Why Greek? The Language of the New Testament

🎯 Objectives

By the end of this lesson you will be able to:

explain why the New Testament was written in Greek and what Koine is;
recognize the role of the Septuagint, the Old Testament in Greek;
understand what studying Greek can give you and what it will not.

📖 Receive

Read Galatians 4:4-5 and Acts 2:5-11. In the first passage Paul says that God sent his Son “when the fulness of the time was come”. In the second, on the day of Pentecost, people from many nations hear the wonderful works of God.

Then look at how the Gospel of John begins in the language in which it was written:

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος En archē ēn ho logos — “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1)

Don’t worry if these letters look mysterious today. In a few lessons you will be able to read them on your own.

🔍 Examine

An ancient language, but not a distant one

Greek belongs to the great family of Indo-European languages, the same family as Latin, the Germanic languages (including English), the Slavic languages and many languages of India and Iran. That is why, even though the alphabet is different, you will soon discover that many words are familiar: theology, angel, apostle, evangelist, baptism, ecclesiastical. You already speak a little Greek without knowing it.

The stages of the Greek language

Greek has a very long history, which scholars usually divide into major periods:

the Mycenaean age (about 15th-12th century BC), with the oldest documents;
the age of the dialects (archaic and classical), when each region spoke its own Greek: Ionic, Attic, Doric, Aeolic; this is the era of Homer, the tragedians and the philosophers;
the Hellenistic and Roman age, after the death of Alexander the Great (323 BC);
the Byzantine age, until the fall of Constantinople (1453);
Modern Greek, still spoken today in Greece and Cyprus.

The New Testament belongs to the third stage.

The diagram below sums up the long journey of the Greek language. Notice where the New Testament stands: in the middle of a story more than three thousand years long.

timeline
  title "The great stages of Greek"
  "Mycenaean age" : "about 15th-12th c. BC"
  "Dialects and classical Greek" : "Homer, Athens, the philosophers"
  "Hellenistic and Roman Koine" : "from 323 BC" : "Septuagint and New Testament"
  "Byzantine Greek" : "until 1453"
  "Modern Greek" : "today"

Koine: everybody’s language

The conquests of Alexander the Great created an immense empire, from Egypt to India. To govern, trade and travel, a common language was needed. So Koine (κοινή, “common”) was formed: a Greek based on the dialect of Athens, but simplified and enriched by contact with many peoples.

When the Romans arrived, Latin became the language of administration in the West, but in the East and in many cities of the empire Greek remained the everyday language. Paul could write in Greek to the Christians in Rome, Corinth and Galatia and be understood by all.

📌 The fulness of the time

Many believers have seen the hand of God in these historical circumstances (Galatians 4:4). A common language, safe roads and a network of Jewish communities scattered throughout the empire prepared the way for the Gospel. God did not choose the refined language of the philosophers, but that of ordinary people: merchants, soldiers, slaves, fishermen. The message of Christ was meant for everyone.

The Septuagint: the Old Testament in Greek

Many Jews lived outside the land of Israel, especially in Alexandria in Egypt, and spoke Greek better than Hebrew. From the third century BC the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek. This translation is called the Septuagint (abbreviated LXX), after the traditional account according to which seventy (or seventy-two) elders worked on it.

The Septuagint is important for two reasons:

the New Testament authors often quote it when they cite the Old Testament;
it supplies much of the Christian vocabulary. For example, the divine name of the Old Testament is rendered with κύριος (kyrios, “Lord”): so when the first Christians confessed “Jesus is Lord”, they used a word full of biblical meaning.

How is ancient Greek pronounced?

No one has recordings of first-century Greek, so there are different conventions:

the Erasmian pronunciation, named after the humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam, is the one used in most schools and seminaries: it distinguishes the letters clearly and helps with spelling;
the itacistic pronunciation, so called because the letter eta is read “i”, is close to Modern Greek and was used by Byzantine scholars.

In this course we will use the Erasmian pronunciation. If one day you hear a Greek person read the New Testament, you will hear different sounds: it is not a mistake, it is another tradition.

What Greek will give you (and what it won’t)

Studying Greek, even just the basics, will allow you to:

read a verse in the original and recognize the main words;
understand the notes in study Bibles and commentaries (“the Greek has a participle here…”);
use well interlinears, lexicons and Bible software;
notice details that translations sometimes cannot fully convey: a verb tense, a case, the repetition of a word.

At the same time, it is important to be honest. This course will not make you a translator, and Greek is not a secret code that reveals meanings hidden from other believers. Good translations are the fruit of the work of teams of scholars and faithfully convey the Word of God. Greek helps us examine better, not replace the translation with our own hunches.

Words that have travelled down to us

Many words of the Christian vocabulary passed from Greek into Latin and then into English. Knowing where they come from helps you remember them and understand their biblical meaning better:

Greek	Transliteration	Original meaning	In English
ἐκκλησία	ekklēsía	assembly called together	ecclesiastical, church
ἄγγελος	ángelos	messenger	angel
εὐαγγέλιον	euangélion	good news	evangelist, evangelical
ἀπόστολος	apóstolos	one who is sent	apostle
βάπτισμα	báptisma	immersion	baptism

Notice that the original meaning is often more concrete: an “angel” is first of all a messenger, and the “church” is a people gathered together, not a building.

Greek with a Hebrew heart

The authors of the New Testament, almost all of them Jews, wrote in Greek but thought with the Hebrew Scriptures in their hearts. That is why their Greek contains expressions typical of Hebrew and Aramaic, the language spoken in Galilee. In some passages the Gospel writers even preserve Jesus’ Aramaic words and then translate them for Greek readers: Talitha cumi, “Damsel, arise” (Mark 5:41), or Abba, “Father”, in the prayer in Gethsemane (Mark 14:36). Amen and hallelujah also come from Hebrew.

It is a precious detail: the New Testament does not spring from a new culture, but brings to fulfilment the revelation of the Old Testament in a language the whole world could understand.

🔗 Connect

Studying Greek is a concrete way to live out the BereaWay Method. The believers in Berea searched the Scriptures daily (Acts 17:11): for them the Scriptures were above all the Septuagint, the Greek Bible of the synagogues of the diaspora.

Remember also what we said in the course How to Study the Bible: the Bible was written for us, but not to us. Language is one of the distances to be bridged. Knowing a little Greek will help you receive the text in its world and examine it more carefully, and then connect it to your life.

Finally, think of Pentecost (Acts 2): from the very first day the Gospel crossed languages. The New Testament in Greek and its translation into all the languages of the world are part of the same story.

🙏 Apply

Before today, what did you think of biblical Greek? Was it something useful, difficult or mysterious for you?
Try to write down five English words that you think come from Greek. Then check them in a dictionary.
What does it tell you that God chose the language of ordinary people for the New Testament?
Make a realistic commitment: for example, ten minutes a day for the next few weeks to learn the alphabet.

📚 Go Deeper

Read Acts 2:1-13 and Acts 21:37-40: in the second passage Paul speaks Greek with the Roman commander and then Hebrew (or Aramaic) to the crowd. What does this tell us about the linguistic situation of the time?
Look in a study Bible for notes that refer to “the Greek”: count how many you find in one chapter.
In the next lesson you will learn the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet. Get a notebook ready: you will need it to practise writing them.