Ur of the Chaldees was the original dwelling place of Abraham (Gen. 11:31); it was in Babylon. The people there were descendants of the tribe of Shem, and the language they used was the Babylonian language just mentioned. When Abraham was called by God into Canaan, historians all agree that he would naturally have given up his native Babylonian language of Shem and would have taken up the local language of Canaan. This language of Canaan probably became the later Hebrew language, or a part of it. Some have taken the “language of Canaan” in Isaiah 19:18 to mean the language used by the Israelites, the descendants of Abraham. Historians have postulated that a large portion of the subsequent Hebrew language was developed from such a language of Canaan.
About six hundred years before Christ, the Israelites were taken captive by the Babylonians to Babylon. They stayed there for a long time. Spontaneously, they gave up Hebrew and adopted the local Aramaic language, which was the Chaldean language. After their return from their captivity, history tells us that they were still using this Aramaic language. At the time of the Lord Jesus, the Romans had already occupied the land of Israel. Although Greek was commonly used throughout the Roman Empire, the Jews nevertheless still used Aramaic among themselves. Only the rabbis spoke and read the Scriptures in Hebrew in the synagogues. If there were some in the synagogues who did not understand Hebrew, there would be someone to translate it into Aramaic.
Many historians have postulated that the language used by the Lord Jesus to speak with the people daily was probably Aramaic, not Hebrew. The words that He spoke in Mark 5:41, “Talitha koum,” and in Mark 15:34, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani,” were all Aramaic.
After the Roman Empire conquered the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea and spread the Greek culture everywhere, Greek became the common vernacular language used by all the people in the Roman Empire at that time.
All of these languages are directly or indirectly related to the completion of the Bible.
The main body of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew.
In the Old Testament, there are four portions which were written in Aramaic. They are Jeremiah 10:11, Daniel 2:4-7:28, Ezra 4:8-6:18, and 7:12-26. These four portions are absolutely related to the Aramaic people (that is, the Babylonians). That is why the Bible used Aramaic there instead of Hebrew.
The whole New Testament was written in Greek. A few sentences in it were written in Aramaic. They are those already mentioned, “Talitha koum,” and “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.”
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