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Early History
The history of the church begins with the first human beings, Adam and Eve. They would have spoken the Universal Language, the first and only language until the Tower of Babel. After the fracturing of languages, there would have been Sanctified people in a variety of languages. Next, however, the People of God would have been almost exclusively of one race and tongue.
Hebrew
Main article: Hebrew:Main
Ancient Hebrew is a very difficult language for Modern English speakers to learn and even comprehend. Semitic languages in general do not have much in common with English. Initially, there was no alphabet and the world used hieroglyphs. The Ten Commandments, written by God's own finger on tablets, would have been etched in this language. Eventually, the Phoenician invention of a phonetic alphabet spread across the ancient Near East.
Greek
Main article: Greek:Main
The locus of people whom God was saving stayed in Israel for a long time. The rebellion of God's chosen people, however, lead to their conquest at the hands of their neighbors and their Diaspora (Scattering). The most influential of these heathen conquerors were the Greeks. Alexander the Great's empire spread over an unprecedented swath of the globe and his language became the first lingua franca. Jews were now very far apart, both in space and in language, and so the common dialect was used by them as well. Holy Scripture (what we think of as the Old Testament) was translated into common Greek and yielded the Septuagint.
Greek was born among pagan people and matured under the influence of philosophers and scholars who sought to establish coherent systems of thought apart from God. As such, the etymology and connotation of many words in Greek is frightfully anti-God and evil. Miraculously, God chose to inspire the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament to be written in this language. And when apostles (and even Jesus, himself) sited the Old Testament, they quoted from the Septuagint.
Latin
Main article: Latin:Main
The spread of Christianity was so successful, in part, due to the hierarchical structure and superior infrastructure of the Roman Empire. The gospel was carried to the edges of the known world in Greek, but the language of the autocratic government came to be abiding lingua franca of the Common Era, and the schism of the Western from Greek churches did not encourage Greek scholarship. Jerome produced the Vulgate in the fifth century, and was the last translator to use the Hebrew Scriptures for quite some time.
The Church spread throughout Europe and carried Latin with it. Latin became an artificial language, maintained for ecclesiastical writing in Europe, and heavily influencing the vocabulary of all European languages.
English
While hardly an official church language, English is one of the preeminent languages of our day and often serves as a lingua franca around the world. English, like many European languages, has the benefit and the challenge of having matured after the Gospel had spread across its speakers' culture. This means words like 'gospel' already exist in the language, but they may be seen as jargon of by-gone religiosity. English may well have more translation of the Bible available in it than any other language.
Study
As Greek, Hebrew and Latin are all dead languages, it is more helpful to learn grammar, morphology and lexicography than to play audio learning CD's as we drive to work. Hopefully, we will all overcome our culture's disdain for classical education and learn to appreciate the nuances of all these languages, in order to get at the true meaning pointed at by mere words.
Latin and Greek have much in common with English, having influenced its development, at least among scholars. Rules of grammar from Latin were hoisted upon English so long ago that they are indeed our rules, though perhaps only in written English. Like English, Greek has the following parts of speech:
- Nouns
- Verbs (Participles)
- Adjectives
- Articles
- Adverbs
- Conjunctions
- Exclamations
- Prepositions
Greek differs from English in several important ways, however. First, Greeks tended to uses participles far more than we do in English. Second, they tended to uses participles and other adjectives substancively far more often. Third, nouns (and their modifiers) have gender in Greek, a trait all but lost in English. Lastly, Greek verbs often have aspect, a subliminated characteristic of English.