Aramaic as the mother tongue of Jesus

ARAMAIC WATCH: Aramaic would have been the mother tongue of Jesus (John Arnott, King Township Sentinel). A refreshingly accurate sketch of the Aramaic language in a local newspaper.

Although today, tiny, widely-scattered Jewish and Christian communities in the Middle East (some in Syria and southern Turkey, but mostly in Iraq) speak dialects of Aramaic as their first language. This ancient tongue, like Latin, is now mainly used in church services by some Syrian Christians and Iraqi Chaldo-Assyrian Christians.

Even though the earthly Jesus never attended service in a Christian church, he would feel almost at home in one of these Oriental Christian churches, where the language at least used would be familiar to him.

That would be something like putting Shakespeare in a modern church service in English. He would understand a fair amount of what was said but he would still be pretty confused.