Wow, total history fail in this thread, not only from Schlafly, but from a lot of the posters.
Americans are used to being monolingual (in some cases even less), but many cultures are inherently polyglott, by necessity.
Any historian versed in the Roman period Levant will tell you that it's more than likely, even certain, that Jesus would have spoken Aramaic as his first language, but also Koine Greek to a good degree, and probably enough rough Latin to get by.
The Levant wasn't composed of segregated, regionally homogenous societies. It wasn't a melting pot either, but a traveller like Jesus would have been pretty lost without being able to speak the Lingua Franca du jour, Koine Greek.
Not only that, the Romans were there as an occupation army. They certainly weren't going to be arsed to learn Aramaic, so any contact with the Romans would have been in Koine and probably in Latin to some degree, more so the lower the rank of the Roman soldier. In occupied countries the locals usually end up speaking the occupiers' language in some way, at least enough to do business. ("Hey, Yankee, you buy?")
The real question is, what language did Pilate and Jesus speak with one another at Jesus' trial? I'm guessing Latin.
Oh, and Andy, the Paulist Letters were written by this guy named Paul, the intellectual formerly know as Saul.
