As far as the language that Jesus spoke in his daily life, it was almost certainly Aramaic, according to History. That was the tongue of 1st century Palestinian Jews, and indeed, it’s still spoken to this day by a small number of Christians in Iraq and Syria. Aramaic is in the same linguistic family as Hebrew, according to The Washington Post, although the two tongues are not mutually intelligible.

On the subject of Hebrew, Jesus might have understood (if not spoken) that language as well. In much the same way that liturgical Latin is used in certain Catholic contexts, Hebrew was the language of religious scholars of Jesus’ day, and of course, the language in which the Old Testament (the sacred text of Jews) was written. Indeed, Luke 4 records Jesus having read from a scroll of the Book of Isaiah, which was written in Hebrew.

Finally, he may have understood, if not even spoken, ancient Greek. Owing largely to the spread of Greek culture in the area (due to military conquest), the ruling and educated classes of Jesus’ day spoke that language, and indeed, the New Testament was written in it. At least one scholar, Jonathan Katz, a classics lecturer at Oxford University, is convinced that Jesus might have known at least a few words in Greek.