Why Greek (not Hebrew) became the language of the New Testament

So the question we’re going to look at today is, how did Israel come to speak Greek during the time of the New Testament? Because if you go back to the Old Testament, they’re all speaking Hebrew. So what happened? Well, let’s find out.

Hi, I’m Darryl Burling from Biblical Mastery Academy, here to help you with the tools, habits and systems to master the Greek of the New Testament so you can read it without helps and tools and all those kinds of things and enjoy learning and reading the New Testament in the original language.

In this video, we’re going to take a look at why do we actually use a Greek New Testament rather than a Hebrew New Testament or an aramaic New Testament? And why is it that there are no hebrew gospels or hebrew texts out there that have managed to survive till today? Well, the answer is really depends really what happens on that period of time between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament.

Now, you remember, of course, that as we close out the Old Testament, we have the writings of Malachi, which date to around 433 BC, thereabouts. And so from about that point, the Old Testament goes silent and we really get this period of 430 ish years where there isn’t really a lot of records, from an Israel point of view anyway, about what’s actually going on in the world. Now, there’s plenty of records about what’s going on elsewhere in the world, but not so much about what’s going on in Israel itself.

And so we’re left to sort of piece it together to some extent from the works of the likes of Josephus and people along those lines. Now, we’re not going to piece all of that together because we really just don’t need to. What we do need to understand, though, are what are some of the influences that took place during that time. And one of the big ones, as you might know, is the rise and fall of empires.

Prior to the closing of the Old Testament, we had the rise of, first the assyrian empire, which spoke aramaic, and then the babylonian empire, which also used the aramaic language. And of course, the babylonian empire came and took all of the southern kingdom, Judah, into exile. Maybe not all of it, but the majority of people who lived in Judah were taken into exile. That means they were transported from Judah to Babylon itself, where they stayed for 70 years, if you date it, from about 603 BC to Cyrus’s declaration that they could return in 533 BC.

From that point, a small number of Jews returned to the land, about 50,000 over that period of time. And we start to see the rebuilding of the temple, we see the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. And then by the time we get to Malachi’s time, we’re seeing the rebuilding of Jerusalem as a city itself. And it kind of seems like Israel is coming back to the old ways.

In other words, things are, you know, returning to normal, if you want to call it that. But things never actually return to normal, and that’s because of what’s taking place elsewhere. So in Macedonia, we have the rise of a certain king by the name of Alexander. He comes to reign over Macedonia in the place of his father, and then he basically becomes the king of all of Greece.

And he wants revenge upon Persia for their invasion to Macedonia and Greece in 481 BC. And so this young upstart decides he’s going to go to war against the greatest empire of the day, and it becomes something of a route in many ways. So he begins his eastward journey in 336 BC, going through Asia Minor, through Syria, through Israel, into Egypt, and eventually going all the way through to Persia, into Persepolis, where he conquers the entire persian empire and basically becomes the ruler of the world.

Now, Alexander doesn’t live very long. In fact, he dies in 323 BC at a very young age, 32, I think he was 32 years old, and doesn’t leave any plans for how his empire is to be continued in his death. And there is a legend that says. He basically just said when he was asked to the strongest. And so there’s this battle after Alexander dies in 323 BC over who’s going to rule over this vast empire.

And the empire ends up being split into four. You have the macedonian side, you have the eastern side, which is basically ruled from Susa or PerSepolis, one of those two. And then you have the Seleucids in Syria, and then you have the Ptolemies in Egypt. And as really, the Seleucids end up taking over the eastern empire, and they become a pretty significant world ruler. So it’s really this battle in the end between the Ptolemies in Egypt and the Seleucids in the north.

But the point here is that everywhere Alexander went on his conquest, he takes the greek language with him. Now, when he defeats one of those particular areas, he would replace the leadership of that area with somebody who spoke Greek, which then means that those who actually want to communicate with the new political and diplomatic structure actually need to learn Greek themselves to be able to communicate with the and be diplomatic and interact with the new rulers.

And so Greek begins to be used as a diplomatic and political language through this empire. And after the breakup of Alexander’s empire, this continues. And so, as a result of this, the Ptolemies and the Seleucids both speak Greek. And Israel is stuck in the middle. In fact, the positioning of Israel here is actually really important. They are in the middle between the Seleucids in the north and Ptolemies in the south.

And the road between those two empires goes right through Israel. And not only that, but the road to the east also goes through northern Israel. Which means that Israel is at the crossroads where all this traffic is going throughout all of these empires. Which means if you are wanting to do business as somebody to take advantage of all these travelers, be it as an innkeeper or someone who fixes wheels for wagons or what chariots or whatever it happens to be, you actually need to know the language as well.

Because if you don’t know the language and your neighbor does, well, guess where that business is going. And so what happens is, over time, with all of this, Greek becomes not only a diplomatic language, but eventually a commercial language and eventually a household language. A little bit like the way English works today. As a result of all of the rise of the british empire through the 1617 and 18 hundreds, as that was starting to rise into the 19 hundreds, really where it started to sort of peter off a little bit.

But nonetheless, as a result of all of that, the English language became dominant in our time. Just like the greek language became dominant in that time. Now, of course, that’s not where the whole story of Greek begins, because there’s more to it. Ptolemy II, who was the ruler of the african sort of side of the empire after Alexander’s empire broke up, he was the ruler of the ptolemaic empire.

