A Somewhat Slanted Look at the History of the Christian Church – Part XVII

drhiter-churchseries

Most of the New Testament was first written in Koine Greek.  “Koine” Greek was very different from formal, or attic Greek, the “proper” Greek of the day.  Koine was the language spoken by everyday people, and it didn’t look very much like the formal Greek spoken by the educated. In fact, for many, many years the Greek of the New Testament was thought to be a secret code, written so that only the initiated could read it.

Scholars only found out differently when records of a lot of eastern Mediterranean business deals started turning up in archaeological digs.  When you think about it, this makes a lot of sense.  Everyday people spoke koine, and when they set out to write down their version of the events of the New Testament Church, they wrote what they knew.

We really don’t know if Jesus spoke koine or not.  He probably did, a little, at least, though his primary spoken language was probably Aramaic.  Aramaic was a language closely related to Hebrew that probably became the standard for many Jews, especially Galilean Jews, during the time of the Babylonian Captivity.  Aramaic was not, especially, a written language, so even speakers of Aramaic usually wrote, if they wrote at all, in Greek.

Dr. T.Y. Hiter
Dr. T.Y. Hiter

In later times, Aramaic became a language called Syriac, and Syriac became the liturgical language of the Church of the East, or the Church in Persia and India.  In the same manner, Greek became the liturgical language of the Orthodox, or Greek Church and Latin the liturgical language of the Roman, or Catholic Church.  Greek texts were translated into Latin and into Syriac, depending upon who did the translating.

Even the Letter to the Hebrews was apparently written in Greek, though an old tradition holds that it was written (by Paul) in Hebrew and later translated into Greek.  If so, then the translator was a highly educated man, for the Greek of Hebrews is vastly better than that of any other New Testament source.

One of the great questions that has hung around the church for a thousand years is “Well, then, were any of the books of the New Testament written in Hebrew?”  The answer is, “we can’t prove it”.  There is a long tradition (dating back to the second Century) that Matthew was written in Hebrew, but no manuscripts remain.

There is a tantalizing story that when the Portuguese arrived on the Malabar Coast of India in the 1400s, they found not only an active Christian community (that knew nothing about Portugal or the west) who worshipped in Aramaic and had a copy of Matthew written in Hebrew.

The Malabar Christians believe that they had been founded by the Apostle Thomas around the year 50 AD.  They had already been “discovered” by Persian missionaries in the 5th or 6th Century, but they had kept their Church in Apostolic form, as many still do, today.  The book, of course, no longer exists.