Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§9.9 The Historical Context
the presence of Scripture scrolls is attested in Palestinian villages as early as
1 Mace. 1.56-57 and confirmed by Josephus for both Judea {War 2.229) and
Galilee (Life 134). 285 So the picture painted in Luke 4.16-17 is in essence quite
credible. 286
Information on the languages spoken in Palestine at the time of Jesus
steadily increases. There is no reason to question the very substantial consensus
that Jesus gave at least the bulk of his teaching in Aramaic. 287 This is not to ignore
the degree of penetration of the Greek language into first-century Palestine,
288 and the likelihood that Jesus knew at least some Greek and may indeed
have spoken Greek on occasions. 289
c. Jesus and Common Judaism
On the basis of earlier discussion, we can conclude meaningfully that a boy
brought up in Nazareth in lower Galilee in the early years of the first century CE
is properly described as a 'Jew'. That description would presumably have in-
285. See further M. Bar-Ilan, 'Scribes and Books in the Late Second Commonwealth
and Rabbinic Period', in Mulder, ed., Mikra 21-38.
286. Meier as usual provides a balanced discussion {Marginal Jew 1.271-78, 303-309).
He is followed by T. E. Boomershine, 'Jesus of Nazareth and the Watershed of Ancient Orality
and Literacy', in Dewey, ed., Orality and Textuality 7-36: Jesus was probably literate but unable
to write (22-23). Crossan has little doubt that Jesus was illiterate {Birth 235); similarly
Chilton, Rabbi Jesus 99. In complete contrast Flusser assumes that 'Jesus' Jewish education
was incomparably superior to that of St. Paul' {Jesus 30).
287. See particularly J. A. Fitzmyer, 'The Languages of Palestine in the First Century
A.D.', A Wandering Aramean: Collected Aramaic Essays (Missoula: Scholars, 1979) 29-56;
also 'Aramaic Background' 6-10. Meier's discussion of the subject is quite sufficient for our
purposes {Marginal Jew 1.255-68, 287-300); see also L. T. Stuckenbruck, 'An Approach to the
New Testament Through Aramaic Sources: The Recent Methodological Debate', JSP 8 (1991)
3-29; M. O. Wise, 'Languages of Palestine', DJG 434-44; Millard, Reading and Writing chs. 4
and 5 (especially 140-47). Flusser continues to maintain that Jesus taught in Hebrew (Jesus
128).
288. See especially Hengel, 'Hellenization'; S. E. Porter, 'Jesus and the Use of Greek in
Galilee', in Chilton and Evans, eds., Studying the Historical Jesus 123-54. Particularly worthy
of note is the presence of Greek manuscripts among the DSS and the predominance of Greek
papyri in the Babatha archive written between 93 and 132 (Millard, Reading and Writing 113,
115).
289. Porter argues that possibly seven of Jesus' conversations took place in Greek —
Matt. 8.5-13; John 4.4-26; Mark 2.13-14; 7.25-30; 12.13-17; 8.27-30; 15.2-5, each, apart from
John 4, with parallels (Criteria 157-63). But even the plausibility of Matt. 8.5-13 is in question
(was the centurion a Gentile? — see above §8.4b — and in Luke's version he used intermediaries).
In Mark 15.2-5 the exchange is minimal.
315