Multi-Lingual Palestine

In the time of the New Testament, Judea was a multi-lingual region. Aramaic was the common speech among Jews; but most had at least a smattering of Greek, could hear Latin spoken all over Jerusalem, not to mention Hebrew in certain settings. Linguistically, first-century Palestine was far more like Switzerland than like the US.

Now, in this situation, the normal thing is to become a comparative linguist. It doesn’t require any formal training; becoming multi-lingual was a demand of survival, and once you know a few languages the natural thing to do is to play them off each other: The Aramaic is X; what’s the Latin equivalent? Or Greek?

Interest in cross-linguistic puns, translations, word derivations in one or the other direction, seems inherent in the situation. And the textual evidence is there, at least a bit: John translates Cephas, Rabbi, Messiah, and other terms into Greek equivalents.