First, most biblical scholars believe that the language Jesus and his disciples, as well as the Apostle Paul, spoke was an Old Galilean Aramaic or Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, which is a dialect of the Western Aramaic known as a Northern dialect. There are many modern Eastern Neo-Aramaic dialects, but no known Western dialect exists today. It is believed to be a dead language, although, in recent years, three villages in Syria, it was discovered, still speak a dialect known as the Ma’lula dialect, which is believed to be a descendent of the Western dialect and possibly closely related to the Old Galilean Jesus Aramaic.  

The Assyrian Church of the East, also known as the Nestorian Church, traditionally considers the Syriac version of the New Testament, the Peshitta, to be the original New Testament and the Aramaic to be its original language.