Why Was the New Testament Written in Greek?

Why was the New Testament originally written in Greek?

The revelation of the Hebrew Bible was completed by about the year 400 B.C. (before Christ). By this time, Israel had been scattered by the Assyrian empire a few centuries earlier. In addition, many Jewish people were also still living in Babylon (Judah having been exiled to Babylon about 100 years after the Assyrians destroyed the kingdom of Israel). At the time the canon of the Hebrew Bible was completed, the Persian empire was at its largest and many Jews never returned to the land of Israel.

Almost a century after the Hebrew Bible was completed, the Persian empire was conquered by Alexander the Great. Alexander was from Macedonia, a province to the north of the Greek city-states. His native language was Greek. As he expanded his empire into Persian territory, he brought Greek language & culture along with him.

Alexander died in the year 323 B.C. when he was 33 years old. At the time of his death, his empire stretched from Greece in the west, Egypt in the south, to Assyria in the north, and India in the east. In most of the territory that he conquered, people began to speak Greek instead of/in addition to their native language. (This process is known by historians as “hellenization”, deriving from the Greek word for a Greek person, Ἕλλην.)

As a result, many Jews who lived outside of Jerusalem spoke Greek instead of Hebrew. They weren’t able to read their scriptures anymore because their Bible was written in Hebrew. With many Greek-speaking Jews unable to read their Bible, the Hebrew scriptures were eventually translated into Greek. Around the year 250 B.C. in Alexandria, Egypt, a collection of scribes came together and translated the Hebrew Bible into the Greek language. We know this translation today as the Septuagint, often referred to as the LXX (70). Jews who didn’t understand Hebrew used the Septuagint version of the Bible instead.

During New Testament times, when Gentiles were joining the church, many of them also didn’t understand Hebrew. With that in mind, these Gentile believers would use the Septuagint translation during their church gatherings. It was because of the prevalence of both Gentiles & Greek-speaking Jews in the church that the New Testament was originally written down in Greek – so that everyone would be able to understand it.