Hi all,

I have been attending an introductory Hebrew class run by a Christian sister who grew up an Orthodox Jew. In the initial class she was mentioning the importance of learning Hebrew as a way to learn more of the Hebraic roots of Christianity.

She also mentioned that 80-90% of the Bible was originally written in Hebrew. Now, I know that everyone says that the NT was written in Greek, but this has been running through my mind in the past couple of weeks...

If Jesus and the apostles all lived in the area of Isreal, why would a bunch of Middle eastern boys be writing about a Jewish Messiah in Greek? It's seems totally against logic.
Perhaps Mark, writing to a Roman audience, wrote in Greek...but the others? Did Jesus really say "I am the alpha and omega" or is that the Greek translation of "I am the aleph and tav"?

I've heard of a book called "The Difficult Sayings of Jesus" by Roy Blizzard, but haven't had the time or the opportunity to read it.

Does anyone have any information, links, or insight regarding this matter?

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Brad Wright

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Josh Parsley

From what I understand Jesus probably spoke aramic and knew hebrew and probably greek also. The words that are still in aramaic (eli eli..) are probably the exact words of Jesus.

EDIT: I'm not much of an authority on this subject though!

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Josh Parsley

The oldest documents we have of the New Testament are all in Greek. The reason they wrote in Greek is because Greek was the common language of the common people, as it was the language of the Roman people. Most of the early Christians, even the Jewish ones, would've probably been more familiar with Greek than Aramaic/Hebrew, because of the great Helenistic movement of the time. Such is why the Jews had made a Greek copy of the Hebrew Scriptures called the Septuigint (LXX). Not to mention most the converts on the day of Pentecost were Jews from the Diaspora.

Jesus and the apostles probably spoke Aramaic as their primary native tongue, but were very fluent in Greek as well. Thus, Jesus could do things like speak with a Roman centurion, who probably knew about as much Aramaic as a soldier in Iraq today knows Arabic. IMO, Jesus probably spoke Greek when interacting with Gentiles.

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Jimmy H

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Josh Parsley

The reason why the New Testament is in greek is because that was the common language of the day. Everyone spoke and wrote and read greek. It was forced by the Romans apon all the places they conqured. God uses what is the common language of the people to get his Word out so that people can read it. Just like today. English is the common language and so he got his Word out in english which is the majority of the world speaks. The same concept.
PreachParsly wrote:

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Eloy Lopez

Thanks for your responses.

Have any of you come across any sites where some historical information regarding the rise of the Helenists and the decline and restoration of the Hebrew language is documented?

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Brad Wright

I don't know any web sites off hand, but I imagine that a good Google search will return some results. Most New Testament Survey/Introduction/Background books will document this info more thoroughly though. From my memory, Hebrew started to decline about 2 or 3 centuries before Christ.

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Jimmy H