He built the library at Alexandria and wanted to populate it with all the best works that were available at the time. And hearing that there were good works amongst the Jews, he sought Jews who actually lived locally in Alexandria because they had come down there. Some had come down there with Alexander. Others had come down there at a later time. But there’s this pretty decent diaspora, if you like, of Jews in Alexandria at the time.

And the legend goes that he wrote a letter. Ptolemy II wrote an open letter to say he wanted a translation of the jewish texts available for his library. And so the story goes that the jewish high priests in Jerusalem sent 72 scholars with their jewish Torah scrolls. And they went down to Alexandria, where they spent 72 days translating the text. And as a result, every single one of them translated those.

Those Torah scrolls and came out with the exact same translation, down to the same nouns and verbs being used in every instance. Now, of course, not many people really believe that this is actually how it happened, but nonetheless, the point is that at some point, because of all of this, there was a translation made of the Old Testament, of the Torah, into Greek. And this became well regarded amongst at least some of the Jews at the time as a quality translation.

And because so much of the world at this point already spoke Greek, what we find is that the Septuagint becomes the default translation for the jewish world at the time. And so everybody who’s got access to the Torah, basically in their own homes or whatever, are going to be reading that in the greek translation. And the reason for that, of course, is that that’s the default language of most of the world at the time.

So if you live in Asia Minor, you’re probably. You may not even use Hebrew anymore, but you’re going to know Greek. In fact, anywhere you go in the empire, you’re going to know Greek, which means then that this is the most accessible copy or translation or option for getting into the Torah if you are jewish, full stop. And so the Septuagint becomes this incredibly popular translation being copied and disseminated throughout the entire greco and later greco roman world at the time.

And this goes into the New Testament era, so that the jewish disciples and the early church use the Septuagint as their primary texts of the Old Testament. In fact, what happens is that over the first century period, toward the end of that period, this begins to be this increasing division between the Jews on the one hand, and the Christians on the others, so that the Christians end up becoming less and less associated with the Jews.

And one of the consequences of this growing distinction between the Jews and the Christians is that the Christians think of the septuagint really as the translation of the church, particularly the gentile church, and they begin to regard the jewish texts, the hebrew writings of the Old Testament, as jewish texts rather than christian texts. And so as a result of this, it’s the Septuagint that becomes the most copied Old Testament text during the New Testament period.

It’s a Septuagint that then becomes the text that everybody tends to read if you’re a Christian during that period. So as a result of this, the jewish texts are actually left behind a little bit, and it’s the greek texts that become the primary ones. And there are actually a number of doctrines and theological results that come about as a result of reading the Old Testament in the greek translation.

But nonetheless, this is how Greek becomes the default language of the first century. And, of course, there’s much more to it. For instance, Herod the great. Herod the Great, when he becomes the king over the area of Israel that he becomes king over in about 37 BC, he ends up making Greek an official language of the government there. And so he does this because, a, everybody’s familiar with Greek already, and b, it’s a way of saying to his roman overlords, if you want to call him that, that he’s actually with them rather than with the Jews.

In a sense, it’s a political move as much as anything else. But it also means that in Israel, the political language, as much as the commercial language, and the default language by the time we get to the time of Christ, is well and truly established as Greek. Now, does that mean that Hebrew was never used? No. Hebrew was very likely used in the temple, it was very likely used in the synagogue.

And it was possibly the jewish texts, the hebrew texts themselves, that were read in synagogue. However, in the home, people were going to speak largely either Aramaic, the language they learned in Babylon, or they were going to speak Greek, the language they would use every day, depending on their background and where they were from, those are the sorts of things that would drive it. And if they were working from a text that they happened to have in their own position, it was very likely to be the Septuagint, not the jewish scriptures, the Hebrew old Testament, that they would have in their own homes.

So the greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, was the default text that the first century church used, that those first century Jews were familiar with, which is one of the reasons why it’s so widely quoted from in the New Testament. And so, as a result of all of that, today, when we look back at the greco roman period and we look back at the first century, and when we look at the heritage we have as a church, we see this huge legacy of Greek.

And the reason for that is clear. It was the default language of the entire world at that point in time, a little bit like what English is today. The vast majority of people in the greco roman world spoke Greek. Very few did not. And it was the default language that you were likely to be able to speak anywhere in the roman empire throughout that period. And all of this means there is plenty of material for us to work with.

There is, of course, the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, which we have available to us today, which we can read of course, we have the New Testament that we can read. We have all the apostolic fathers in the original languages, which is Greek, which we can also read. So learning Greek not only gives you access to the New Testament in the original language, which, of course, is the inspired word of God, which is, of course, what we want.

And on that note, just let me make a note here. I saw this in a comment the other day. The translations we have are not inspired. Right. The doctrine of inspiration extends only to the original autographs, which were written in Greek, which is one of the reasons why it’s so important that we preserve not only those original texts as best we can and reconstruct as best we can the original autographs, but also we need to know these languages as the church.

And so the doctrine of inspiration is one reason why we get to benefit from the New Testament. But there’s this entire heritage that’s open to us, that the early church was steeped in, that was part of the entire first century culture that the church was born in. And if we know Greek, then we can get access to all of that. That whole world becomes open to us, which is another reason, really, to consider learning Greek.

And so I hope you’ll join us if you’re interested in a little bit more information on this. I’ve actually been writing and doing a bit of research on it, so if you’re interested, bma.to/greekhistory and download a copy for yourself. 

See you next time. 

By Dr. Darryl Burling