What is Koine Greek, and why was the New Testament written in it?

The ages were rolling by. The time was approaching when the hope of Israel should appear, and the mystery, kept secret, since the world began — the Church — should be unfolded. It is deeply interesting to trace how God was preparing for the advent of His Son, that, when He should appear, and the Scripture, be appealed to in support of His claims as the promised seed and Messiah, the nations of the earth should have within their reach a translation of the word of God, made by Jews, and accepted by the bitterest foe of the truth, as generally correct, to which they could appeal, and see for themselves, when subject to the Spirit, as the Bereans did, (Acts 17:11-12,) whether or not Jesus was the Christ. The great centre of trade had ceased to be found at Tyre. The language of commerce was no longer Phoenician, or Hebrew, but Greek. A Greek translation became a desideratum for the Jews of the dispersion. About the year 280 B.C. this want was supplied; and when God next caused fresh revelations to be written, He chose not Hebrew, nor Chaldee, but Greek, the language then generally understood throughout the Roman earth. In the Roman senate, as well as at Jerusalem, Greek might have been heard. To the strangers of the dispersion Peter wrote in Greek. To the Roman Christians, as well as to the Hebrews, Paul dictated, what the Holy Ghost would have him say, in Greek. The twelve tribes, scattered abroad, had a message addressed specially to themselves, but James announced it in Greek. At Rome, at Alexandria, at Ephesus, at Antioch, at Jerusalem, Greek was understood; so in Greek the New Testament was written, that it might be read far and wide by Gentiles as well as Jews. What care then has God taken that His word should be made known, by using the language, best adapted for it, at the different periods of its delivery; that not merely the general sense, but the very words, in which His mind was expressed, might be within the reach, as far as possible, of those concerned!

At any rate, there was certainly a distinction between Greek-speaking Jews, and others. For we notice in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 6 etc.) that some are called Hebrews and some Grecians. There is a difference of opinion as to whether the distinction consisted in the speech they used; or in the version of the Bible that they read. For while the Jews of Palestine, and eastward of that country, constantly used the original Hebrew Scriptures, only rendered into Aramaic at the very moment they were read; the Jews of Alexandria, and generally in the countries west of the Holy Land, seem not to have known the Hebrew, even in the synagogues, and to have used only the Greek Septuagint translation.

As Greek was the tongue of their Syrian oppressors in the time of the Maccabees, the Rabbis looked upon it with aversion, as being especially a profane tongue, fit only for entirely worldly business, but never to be intruded into the synagogue. This feeling was aggravated by the fact that the Jews of Alexandria — where chiefly Greek-speaking Jews abounded, — had not only a translation of the Scriptures, which they advanced almost to the same rank as the original: but even a temple of their own, which in some respects was permitted to rival the holy building in Jerusalem.

But, anyhow, Greek was the current language of the world at the time of the appearance of Christianity:— the language with which a man might travel from end to end of the Roman Empire. And there appears a special providence in the circumstance that the Gospel was sent forth at the very time when there was thus a universal language, in which to convey it. It was necessary to the free circulation of the message, that it should be written in the speech of the Empire, not in some local dialect. And the Grecians or Hellenists, though despised by the Palestine Jews, appear certainly, by means both of their more common tongue, and also of their greater enlightenment, to have been the part of Israel that most generally embraced the Gospel, and carried it into distant lands, away from its original cradle in Judaea and Galilee.

God so ordained it that by the rise of the Greek empire this language was spread over Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, and countries adjacent, and it is a language still understood by the learned of all nations. It is acknowledged to be a remarkably flexible language, capable of forming new theological terms with delicate shades of meaning, and of expressing ideas with precision. It was therefore, on all accounts, the most suitable language in which to make known the gospel of God, and the truths needed for the building up of the saints. Not only was the New Testament written in Greek, but the O.T. was also translated into the same language, and that version was quoted by both the Lord and His apostles. The chief captain at Jerusalem, though a Roman, asked Paul if he could speak Greek, supposing him to be an Egyptian. Acts 21:37. The inscription placed over the Lord at His crucifixion was written in Greek as well as in Hebrew and Latin: all the world must be informed who it was that hung upon that cross. Luke 23:38; John 19:20. The name and character of the angel of the bottomless pit was also proclaimed in Hebrew and Greek. Rev. 9:11.

