[zeek]

The Gospels clearly document that Jesus spoke Aramaic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_Jesus So, from naturalistic-historical point of view in which we find Jesus as a Galilean peasant/artisan existing on the margin between Syriac/Hebraic/Aramaic culture and the Greco/Roman culture, the importance of understanding as much as possible about ancient Aramaic cannot be overestimated. On the subject of Aramaic , Albert Schweitzer, writing in the early 20th century provides this summary:

In the course of the nineteenth century Aramaic—known down to the time of Michaelis as “Chaldee” * — was more thoroughly studied. The various branches of this language and the history of its progress became more or less clearly recognisable. Kautzsch’s grammar of Biblical Aramaic (1884) and Dalman’s work embody the result of these studies.

“The Aramaic language,” explains Meyer, “is a branch of the North Semitic, the linguistic stock to which also belong the Assyrio-Babylonian language in the East, and the Canaanitish languages, including Hebrew, in the West, while the South Semitic languages—the Arabic and Aethiopic—form a group by themselves. The users of these languages, languages, the Aramaeans, were seated in historic times between the Babylonians and Canaanites, the area of their distribution extending from the foot of Lebanon and Hermon in a north-easterly direction as far as Mesopotamia, where “Aram of the two rivers” forms their eastern-most province. Their immigration into these regions forms the third epoch of the Semitic migrations, which probably lasted from 1600 B.C. down to 600.

The Aramaic states had no great stability. The most important of them was the kingdom of Damascus, which at a certain period was so dangerous an enemy to northern Israel. In the end, however, the Aramaean dynasties were crushed, like the two Israelitish kingdoms, between the upper and nether millstones of Babylon and Egypt. In the time of the successors of Alexander, there arose in these regions the Syrian kingdom; which in turn gave place to the Roman power. But linguistically the Aramaeans conquered the whole of Western Asia.

In the course of the first millennium B.C. Aramaic became the language of commerce and diplomacy, as Babylonian had been during the second. It was only the rise of Greek as a universal language which put a term to these conquests of the Aramaic. In the year 701 B.C. Aramaic had not yet penetrated to Judaea. When the rabshakeh (officer) sent by Sennacherib addressed the envoys of Hezekiah in Hebrew, they begged him to speak Aramaic in order that the men upon the wall might not understand. [II KIngs 18:26]

For the post-exilic period the Aramaic edicts in the Book of Ezra and inscriptions on Persian coins show that throughout wide districts of the new empire Aramaic had made good its position as the language of common intercourse. Its domain extended from the Euxine southwards as far as Egypt, and even into Egypt itself. Samaria and the Hauran adopted it. Only the Greek towns and Phoenicia resisted.

The influence of Aramaic upon Jewish literature begins to be noticeable about the year 600. Jeremiah and Ezekiel, writing in a foreign land in an Aramaic environment, are the first witnesses to its supremacy. In the northern part of the country, owing to the immigration of foreign colonists after the destruction of the northern kingdom, it had already gained a hold upon the common people.

In the Book of Daniel, written in the year 167 B.C., the Hebrew and Aramaic languages alternate. Perhaps, indeed, we ought to assume an Aramaic ground-document as the basis of this work.

At what time Aramaic became the common popular speech in the post-exilic community we cannot exactly discover. Under Nehemiah “Judaean,” that is to say, Hebrew, was still spoken in Jerusalem; in the time of the Maccabees Aramaic seems to have wholly driven out the ancient national language. Evidence for this is to be found in the occurrence of Aramaic passages in the Talmud, from which it is evident that the Rabbis used this language in the religious instruction of the people. The provision that the text, after being read in Hebrew, should be interpreted to the people, may quite well reach back into the time of Jesus. The first evidence for the practice is in the Mishna, about A.D. 150.

In the time of Jesus three languages met in Galilee—Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. In what relation they stood to each other we do not know, since Josephus, the only writer who could have told us, fails us in this point, as he so often does elsewhere. He informs us that when acting as an envoy of Titus he spoke to the people of Jerusalem in the ancestral language, and the word he uses is [Gk. evraizon]. But the very thing we should like to know—whether, namely, this language was Aramaic or Hebrew, he does not tell us.

We are left in the same uncertainty by the passage in Acts (xxii. 2) which says that Paul spoke to the people [Gk. Evraidi dialekto], thereby gaining their attention, for there is no indication whether the language was Aramaic or Hebrew. For the writers of that period “Hebrew” simply means Jewish. Schweitzer, Albert. The Quest of the Historical Jesus (Collected Works of Albert Schweitzer Book 3) (pp. 271-273). Actonian Press. Kindle Edition.

It is also likely that Jesus knew some Koine Greek since it was spoken widely in Galilee, and it is also possible that Jesus knew some Hebrew that he learned in the synagogue.

According to Dead Sea Scrolls archaeologist Yigael Yadin, Aramaic was the language of Hebrews until Simon Bar Kokhba's revolt (132 AD to 135 AD). Yadin noticed the shift from Aramaic to Hebrew in the documents he studied, which had been written during the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt. In his book, Bar Kokhba: The rediscovery of the legendary hero of the last Jewish Revolt Against Imperial Rome, Yigael Yadin notes, "It is interesting that the earlier documents are written in Aramaic while the later ones are in Hebrew. Possibly the change was made by a special decree of Bar Kokhba who wanted to restore Hebrew as the official language of the state"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_Jesus