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• And so, to conclude this lesson, we have seen that Aramaic was the language used for official correspondence throughout the vast network of the Medo-Persian Empire. When the Jews went into the Babylonian exile, Aramaic was largely new to them, and they still spoke Hebrew. But seventy years later, at the end of the Babylonian captivity, several generations had gone by, and the Jews now spoke Aramaic as they normal language.
• Afterwards, continuing on through time in the Medo-Persian Empire, the use of Aramaic simply increased. As the Talmud suggests, the Jews by this time possibly even preferred to speak Aramaic as their secular, or everyday, language, and reserved Hebrew for prayers, worship in the Temple, and for reading the Hebrew Bible.