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The "Bible" or "Old Testament" and the "Mishna" were usually in Hebrew, the Talmud in Aramaean.
There is no record in the Gospels for Jesus having proceeded to studies in the Academies. However it is obvious from the content of the Gospels that he had a highly advanced knowledge of both the law and the prophets. Edersheim claims Jesus spoke Hebrew, Greek, possibly Latin, and Aramaean.
Thus there is a vast difference between Jesus' early life according to what is known from the Gospels and that which is given in The Urantia Book. Particularly this is true for writers such as Bundy1 who assumes that Jesus was an uneducated provincial with no knowledge of the Greek and Roman worlds beyond Galilee.
Missing from both the biblical account and that of our selected historians is the fact that during Jesus' childhood the capital city of provincial Galilee was Sepphoris. The capital moved to Tiberias on the shores of the lake in A.D. 21, but Sepphoris remained as an important Greco-Roman city. This ancient city site was being excavated in 1985 in a joint project between the Hebrew and Duke Universities. It is situated on a hill less than five miles from Nazareth, and was a relatively large city complete with amphitheatre, palace, etc. as would be expected for a city built by one as vain as Herod Antipas.
Sepphoris does not get a mention in connection with Jesus and is not mentioned either in the Old or New Testaments but Edersheim confirms its early historicity by a comment that it was captured by Jewish nationalists early in the first century2. This is surprising since Edersheim's one thousand page book was not published until 1993, long after archaeological explorations had given that city much publicity at least in relevant academic circles.
Such a large city in close proximity to Nazareth where Jesus appears to have spent much of his early life but nevertheless failing to get a mention either in the Gospel literature or by modern historians is an unexplained mystery. However it appears to be highly unlikely that Jesus could have lived within easy walking distance of the provincial capital and not be influenced by its presence.
Certainly the omission has been remedied in The Urantia Book (published 1955) which informs us that not only did Jesus spend several years full time working in Sepphoris, but also that his earthly father, Joseph, was killed there while working on one of Herod's building projects.
Thus Jesus was not a country yokel who had never been exposed to Greco-Roman civilization1. According to The Urantia Book, his father, Joseph, spoke both fluent Aramaic and fluent Greek, and taught the young Jesus Greek from a Greek language version of the scriptures that was presented to Jesus by a family friend when a child in Egypt.
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