Did Jesus speak Greek?

Although there are some who deny that Jesus spoke any language other than Aramaic, there is a growing number of scholars who recognize that Jesus certainly spoke Aramaic but probably also spoke Greek on occasion. Most scholars do not wish to attempt to identify such episodes, even if they recognize it as possible that Jesus did speak Greek. A few scholars have been willing to try to identify such episodes. The criteria for identiWcation might well include the plausibility of Greek being used in the particular context. For those episodes where Greek is presumed, the use of independent accounts is helpful in establishing what may well have been said on the occasion. Those passages that have been identifed as possible instances where Jesus conversed in Greek with others are the following (see Porter 2000a, 2003):

At the very least, this discussion indicates that it is highly probable that Jesus was himself multilingual, knowing Aramaic and Greek, and possibly Hebrew (Luke 4: 16–30), even if we cannot establish with certainty the language of a given episode, especially where the question of Greek is involved.