The only other language that remains to be noticed, is the Greek, in which, the whole of the New Testament is written: a peculiar dialect of which prevailed in Western Asia and Egypt, in consequence of the conquests of Alexander the Great. Its chief locality was Alexandria, where the first Ptolemies had transplanted most of the arts and sciences which used to flourish before in Athens. This dialect is therefore called Alexandrian Greek, and is distinguished from the language of the classics, by having engrafted on it, many Hebrew and other Oriental modes of expression; no doubt partly in consequence of the great numbers of Jews, who, from an early period, dwelt in Alexandria.

Even in Palestine, although Hebrew retained its place as the sacred language, and Syrian or Aramaic was spoken in the country parts, there is every probability that Greek was the ordinary speech of intercourse; and that it stood in the same relation to the native Aramaic, that English does to Welsh in Wales at the present day.

In this Alexandrian Greek is written the whole of the New Testament; the ancient Septuagint translation of the Old; and the works of Josephus and Philo. As it was the common language of the Eastern part of the Roman Empire, it became necessarily the common language of all early Christians, who for some years were confined to that part of the world. And even when Christianity had reached Rome and the West, there is evidence that Greek (and not Latin, as might have been supposed) was, for a long time, the ecclesiastical tongue.

God had foretold in the prophet Daniel just exactly when the Messiah was to be "cut off." If there had been men of spiritual understanding to understand the Scriptures, they might have known beforehand the very day on which the Messiah must suffer. God had chosen the exact time when He should send forth His Son; and He prepared all accordingly. He sent before Him His servant John to prepare His way before Him (see Matt. 11:10). God allowed the Romans to have a strong government, having control of all that part of the world of which Palestine is the center. The Romans made good roads and kept a great measure of order, which made it possible to preach the gospel in very many places. God had also arranged that all that part of the world should understand the Greek language, so that this helped greatly in spreading the good news. He also arranged that this language should be, perhaps, at this time, the most perfect language this world has known, with which to give us the New Testament.

Nobody doubts that scripture without exception has a human element. In it God speaks and writes permanently to man, and therefore in human language. It were unintelligible otherwise. As the general rule Hebrew was employed in the so-called O.T., Greek in the New. We can readily perceive His wisdom in thus writing by man to man (Deut. 5:22, Deut. 9:10, Deut. 10:4), save in the most solemnly exceptional case: the law with all its variety of meaning in the language of His ancient people; the gospel with all the fulness of grace and truth in the chief tongue of the Gentiles.

This Alexandrian or Septuagint version, being thus made in the common speech of the East, was read even in Palestine, where Greek had become the ordinary language of intercourse. It alone is quoted by the philosopher Philo, and the historian Josephus: and (which is of more interest to us), the writers of the New Testament almost constantly refer to it: for at that epoch it stood in the same relation to the Hebrew as our common English version does, and was therefore used by all who wrote books for universal perusal.

1 Mark, although he may have been (as Birks thought, p. 235) a Roman Christian on his father's side, was doubtless maternally a Hebrew (Palestinian) Christian (Acts 12:12). Cf. the Aramaic surname of his cousin Joseph (Acts 4:36). Hence the Greek used by him would have, as we find, an Aramaic tinge about it. Very noticeable is the frequency with which he gives Aramaic words. At Mark 6:15, Mark 8:14, Mark 10:22, Mark 14:8, Mark 15:12, Wellhausen impeaches him of imperfect acquaintance with Greek (as to which see note 78 in particular). Mark's peculiarities, however, are all explicable from the κοινὴ διάλεκτος, used from the time of Polybius to long after the beginning of the Christian era. As to this "Hellenistic" Greek, see Carr, Notes on Luke, pp. 9-14. The second Evangelist does but combine an Aramaic element with strictly colloquial Greek, with which the Roman Christians would be familiar, as this was the language very long used in that community at Rome (Swete, Introduction).

For some period after the first profession of Christianity in the West of Europe, all christian writers seemed to have used the Greek as the ecclesiastical language, and not the Latin — no doubt for two reasons, mainly. In the first place, the apostles and early emissaries from the East spoke Greek, and, in many cases, no other tongue. Respect for these teachers, and imitation of them, naturally produced a continuation of their speech. In the second place, there existed a strong and a reasonable wish to preserve the unity of the Church, and to keep it from separating into fragments.