Mark and the Hebrew Masoretic

text. The Aramaic text reads, ‚Talitha kumi,‛ as we have seen. The Masoretic text reads, ‚bitti,

hakher’a hikhra’etini‛ (Jdg 11:35, ‘my daughter, down, you have brought me down’).

Viewing the use of language here from a discourse analysis perspective, it seems that this

use of Aramaic is to highlight Jesus’ identification with the lowly in society, who would have

been monolingual in Aramaic. The young girl here is a stand-in for the members of society

who were not of any particular socio-economic or cultural importance and shows that Jesus

identifies with these followers as much as any elite members of Christian assemblies.

Adam Kubis, ‚The Hemorrhaging Woman and Jairus’ Daughter as Representatives of Israel. An Attempt at

the Symbolic Reading of Mark 5: 21-43‛, The Biblical Annals 10, no. 67/3 (2020), pp. 355-387; J Mateos, F

Camacho, I Vangelo di Marco, Analisi linguistica e commento esegetico, «Lettura del Nuovo Testamento» 1, (Assisi:

Cittadella, 1997).

J. L. P. Wolmarans, ‚Transitioning from childhood to maturity: a rereading of the resurrection of Jairus’

daughter (Mark 5: 21-43)‛, Ekklesiastikos Pharos 92, no. 1 (2010), pp. 275-285.

Stephen B. Hatton, ‚Comic ambiguity in the Markan healing intercalation (Mark 5: 21-43)‛, Neotestamentica 49,

no. 1 (2015), pp. 91-123.

Mary Ann Beavis, ‚The Resurrection of Jephthah’s Daughter: Judges 11: 34-40 and Mark 5: 21-24, 35-43‛, The

Catholic Biblical Quarterly 72, no. 1 (2010), pp. 46-62.

Original translation.

Jordan Lavender

3. Ephphatha (Mark 7:34), ‘be opened’

The following lexical item, Ethphateh or ephphatha in Greek, occurs in the region of the

Decapolis, as a deaf and mut man is brought to Jesus who begs for healing, some have even

noted an apocalyptic undertone to this seemingly benign healing phrase.

This region was

populated with Jews, Nabateans and Arameans, but was thoroughly Hellenized, and it was

quite likely that Greek was the common language of that area. The Syriac Peshitta records

Jesus saying, ‚‛ but the Greek has, ‚Ἐφφαθά‛, which has resulted in scholarly

speculation about the reason for the significant departure from Aramaic grammar in the

Greek. The Syriac is likely closer to what Jesus would have said. An important factor not to

mention is that the man who is being healed is of a lower social status and would have had no

reason to be proficient in Greek. There has been considerable debate surrounding the precise

linguistic form of ephphatha and if it is meant to be a representation of Hebrew or Aramaic,

given that the Greek transcription in Mark does not match neatly either Hebrew or Aramaic

verbal forms. The precise linguistic formulation is not of great concern to this study, other

than to note that Mark clearly intends to portray Jesus as proficient in a Semitic language.

The use of Semitic varieties when describing Jesus’ healing ministry might also serve a

function of competing with proto-rabbinic charismatic healers, such as Honi the Circle-

Drawer and Hanina ben Dosa. Crossan would describe these wonder workers as ‚operat[ing]

with certain and secure divine authority not mediated through or dependent on the normal

forms, rituals, and institutions through which that divine power usually operate[d].‛

There

might have been a distinct Galilean tradition, linked to the Elijah-Elisha connection in the

prophetic stories, especially since Hanina imitates the Elijah posture and controls the rain like

Elijah.

Crossan postulates that these magicians represented the lower classes against the

Temple elite and were likely far more common than just the few, isolated examples that

remain. It is possible that stories about these figures circulated in the late first century and

Mark’s use of Aramaic served the purpose of linking Jesus to these (presumably) popular

figures.

4. Corban (Mark 7:11), ‘sacrifice’

In Mk 7:11, there is an Aramaic lone insertion in a full Greek sentence, in which Jesus is

engaged in polemical discussion with the Pharisees and is mimicking their arguments and

David Lincicum, ‚Εφφαθα (Mark 7, 34): An Apocalyptic Trope?", Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 91, no. 4

(2015), pp. 649-653.

John Adney Emerton, ‚Maranatha and Ephphatha‛, The Journal of Theological Studies (1967), pp. 427-431.

