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To: boatbums
Has it ever occurred to you that the writers of the New Testament wrote in Greek to ensure a wide dissemination of the teachings of Christ and His Apostles and that they did the translating from the spoken Aramaic of Christ Jesus into Greek?

[etc.]

There is a superb essay in the first volume of the Expositor's Bible Commentary on this very subject: arguing that the political/demographic/cultural conditions of the time of Christ were just right for the coming of the Messiah and the spread of his gospel. Among the two examples cited: the Roman road system, which enabled rapid (for the day) travel between population centres; and the use of koine Greek as the lingua franca of the Empire, enabling nearly any of Caesar's subjects to hear and understand the Gospel.

Unfortunately, I don't have my book handy, and I can't tell from a table of contents listing which essay it was. I believe it is "Between the Testaments," by Harold Hoehner, but I'm not 100% certain of that.

Christianity was meant from the beginning to spread throughout the world. It would have made little sense for its chief documents to have been written either in Aramaic (the regional language of Palestine) nor Hebrew (which was basically limited to the synagogue). Certainly not when Alexander the Great had taken the trouble to unite the entire known world under the Greek banner!

649 posted on 03/06/2014 9:58:53 PM PST by RansomOttawa (tm)
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To: RansomOttawa

Thanks for that. I have read several articles that expound upon this. All things are in God’s timing. Amen!


655 posted on 03/06/2014 10:18:20 PM PST by boatbums (Simul justis et peccator.)
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To: RansomOttawa

Maybe you can find it here? I did not see an inter-testament chapter though:

http://www.studylight.org/com/teb/


683 posted on 03/07/2014 5:57:09 AM PST by redleghunter
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