Luke 4, NRSVUE
16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Did Jesus Speak Greek? by Joseph A. Fitzmyer
The following paragraphs were extracted from that very good paper.
Did Jesus himself speak Greek?
The answer is almost certainly yes. The more difficult question, however, is whether he taught in Greek. Are any of the sayings of Jesus that are preserved for us only in Greek nevertheless in the original language in which he uttered them?
That Aramaic was the language Jesus normally used for both conversation and teaching seems clear. Most New Testament scholars would agree with this.27 But did he also speak Greek? The evidence already recounted for the use of Greek in first-century Palestine provides the background for an answer to this question. But there are more specific indications in the Gospels themselves.
All four Gospels depict Jesus conversing with Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect of Judea, at the time of his trial (Mark 15:2–5; Matthew 27:11–14; Luke 23:3; John 18:33–38). Even if we allow for obvious literary embellishment of these accounts, there can be little doubt that Jesus and Pilate did engage in some kind of conversation (compare the independent testimony in 1 Timothy 6:13, which speaks of Jesus’ “testimony” before Pilate). In what language did Jesus and Pilate converse? There is no mention of an interpreter. Since there is little likelihood that Pilate, a Roman, would have been able to speak either Aramaic or Hebrew, the obvious answer is that Jesus spoke Greek at his trial before Pilate.
The same might be suggested by Jesus’ encounter with the centurion (Matthew 8:5–13; Luke 7:2–10; John 4:46–53). Luke gives him the title hekatontarchos, which might well indicate that he was a Roman centurion, or at least in charge of a troop of Roman mercenaries in the service of Herod Antipas (perhaps that is why he is called basiliskos, “royal official,” in John 4:46). In any event, Luke 7:9 implies he is a gentile. In what language did Jesus speak to this first gentile convert? Most probably in Greek.
In Mark 7:25–30 Jesus, having journeyed to the pagan area of Tyre and Sidon, converses with a Syro-Phoenician woman. Though the indigenous population of that area undoubtedly spoke some Semitic language, either Phoenician or Aramaic (sister languages), the Marcan account goes out of its way to identify the woman as Helleµnis, “a Greek” (Mark 7:26). This too suggests that Jesus spoke to her in Greek.
…
It is important to keep in mind the three stages of the Gospel tradition. Stage I consists of what Jesus of Nazareth said and did during the approximate period between 1 and 33 A.D.; stage II consists of what the disciples and apostles taught and preached about him and his words and his deeds during the approximate period between 33 and 66 A.D. Stage III consists of what the evangelists sifted from that preaching and teaching and then redacted, each in his own way and each with his own evangelical purpose and literary and rhetorical style. This last stage occurred sometime between about 66 and 95 A.D. The canonical Gospels reflect stage III of the gospel tradition much more than stage I.
If we fail to keep this in mind, we fall into the danger of fundamentalism, of equating the Greek of stage III of the gospel tradition with its Aramaic stage I.
