Matthew’s own style is less distinguished than that of Luke - he writes a grammatical Greek, sober but cultivated, yet with some marked Septuagintalisms Luke is capable of achieving momentarily great heights of style in the Attic tradition, but lacks the power to sustain these he lapses at length back to the style of his sources or to a very humble koine. Matthew and Luke each utilize the Markan text, but each corrects his solecisims, and prunes his style. Mark is written in the Greek of the common man. “Having thus summarized the general characteristics of New Testament Greek, we may give a brief characterization of each individual author. “The language in which the New Testament documents have been preserved is the ‘common Greek’ (koine), which was the lingua franca of the Near Eastern and Mediterranean lands in Roman times” (p.713) Luke himself was master of a fine literary literary style, as appears from the first four verses of his Gospel, but in both Gospel and Acts he adapts his style to the characters and scenes that he portrays” (p.55-56). The Gospels contain more really vernacular Greek, as we might expect, since they report so much conversation by ordinary people. The Epistle to the Hebrews and the First Epistle of Peter are true literary works, and much of their vocabulary is to be understood by the aid of a classical lexicon rather than one which draws upon non-literary sources. “Paul, we may say, comes roughly half-way between the vernacular and more literary styles.
To remedy this situation seven men were appointed to take charge of it, and it is noteworthy that (to judge by their names) all seven were Greek-speaking” (p.49). These Greek-speaking Jewish Christians (or Hellenists) are mentioned in Acts 6:1, where we read that they complained of the unequal attention paid to the widows of their group by contrast with those of the Hebrews or Aramaic-speaking Jews. Greek was no strange tongue to the apostolic church even in the days when it was confined to Jerusalem, for the membership of the primitive Jerusalem church included Greek-speaking Jews as well as Aramaic-speaking Jews. It was the Greek language, which, at the time when the gospel began to be proclaimed among all the nations, was a thoroughly international language, spoken not only around the Aegean shores but all over the Eastern Mediterranean and in other areas too. “The language most appropriate for the propagation of this message would naturally be one that was most widely known throughout all the nations, and this language lay ready to hand. The preponderance of the evidence is that the New Testament manuscripts were originated in Greek with only the possible exceptions of Matthew and Hebrews.
The Apostolic writings of the New Testament were written in Greek The Evolution of the Doctrine of the Trinity.Controlling Influence – What is the Holy Spirit.Hebrews_10:26, Can those who backslide be saved?.The Law and the Sabbath vs the New Covenant.
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