[B-Greek] New Testament Greek texts?
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Wed Dec 3 19:16:20 EST 2008
On Dec 3, 2008, at 6:37 PM, bwmeyers at toast.net wrote:
> I ran into this on a newsgroup, and would like to check more on the
> truth of it:
>
> *******************************************
> There is no evidence that any of the Bible was originally written in
> Greek. There are over fifty different versions of ancient Greek texts
> that still exist today. This indicates a non-Greek original with
> local translation into Greek. The only accounts of original language
> are Christian accounts of the Hebrew autograph (manuscript written by
> the author) of Matthew being stored in the library in Ceasaria in
> Israel, and the orthodox Jewish account in the Talmud that the New
> testament was a problem for the ancient rabbis who were not allowed to
> destroy any text with God's actual name written in Hebrew. The
> Talmudic account goes not to say that these Hebrew texts had to be
> hidden away set into masonry for God to decide their fate. So in the
> second through Fourth Centuries CE, Hebrew texts of the NT were quite
> common, but they were taken out of circulation when discovered by
> Orthodox Jews.
> *****************************************
>
> Cn anyone help? Thanks.
>
> Bob Meyers
This question really lies outside the scope of B-Greek discussion in
that it concerns background information about the GNT rather than the
text of the language of the GNT. I would say no more about the
question raised other than that the oldest extant texts of the GNT are
in the Greek language, and while it's commonly supposed that a non-
Greek oral tradition may underly gospel accounts within the GNT, it is
generally supposed that the letters, most of which are older than the
gospels, were composed in Greek. At any rate, the burden of proof
really rests upon those who would deny the the New Testament is
essentially a Greek-language composition.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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