Q. Since Paul was fluent in Greek (so he could take the Gospel to the Gentiles) wouldn't he write and express certain things directly in Greek, especially in this case, since this (1 Timothy) was a personal letter to Timothy, a Greek Gentile convert?

A. Paul was fluent in many languages (1 Cor.14:18) but he always wrote in Hebrew or Aramaic, the languages of the Torah, which were subsequently translated into Greek (the lingua franca of the eastern part of the Roman Empire) and almost certainly by different translators, given the differing styles. It would have been natural for Him to read the Torah in the original Hebrew (since he already knew the language), even though a Greek translation (The Septuagint/LXX) was available for Greek converts who knew little or no Hebrew. His missions outside of Israel always started in Hebrew synagogues, and those Hebrews who were converted would have formed the nucleus of messianic congregations, with Hebrews as their leaders since they alone would have been conversant in the Torah, which new gentile converts obviously would not have been.

Timothy was not like those non-Hebrew-speaking Greek converts for one important reason: His mother was Hebrew, even if his father was Greek, and, we are told, raised him in the Torah in his mother's own tongue, for as Paul reminded him, "from infancy you have known the qadosh (holy, set-apart) Scriptures" (2 Tim.3:15, NIV), i.e. the Tanakh (Old Testament). It is highly unlikely that she, a Hebrew, would have taught the boy Torah using the Greek Septuagint (LXX). Timothy would have been bilingual. It is far more reasonable to suppose that Paul and Timothy conversed and wrote in Hebrew or Aramaic than in Greek, both because they spoke the tongue and also because the Torah was written in Hebrew.

Paul stated that he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews and a Pharisee of the Pharisees and that he was taught at the feet of Gamilel. In other words he consistently emphasised that he was a Hebrew through and through.

At that time, the historical period of the NT, there aas deep mistrust and disdlikle by Judahite Israelites of everything and anything Greek because of their treatrment by the Greeks prior to the Maccabean revolution. Of course, diaspora Greeks, as well as those living in Roman Palestine, were compelled to know and speak Greek for trade purposes, at least in the metropolitan areas, but is was never a language they would have spoken amongst themselves. If you can picture a bilingual Polish family in nazi-occupied Poland during the way able to speak both Polish and German (which was certainly the case in the former Prussian and Austrian areas of Poland), the suggestion that they spoke or wrote with or to each other in the hated language of the occupier gives you some idea of how first century Judahites viewed the Greek language.

The only two books that MIGHT have been written in Greek originally would have been the Gospel of Luke and Acts as Luke was a Syrian Greek, but that is by no means certain. As Messianic Evangelicals, we have asserted Hebrew/Aramaic primacy of the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament) for sound academic reasons, and it is from that position we officially operate. That doesn't mean we ignore Greek, Latin or othert languages into which the Bible was translated - and especially Greek - but our default is always the Semitic. The rerasos we do so are all carefully detailed in many articles on the main website, but in case you are unfamiliar with them, I am linking two of them below which give a good overview of the issue:

• 1. Was the New Testament Really Written in Greek?
  
• 2. Preface to the Hebraic Roots Version of the Bible

This page was created on 8 June 2018 Last updated on 8 June 2018

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