Faith lives in the heart of every person, even very deeply ... Without it, a person simply cannot exist. We Christians believe in God and his Son Jesus Christ. The Bible says that the Son of God was a man, lived among people. Where is his homeland? What language did Jesus Christ speak? You will find the answers to these questions in the article.
Promised Land Where Jesus Christ Lived
Each person is invisibly bound to the place where he saw the earthly light. There is some higher regularity to be born in that and not in another place. The incarnation of Jesus Christ - the Savior of all people - in the land of Palestine, among the Jewish people, also naturally happened.
This land God of hosts promised Abraham and his descendants for loyalty to Him. Obeying God, Abraham left his native Babylonian lands and settled here in a foreign land for him. “The children of Abraham” had a difficult history: hunger brought them to Egypt, Moses led them 40 years through the desert to return, Jesus Joshua recaptured the promised land from the Canaanite tribes. 12 Jewish clans settled here.
For thousands of years, Jews lived in this territory, experienced Babylonian captivity, the destruction of Jerusalem, the loss of the Ark of the Covenant. They returned here again, rebuilt the Temple and continued to pray - a small nation in the pagan sea of ​​neighbors maintained worship of the One Invisible God. The whole Old Testament history of the Jewish people is a preparation for the Incarnation to take place in its midst.
Birthdays of Christ - Babel Babel
Half a century before Christ, Palestine was captured by Rome, which exercised world domination. The Jewish state was no longer single. Judea in the south was inhabited by the most Orthodox part of the people, in the middle part - in Samaria - the inhabitants mixed with the eastern settlers and became almost pagans, so the Jews did not communicate with them. In the north of the country was Galilee, where representatives of the Greek diaspora, natives of Phenicia and Syria, and Arabs lived next to the Jews. The tolerance of the Galileans in relation to the neighbors was condemned by the inhabitants of Judea, they considered the northern relatives to be lower-class people, but still communicated with them.
Herod the Great
The power in Judea at that time was usurped by Herod the Great. Great he was a villain and a lawless. Afraid of losing power, he executed all his relatives, his wife, and sons. The beating of 14 thousand Bethlehem children is also his work. And the Holy Family, saving the Divine Infant, was forced to hide in Egypt.
After Herod the Great, kings were no longer in Judea. His son, the depraved Herod Antipas, mentioned in the Gospel as the murderer of John the Baptist, ruled only Galilee and obeyed the Roman governor - the procurator Pontius Pilate.
The Jews had only spiritual leaders: the scribes-teachers of the Law of God, the Pharisees and Sadducees - religious aristocratic parties. Seeking power and wealth, they hated Roman dominion and dreamed of the Messiah, the savior, who would free them from strangers. They did not wait for Christ the suffering, atonement for their sins.
Conception: immaculate or illegal?
Who is the mother and father of Jesus Christ? There is no use in the endless search for evidence of the immaculate conception, the exact date of the Birth of Christ, other facts confirming church dogma. This is a matter of faith, which does not require proof, but is accepted by the heart as the truth necessary for it. “Behold, the Virgin in the womb will accept ...” Translating these words of the prophet Isaiah into Greek, the righteous Simeon the God-Receiver wanted to write: “young woman”. Church tradition says that he lived 360 years to see the Born Virgin. And in the Greek translation it remained: "Parthenos," that is, Virgo!
God the Word incarnates on Earth as follows Him - in a miraculous way. Not everything can accommodate the human mind, because it is not equal to the Divine. Here you need humility. Anyone who does not want to reconcile, let him repeat after the Jews who betrayed Christ the gossip about the "illegitimate son of a married woman." By the way, according to the law of Moses, Joseph had to stone Mary to death if the child were illegal. His own son would have remained in history as “Jesus is the son of Joseph,” and not “Jesus is the son of Mary,” as the two holy books testify - the Gospel and the Qur'an.
Pedigree of Mary
Mary's parents, according to the testimony of the Gospel of Luke, lived in Nazareth of Galilee and were Orthodox Jews. At three years old, the girl was sent to the Jerusalem temple, the high priest accepted her as a representative of the Davidov clan and introduced her to the Holy of Holies - a place where priests themselves enter once a year. After conception, Mary spent three months in Jerusalem with her cousin, the mother of John the Baptist. Elizabeth came from the family of Aaron - the first Jewish priest. So, the future Mother of God was one hundred percent Jewish and was related to the high priest Aaron and King David.
Husband, guardian, betrothed?
The law of Moses did not allow leaving adult girls at the Temple. They were given back to parents or given out to marry. The elderly parents of Mary had died by then, and she categorically refused to marry. Then the orphan girl was betrothed to an elderly and not rich carpenter Joseph 80 years old from her hometown of Nazareth. They were distant relatives. The genealogy of Joseph the Betrothed dates back to King David. For the census announced by the emperor Tiberius, he came to the city of David - Bethlehem, where Christ was born.
