Bible: The New Testament

The New Testament is the second part of the Bible, the holy book of Christianity. The first part of the Bible is known as Old Testament, the books of which were written in ancient Hebrew. But the New Testament was written in Greek; specifically, in Koine Greek, the vernacular Greek dialect of the time.

Why was Greek chosen as the language in which the New Testament was written?

The reason is that, during the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, Greek had become the “lingua franca” (the “common language”) of the Mediterranean world. If today an author wants to reach an as wide readership as possible, he or she will choose to write in English; at the time the books of the N.T. were written, Greek was playing that role. The reason for Greek playing the role of lingua franca was that Alexander’s conquests had helped spread the Greek culture in vast expanses of the eastern Mediterranean world, and thus knowledge of the Greek language was perceived as an asset of good education. Similarly, the Romans, who had conquered Greece by the 2nd C. BC, were “captured” by the Greek culture, and would hire Greek teachers to teach Greek to their children.

The New Testament starts with the four gospels, by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These occupy a little less than half of the N.T., with Matthew and Luke being the longest ones. The gospels are followed by the Acts (of the Apostles, perhaps written by Luke), which narrates the deeds of Christ’s Apostles after Christ’s crucifixion; the Pauline Epistles (letters that Apostle Paul sent to several people in the Roman empire); a few more epistles (by James, Peter, John, and Jude); and the Revelation, written by Apostle John, son of Zebedee (same as the author of the 4th gospel), while he was on the Greek island of Patmos.

The original Greek text is presented in Classics Reader in a way that facilitates its studying: it is broken down into small, meaningful phrases on the left page, so that one can easily follow their translation on the right page. Young’s Literal Translation helps even further, often sacrificing proper syntax in English in order to preserve the order of words in Greek, together with their tenses, aspects, etc.