John Dominic Crossan, Birth of Christianity, (s.l.: A&C Black, 1999), p. 157.

b. Berakhot 34b; b. Ta’anit 24b

The issue of Jesus’ multilingualism and Mark-within-Judaism

mentions ‚‛ (qurban).

The usage reflects how this term was used in other Second

Temple Judaism. The Syriac translations use qurban explicitly in cases where the Greek text

does not.

The context here is markedly different in that Jesus is mimicking what the Pharisees

say in their disputes with him but Jesus is not directly addressing a single person but the

Pharisees and scribes as a crowd. The exchange should be read as a form of oath-taking

perhaps shared with later rabbinic tradition (c.f. m. Shev. 5:2). Available data suggests that oath

formulae were taken seriously at the time and the implication of a bad vow was a serious

offense.

The use of Corban here introduces a relationship-severing formula in that he is

claiming to no longer be able to help his parents in any way, which transgresses a biblical

commandment per Jesus.

The exchange occurs within a broader critique of the Pharisees. Throughout the Gospel,

Jesus’ teaching is contrasted with the Pharisees and his teaching is characterized as having

authority, whereas the teaching of the Pharisees lacks such authority.

In this section, Mark

criticizes the paradosis of the Pharisees. This term is found throughout literature of the time and

interpreted by Baumgarten as a technical term referring to the Pharisaic regulations observed

but not found in the Mosaic legislation.

Other sects of the time rejected Pharisaic paradosis

because it was not written (Ant. 13.10.6) or criticized the Pharisees for following the desires of

their hearts and not God (1QH 4:14–15). Nicolaus of Damascus criticized the Pharisees for

pretending to follow the laws of God (c.f. Ant. 17.2.2).

Chapter 7 includes two halakhic arguments against the legal positions of the Pharisees vis-a-

vis the position of the Jesus movement. The first section (vv. 1–8) concerns a matter of how to

interpret the purity regulations in the Hebrew Bible (c.f. Lev 1:9, 15:27; Deut 23:11). The

debate around the washing of the hands connects to the Pharisaic paradosis mentioned above.

The presence of miqwa’ot at Qumran suggests that immersions were performed for ritual purity

purposes and perhaps for handwashing purposes as well. Additionally, the ritual of

handwashing is explicitly mentioned by the Letter of Aristeas 305.

The Curetonian Old Syriac has  without the first person possessive suffix.

With variation between Old Syriac and the Peshitta in Matt 2:11; 5:23–24; 15:5. The Old Syriac does not have

the possessive form, whereas the Peshitta does.

George Wesley Buchanan, ‚Some Vow and Oath Formulas in the New Testament‛, Harvard Theological Review

58, no. 3 (1965), pp. 319-326.

Aecio E. Cairus, ‚The Heartless Corban Vow (Mark 7: 11)‛, Journal of Asia Adventist Seminary 4, no. 1 (2001),

pp. 3-7.

Richard J. Dillon, ‚’As One Having Authority’ (Mark 1: 22): The Controversial Distinction of Jesus’

Teaching‛, The Catholic Biblical quarterly 57, no. 1 (1995), pp. 92-113; Judith Konig, ‚Exousia and Conflict in

the Gospel of Mark‛, Religions 14, no. 10 (2023), pp. 1318. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101318.

Albert I. Baumgarten, ‚The Pharisaic Paradosis‛, Harvard Theological Review 80, no. 1 (1987), pp. 63-78.

For the connection of Nicolaus to Josephus see D. Schwartz, ‚Josephus and Nicolaus on the Pharisees‛,

Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period 14 (1983), pp. 157-171.

Jordan Lavender

Furstenberg’s reading of this account provides the best framework for understanding the

legal dispute behind this passage.

Jesus is portrayed as disputing the nature of ritual impurity

and how it affected people and the body. Rabbinic laws pertaining to handwashing are tied to

ritual impurity and serve as a full system to describe how impurities enter the body through

contaminated food and liquids. Furstenberg proposes that Jesus’ words were meant to oppose

the Pharisaic ideal of eating in a state of ritual purity, seen as a non-biblical innovation, and

that these norms reflect Greco-Roman practice and not priestly purity laws. According to this

reading, Jesus would say that contaminated food does not render the person ritually impure.

100

This reading seems to follow biblical law which does not propose that contaminated food

defiles the body, which contrasts with Mishnaic law, which does view contamination as

resulting in ritual impurity. Furstenberg renders the passage as the following, ‚Contrary to your

halakhah, which is unknown in the bible, the body is not defiled by eating contaminated food.

