“A Hebrew dialect,” then, does not imply that Matthew wrote in the Aramaic language. In other connections we should expect the conjunction of “Hebrew” and “dialect” to form a reference to language. But the stylistic contrast between Mark and Matthew cancels such an expectation here. And the lack of a definite article in ‘Εβραιδι διαλεχτω facilitates (though it does prove) a different references since διαλεχτος always has the definite article in its six occurrences for languages in Acts, including three for the Hebrew or Aramaic language (1:19; 2:6, 8; 21:40; 22:2; 26:14). Besides, the generality o each person’s interpreting as he was able fits better the exercise of reading and understanding a Gospel written in the lingua franca, Greek; for comparatively few people had the knowledge of Aramaic that would have enabled them to translate an Aramaic Gospel into Greek or into whatever other language was native to them. διαλεχτος commonly carried a stylistic meaning, especially when referring to debate (cf. the English word “dialectic”). In describing Matthew, then, “a Hebrew dialect” means a Hebrew way of presenting Jesus’ messiahship. Immediately, we think of all those Jewish features of Matthew—the stress on Jesus as the Son of David and Messiah, the tracing of his genealogy back to Abraham, the frequent and unique citations of OT passages as fulfilled by Jesus, and so on—that capture a large amount of attention in modern introductions to this Gospel. (Robert Gundry, “The Apostolically Johannine Pre-Papian Tradition concerning the Gospels of Mark and Matthew,” in The Old Is Better: New Testament Essays in Support of Traditional Interpretations [Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament 178; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005; repr., Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2010], 67-68; cf. how "language" is used in a like-way in the Book of Mormon [e.g., 1 Nephi 1:15; 3:21; 5:3 ,6, 8; 10:15; 17:22; 2 Nephi 31:3])