Joseph's feat of life began after the Annunciation, when he began to notice that Mary was pregnant. A storm of inner thoughts offered different ways out of the situation: stoning, letting go of yourself, recognizing the unborn child as your son and covering up shame ...
The fact remains that he did not recognize Christ as his son, was not his father in the flesh, but did not leave Mary neither in the Nativity scene, nor during the flight to Egypt, nor during his life in a foreign land, when the Virgin and Child were especially defenseless.
Who is My Mother? And who are my brothers? (Matthew 12:46)
The biographical data of Christ are described in the Bible. It says that the Infant born in the cave of Bethlehem on the eighth day was circumcised according to Jewish custom, received the name Jesus, which translates as “savior”. He was raised by his parents in the Jewish faith, and there is no reason to deny his belonging to this society. And he himself, in conversation with the Samaritan woman, said: “We know what we bow to, for salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22).
What is the nationality of Jesus Christ? He embodied and lived among the Jews, and this is their glory: they brought up in their midst the only one worthy to be the Mother of God. But according to the laws of levirate, the genealogy of a person is conducted on the paternal side. The father passes the properties of the clan by inheritance. The mother of Christ was and remains the Virgin, he did not have an earthly father. Therefore, He does not fit into the narrow framework of Jewish selectivity and isolation, breaking the bonds of consanguinity. When a mother and her brothers stood at the door to take him home, he replied that those who did the will of the Heavenly Father were relatives to him. So, the nationality of Jesus Christ is not defined. There is no Greek, no Jew, no barbarian, no Scythian in Him; He incarnated in order to unite all nations into a new - spiritual - community. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3: 6).
The language spoken by Jesus Christ
What language did Jesus Christ speak? “Of course, in Hebrew,” the answer immediately begs. But we must not forget that there was no longer a single Jewish state as such in the time of Jesus Christ. And the Hebrew language itself has undergone great changes.
The language of the Old Testament - Hebrew - was widespread in Judea: they prayed on it, conducted theological conversations, and communicated.
So what language did Jesus Christ speak? In Galilee, where the Son of God lived most of his earthly life, they spoke Aramaic: a kind of colloquial Hebrew, which has undergone a strong influence of the Semitic language of the nomadic Aramaeans. This language was livelier and richer than prim Hebrew, like life in Galilee itself.
In all the territories conquered by Alexander the Great, including Palestine, the population spoke Greek “koyne”, which allows people of different nationalities to understand each other.
And finally, Judea became part of the Roman state, where the official language was Latin.
Qumran Manuscripts Certificate
Over 60 years ago in the desert, near the Dead Sea, caves with a huge number of religious texts were found. Scientists have now established that the scrolls were a library exported from Jerusalem during the war with Rome. The study of manuscripts made it possible to establish: in the time of Jesus Christ, services were held in Hebrews in the synagogues. Jews in exile (for example, in Egypt) prayed in Greek. Interpretations of Scripture and sermons were conducted in Aramaic, understood by the common people.
“Eloi, Eloi, Lama of Savahfani?” (Matthew 27:46), (Mark 15:34)
The Aramaic language of Jesus Christ was not the only one that He possessed. Since the family of Jesus lived for some time in Egypt, where there was communion in Greek, there can be no doubt that He freely owned it. His students - Peter, Andrew, Luke, Philip - bore Greek names, it is likely that communication with them, as well as with foreigners was conducted in Greek.
What language did Jesus Christ speak? At age 12, Jesus first made his parents worry about himself: he was lost on the road from Jerusalem to Nazareth. Mary and Joseph found him in a temple, talking with the Pharisees on theological topics. Of course, the conversation was in Hebrew - the language of prayer and theology.
The interrogation of Pontius Pilate on the last day of His earthly life went without translators (not a single source mentions them). It is hard to believe that the Roman procurator should learn his language to communicate with enslaved people. In all likelihood, Jesus of Nazareth answered him in Latin.
But his native language was still Aramaic. At it, he spoke his sermons in the Galilee, talked with students. The last words of Christ were also uttered in Aramaic: "God, God, why did you leave me?"
Now the native Aramaic language of Jesus Christ is disappearing, it is spoken by a handful of people in Syrian villages.
Logos of Christ
Two centuries ago, biblical scholars, comparing the synoptic Gospels, found that they had some early source, which they designated the Gospel Q. This is a collection of introductory sayings of Jesus Christ, which included the Sermon on the Mount, the prayer “Our Father”, a story about John Forerunner, some parables. All the sermons of Jesus Christ to disciples and listeners are a call to stand on the path of salvation. This path is always narrow, full of suffering, self-denial. But this is the way to gain the kingdom of God within us. Woe to him who, in his life, will choose the broad path of self-indulgence that leads to perdition.
He who saves his life for himself will lose it. Whoever loses his soul for Christ’s sake will save her.
The word of Christ, read in spirit and truth (with a pure heart and without earthly self-interest), is understandable to people of all nationalities.