05-05-2010, 09:53 PM
It's generally agreed that they would have spoken Aramaic. Most scholars contend that they would have spoken a Galilean dialect closer to Judean Aramaic than the Syriac of the Peshitta, but a minority hold to the Syriac theory.
There is some evidence that Jews living in Israel in that period may have also been familiar with Hebrew to a certain degree, but it wasn't widely spoken, and even when Hebrew was eventually revived it was the heavily Aramaized Mishnaic dialect, and a far cry from Biblical Hebrew.
There is some evidence that Jews living in Israel in that period may have also been familiar with Hebrew to a certain degree, but it wasn't widely spoken, and even when Hebrew was eventually revived it was the heavily Aramaized Mishnaic dialect, and a far cry from Biblical Hebrew.