This is all assuming a lot. Many scholars assume that the "Hebrew" of
Matthew was really Aramaic, and there is really no proof at all that the
rest of the gospels or Acts were written by native speakers of Hebrew.
Remember, that many western Diaspora Jews, in places like Alexandria and all
of Paul's synagogues/churches (Rome, Galatia, certainly places like Corinth)
were really native speakers of Greek, who may have known some Hebrew. Of
course, there were also many learned people who knew Hebrew, but the whole
point of translating the Bible into Greek, back in the 3rd or 2nd centuries
BCE, was to provide a text for Greek-speaking Jews.
But beyond all this - the question is not what the Apostles spoke. The
question is what the intended audience of the NT read and spoke. This was
Greek. So the authors of the NT, and in fact even before them, the first
Jesus-followers who used the OT to try to convince Greek-spaking Jews and
gentiles of Jesus' messianity, quite naturally would use the availible Greek
translation. This was the LXX (or something very close to what we today call
the LXX). Josephus, who certainly knew Hebrew, did the same: his quotes of
the Bible are very close to what we today call the LXX. There was probably
not a single "authorised" version of the "Christian"-Greek text until the
Church was reorganized in the 4th century CE.
Yigal Levin
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