Talk:Language of the New Testament

Creation of page and move of chunks of text from Greek primacy (sic)
The lede was created new using standard ref works as sources. A substantial part of the text was then moved from "Greek primacy" (sic, neologism) following comment on Talk:Greek primacy. The term "Aramaic primacy" clearly, now exists, but evidence for the term "Greek primacy" is non-existent except in works by advocates of "Aramaic primacy," hence not a suitable Wikipedia article title, unless dealing with what "Greek primacy" means in socio-historical texts on Hellenism.

The other reason was to repair a WP:POVFORK.In ictu oculi (talk) 01:55, 20 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Good move actually (pun intended). I added sourced items, and commented out non sourced. The Language of Jesus section can be expanded by Barr's article which is a great survey. Not that I have time for it, but there is a link to it. History2007 (talk) 04:32, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Commented text
Why is the text under Language_of_the_New_Testament being commented out? A good practice is either to keep it or remove it.--  R a f y  talk 22:44, 25 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Commented text has been moved to Language of Jesus talk page for further work. —Telpardec TALK  07:32, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Impeccable is not a common argument
"since the style of their Greek is impeccable"


 * Now I'm not highly-qualified, only having taken 3 formal semesters of Greek, BUT I was always told that the primary reason against Greek Primacy is the highly variant, sometimes even poor, quality of the Greek in much of the New Testament. I mean, that's why all koine courses start with John, right?  This article as it stands very much disagrees with that, saying that we know it was written in Greek because the grammar is "impeccable".  Some may argue that the numerous hebraisms in there evidence that it wasn't edited and is therefore likely to be the original, but not that the hebraisms aren't there or that they're proof that the author was a master of Greek.  The next line in the article says that since these were Jews writing to an audience who spoke Greek, obviously the book must have been in Greek.  That makes sense, except for the "since they were Jews" part.  And it argues the common Greek Primacy argument that the colloquialness of the koine evidences that it was written in Greek (not the impeccableness.)  And it doesn't explain things like the Book of Matthew or the Book of Hebrews, both of which were Jews writing formal religious documents to Jews (so why would it be in Greek?)  Anyway, I'm not against the idea of it being written in Greek; it's just the dismissiveness of what I would consider standard academic arguments to the contrary is strange and not NPOV.  Plus the idea that the only other theory is that it was in Aramaic...  Again, what about Matthew or Hebrews being in Hebrew?  Or what about arguments that it was already a translation before it got to Greek?  And the article further doesn't encourage these fun discussions because rather than link to primary sources or even online sources it cites generally non-verifiable 500 page books.  Thoughts?--Mrcolj (talk) 17:58, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Hasty generalisation
This article is treating the New Testament as a monolith. It was not written all at once, nor by the same people. As such, it is entirely possible that portions of it were written in Greek while others were written in Hebrew or Aramaic. There is significant evidence, for example, that the Gospel of Matthew was written in a Semitic language and then later translated into Greek. I think this article is in need of some significant revision. Any thoughts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.230.41.194 (talk) 12:22, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

The language of the New Testament
The whole section is full of rather one dimensional, one sided claims that do not hold up under scrutiny. It seems rather plausible this was mostly written by someone that linked their own online article to it - which reeks of errors.

The Aramaic of the Peshitta is closely related to the Aramaic used in some portions of the Old Testament. We do not have any reliable method of knowing in what exact dialect the NT would have been written, guesses abound, but there are no valid arguments for the Greek over the Aramaic in this section or its sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:C8:A3DF:B557:2577:6D37:CD95:4A9F (talk) 21:22, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

Hebrew or Greek? Andrew,Peter?
Andrew the brother of Peter Peter cut off the guard ear when they came for Jesus Andrew was called and the first mytrered and the John the Baptist was who kept Jesus safe as long as he did or until he died. He was also of the pharasies one of whom advocated for Jesus unsuccessfully. Is this true and if so it must be hebrew or Aramaic? Correct? 2001:56B:3FE0:8CA9:ACD1:19B1:AE38:2DA9 (talk) 03:12, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

First sentence makes no sense
The first sentence of the article is currently: "The New Testament was written in a form of Koine Greek, which was the common language of the Eastern Mediterranean from the conquests of Alexander the Great although it was written about 200 years prior, (335–323 BC) until the evolution of Byzantine Greek (c. 600)." This makes no sense to me. What is the "it" in "it was written about 200 years prior" referring to? The New Testament? If so this sentence is of course wrong, the New Testament was written many hundreds of years *after* the conquests of Alexander the Great. If the "it" is referring to something else (Koine Greek, perhaps?) then the sentence is confusing and needs to be re-worded in a clearer way. It may be that the "about" here is especially confusing, because "written about 200 years ago" can mean "written approximately 200 years ago" or "someone wrote about this thing 200 years ago." 2601:152:97E:9A00:6012:BC28:ED2E:88DC (talk) 00:57, 14 June 2024 (UTC)