Rather, it is defiled by what comes out of it‛.

101

In contrast, tannaitic material describes hands

as possible of second-degree ritual impurity (m.Yad. 2:1; m. Tah. 1:7). This can make liquids

into first-degree impure objects that leads to any object touching liquid receiving the impure

status (m Par. 8:7). Jesus’ response in vv. 18ff is to say that the reason that his disciples do not

wash their hands before eating is that there is no reason to do so according to his

understanding of the purity laws in contrast to that of the Pharisees. Jesus denies the possibility

of contamination through ingestion. In other words, Jesus is specifically attacking the idea that

foods can transfer contamination to other objects as contrary to the message of the levitical

purity system. Other scholars have highlighted the problems with reading this pericope in

Mark as evidence that Jesus opposed the dietary restrictions or even the ritual purity laws.

102

However, food itself was only latently impure, in the sense that impurity was not transferable

through physical contact, only through death. Whereas Thiessen sees Jesus as fulfilling an

apocalyptic vision of removing the sources of impurity, Furstenberg’s approach makes more

sense of what the historical Jesus might have actually meant, with the caveat that it is quite

likely that the Gospel writers subscribed to something close to what Thiessen proposes.

Following this reading, Mark is making a series of complex halakhic arguments through the

mouth of Jesus, showing his sophistication and understanding of Pharisaic law and custom, as

opposed to the nascent ideas of the Jesus movement. The use of Aramaic here serves to

elevate Jesus to the level of halakhic master and rabbi in order to be able to debate the legal

conclusions of the scribes and Pharisees.

Yair Furstenberg, ‚Defilement penetrating the body: a new understanding of contamination in Mark 7.15‛,

New Testament Studies 54, no. 2 (2008), pp. 176-200.

100

M. Kister, ‘Law, Morality and Rhetoric in Some Sayings of Jesus’, «Studies in Ancient Midrash» (ed. J. Kugel;

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 2001), pp. 145-154.

101

Yair Furstenberg, ‚Defilement penetrating the body: a new understanding of contamination in Mark 7.15‛,

New Testament Studies 54, no. 2 (2008), pp. 176-200.

102

Matthew Thiessen Jesus and the forces of death: the gospels' portrayal of ritual impurity within first-century Judaism, (s.l.:

Baker Academic, 2020), pp. 354ff.

The issue of Jesus’ multilingualism and Mark-within-Judaism

Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani (Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34)

‘My God, my God, what have you forsaken me?’

Perhaps most famous of Jesus’ sayings in Aramaic is his cry on the cross, found in Mark and

Matthew, with slight variation. In Mk 15:34, Jesus says, ‚Ἐλωί ἐλωί λεμα ςαβαχθανεί,‛ whereas

in Mt 27:46 he says, ‚ηλι ηλι λεμὰ ςαβαχθανεί‛. The Peshitta treats this in an interesting manner

in Mk by presenting two versions of the phrase with the first being, ‚  ‛

followed by an explanation with, ‚  ‛. The Old Syriac Palimpsest

agrees with the latter clause of the Peshitta. The Matthean version in Syriac does not present

two versions of the phrase but only has, ‚  ‛ with the Old Syriac

palimpsest adding the first person possessive suffix to il. There is a slight difference between

Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus with regard to the word why with CS having lema reflecting

Aramaic and CV with lama reflecting Hebrew.

103

Casey describes some of the historical

development with regard to how the linguistic structure of this saying was attributed to either

Hebrew or Aramaic sources.

104

Casey himself strongly sides with an Aramaic source behind

Jesus’ utterance here, reiterating the commonality of the Markan forms in the Greek and later

Peshitta. He also highlights that this is a prayer to God, like the discussion of Abba above,

which Casey infers to mean that Aramaic was Jesus’ first language, given the record of him

crying out at this moment of anguish in that language. This is beyond the scope of our analysis

here, but Casey’s comments vis-a-vis the Aramaic sources of this material is noted.

This is, of course, a quotation of Ps. 22:2 (Ps 21:2 LXX), which in Hebrew reads, ‚    

        ‛ with the Targumic reading of, ‚            ‛.

105

The lexical variation in

Hebrew and Aramaic is between azavtani vs. shevaktan(i) (‘abandon’ vs. ‘leave’). The Greek

mirrors the Aramaic version of the word. The Peshitta duplication has the second version of

the phrase mirroring Mark’s version, but this might be an attempt to make the Peshitta text

more closely align with the Greek, but it seems to give weight to the form il. For a slight

comparison, the Septuagint reads, ‚ὁ Θεόσ, ὁ Θεόσ μου, πρόςχεσ μοι· ἵνα τί ἐγκατέλιπέσ με‛. The

divergence between the LXX and Masoretic text are not profound but are noticeable. The

LXX includes the phrase, πρόςχεσ μοι, pay attention to me, not found in the Hebrew or Targum.

Mark has subtly edited the Septuagint in this instance, a practice found throughout this

chapter. Earlier, he uses the same psalm, among others, to construct the narrative about Jesus’

death and to portray him as a ‚suffering righteous one‛, a concept derived from both the

Hebrew Bible, but particularly the Wisdom of Solomon, where this righteous person is

103

Bruce Metzger, A textual commentary on the Greek New Testament, vol. 31975, (London: United Bible Societies,

1971); cf. V. Taylor, ‚Additional Notes‛ in The Gospel According to St. Mark, (UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 1966),

pp. 617-671.

104

Maurice Casey, Aramaic sources of Mark’s Gospel, vol. 102, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp.

6ff.

105

Bruce D., Chilton, et al., A comparative handbook to the gospels of Matthew and Luke, vol. 2, (Boston-Leiden: Brill,

2021), p. 512.

Jordan Lavender

described as shamed and killed but vindicated by God (Wis 2:10–20; 3:1–9; 4:7–20; 5:1–7).

Mark also slightly changes the Septuagint’s wording in 15:24 when he quotes Ps 22:19.

106

Mark’s use of the Septuagint here mirrors his use of biblical citations throughout his work,

where he uses the Hebrew Bible in a ‚cryptic, enigmatic, and allusive manner that provokes

the reader's imagination to uncover intertextual connections with those scriptures.‛

107

His

allusive and enigmatic use of Scripture was possible due to his audience, because he ‚writes for

a particular audience, with particular knowledge and competencies‛.

108

In total, Mark contains

twenty-seven direct quotations from the Hebrew Bible via the Septuagint.

109

Another issue that could be missed is that Jesus is misunderstood by the crowd, who hear him

as calling out to Elijah. Whitters sees the inclusion of the Aramaic phrase as a means of

signaling the purpose of the saying which is to further cement Jesus’ identity as other than

being identified with Elijah. This is a role that Mark wishes to cast upon John the Baptist and

tie him into the Jesus story. However, Jesus himself must supersede Elijah. However, at the

time, there was a fervent expectation for a prophet like Elijah.

110

The crowd’s

misunderstanding of Jesus’ words is a setup for the resolution by the centurion who proclaims

Jesus the son of God.

111

Linguistic Analysis and Conclusions

The six Aramaic sayings of Jesus in the Gospel are the following:

1. Abba (Mark 14:36), ‘father’

2. Talitha Kum[i] (Mark 5:41), ‘little girl, rise’

3. Ephphatha (Mark 7:34), ‘be opened’

4. Corban (Mark 7:11), ‘sacrifice’

5. Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani (Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34), ‘My God, my God, what

have you forsaken me?’

The scattered Aramaic phrases attributed to Jesus in the Gospels fall into two types of

categories: intersentential code switches and lexical borrowings, if we analyze the narrative

context of each occurrence. #1 and 4 are most likely lexical borrowings from Aramaic into the

106

Marijke H. De Lang, ‚One Cry or Two? Mark’s Composition of Mark 15: 34-37‛, Journal of Biblical Text

Research 45 (2019), pp. 235-253.

107

Ardel B. Caneday, ‚Mark’s ‘Provocative Use’ of Scripture in Narration: He Was with the Wild Animals and

Angels Ministered to Him‛, Bulletin for Biblical Research 9, no. 1 (1999), p. 19.

108

Donald H. Jeul, ‚A Master of Surprise: Mark Interpreted‛, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), p. 38

109

Ardel B. Caneday, ‚Mark’s ‘Provocative Use’ of Scripture in Narration‛, pp. 19-36.

110

Cbeaver, Mark's Argumentative Jesus: How Jesus Debated His Opponents Using Greek Forms of Argumentation, (s.l.:

Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2018).

111

Mark F. Whitters, ‚Why Did the Bystanders Think Jesus Called upon Elijah before He Died (Mark 15: 34–

36)? The Markan Position‛, Harvard Theological Review 95, no. 1 (2002), pp. 119-124.

The issue of Jesus’ multilingualism and Mark-within-Judaism

Jewish Greek of the author and mapped onto the historical Jesus. That is, they have been

morphologically integrated into Greek and serve to reference concepts related to Jewish law or

philosophical concepts, such as is the case in the Septuagint. #2, 3, 5, 6 are intersentential

switches, meaning that the Aramaic phrase consists of a full verbal phrase. Who does Jesus

address in Aramaic? The daughter of a synagogue leader and the deaf man in the Galilee

around the region of the Decapolis. In the case of his exclamation on the cross, this can be

interpreted as Jesus’ cry to God. Finally, the cry of ‚Hosanna!‛ was made by the crowds, not

Jesus. In all other cases, Jesus speaks Greek, whether to Jew or Gentile. The two clear

examples are cases of Jesus’ healing and his use of Aramaic. This suggests that Aramaic was

used within the context of healing, perhaps an extension of the diglossic use of Aramaic in

prayer. Jesus’ knowledge of Aramaic and Greek seems to reflect common social patterns and

he would have used Greek as a contact language with outsiders and possibly with his followers,

although some suggest he would have spoken Aramaic among his followers, even if textual

evidence does not suggest that.

112

All of this presupposes that Mark’s use of language can tell us something about the

historical Jesus, a fact that remains unsupported. How does Mark portray Jesus as an Aramaic

speaker? First, he shows Jesus praying to God in Aramaic, a characterization that fits some

interpretations of diglossic patterns of the time.

113

This is the case of #1 and #6 above. In

other cases, #2 and 3 above, Jesus addresses members of the lower socioeconomic class, who

would have been Aramaic speakers, according to many interpretations of linguistic proficiency

of the time. Finally, Jesus’ use legal terminology in Aramaic in #4 is in the context of a

religious debate with the Pharisees.

The available evidence suggests that Jesus was portrayed as a Jewish sage, like the early

Rabbis, and in his literary portrayal, he is presented as one able to speak Greek. The Aramaic

phrases found in Mark and elsewhere are used in addressing God and in healing individuals

who would have not spoken Greek. This implies Jesus was like other sophists, in that he was

able to speak Greek. It is quite likely that his mother language was Aramaic and that he used

this daily to some degree. Mark does not attempt to portray Jesus as proficient in Hebrew,

something that is corrected by the later Gospel of Luke, when he portrays Jesus as reading the

scrolls of the Prophets in a synagogue.

112

Hughson T. Ong, ‚An Evaluation of the Aramaic and Greek Language Criteria in Historical Jesus Research: A

Sociolinguistic Study of Mark 14, 32–65‛, Filogia Neotestamentaria 25 (2012), pp. 37-55.

113

Hughson T. Ong, ‚An Evaluation of the Aramaic and Greek Language Criteria..‛, pp. 37-55.

Jordan Lavender

Abstract: The available evidence suggests that

Jesus was portrayed as a Jewish sage, like the early

Rabbis, and in his literary portrayal, he is

presented as one able to speak Greek. The

Aramaic phrases found in Mark and elsewhere are

used in addressing God and in healing individuals

who would have not spoken Greek. This implies

Jesus was like other sophists, in that he was able to

speak Greek. It is quite likely that his mother

language was Aramaic and that he used this daily

to some degree. Mark does not attempt to portray

Jesus as proficient in Hebrew, something that is

corrected by the later Gospel of Luke, when he

portrays Jesus as reading the scrolls of the

Prophets in a synagogue.

Resumen: La evidencia disponible sugiere que

Jesús fue retratado como un sabio judío, como los

primeros rabinos, y en su retrato literario, se lo

presenta como alguien capaz de hablar griego. Las

frases arameas que se encuentran en Marcos y

otros lugares se utilizan para dirigirse a Dios y

curar a personas que no habrían hablado griego.

Esto implica que Jesús era como otros sofistas en

el sentido de que podía hablar griego. Es muy

probable que su lengua materna fuera el arameo y

que la utilizara a diario hasta cierto punto. Marcos

no intenta retratar a Jesús como un experto en

hebreo, algo que se corrige en el evangelio

posterior de Lucas, cuando retrata a Jesús leyendo

los rollos de los profetas en una sinagoga.

Keywords: Mark; Bilingualism; Aramaic; Second

Temple; Greek.

Palabras clave: Marcos; Bilingüismo; Arameo;

Segundo Templo; Griego.