Why were all the early writings available today about Jesus written in Greek?

[davefoc]

Why were all the early writings available today about Jesus written first in Greek? Even if one credits the Jewish Christians with proto mark and Q there are no writings extent that discuss their early meetings, leadership, etc. Everything we know about them comes from their representation in the Gospels, paul's letters, Acts , some references to them by early Church Fathers and maybe the reference to the death of James by Josephus.

Even moderately well established, apparently Jewish Christian groups, like the Ebionites don't seem to have had any writings survive about their beliefs or their organizations.

What's going on here?

Were all their writings destroyed by the early gentile Christian Church?

Were their writings just lost along with the groups themselves as the gray region between Christian and Jew was eliminated by Jewish and Christian establishments.

Maybe their writings were lost along with themselves during the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD.

Maybe they didn't write much, because they were a small time movement with mostly illiterate members.

Maybe their early writings were in Greek because they were mostly Greek speakers and their writings ended up getting absorbed into the gentile Christian writings.

The difficulty with this question is that some will contend that the gospels and paul's letters were early Jewish Christian writings. They were early Christian writings that might have been done by Hellenized Jews for sure, but did they represent the beliefs and activities of the Jewish Christian Church? Not as the early Jewish Christian Church seems to have been based on the conflicts reported in the NT between the goup led by James and the group led by Paul.

[Euromutt]

I'm speculating here, but I guess that after the Macedonian conquest of the Levant, Greek (specifically Koinè) became the lingua franca of the time in the region. So perhaps if you wanted your material to be accessible to as wide an audience as possible, you'd write in Koinè (much like you'd write a scientific study in English today if you wanted it to get noticed internationally). Alternatively, it may have been the language of which the written form as most widely known among those not part of the formal religious hierarchy. Koinè is actually a fairly simple form of Greek, much less complex than Attic (i.e. Athenian) or even Doric, and easier to learn as a result.

[Gwyn ap Nudd]

I'm speculating here, but I guess that after the Macedonian conquest of the Levant, Greek (specifically Koinè) became the lingua franca of the time in the region. So perhaps if you wanted your material to be accessible to as wide an audience as possible, you'd write in Koinè (much like you'd write a scientific study in English today if you wanted it to get noticed internationally). Alternatively, it may have been the language of which the written form as most widely known among those not part of the formal religious hierarchy. Koinè is actually a fairly simple form of Greek, much less complex than Attic (i.e. Athenian) or even Doric, and easier to learn as a result.

That would explain why the extant writings from the more gentile-inclusive Antioch branch (under Paul, and to a lesser etxent Peter) of early Christianity were written in Greek, but if you read the OP, the question, that is not the question. What the OP asked was why are there no extant writings from the more exclusive Jerusalem branch (under James), which would presumably have been written in Aramaic:

Were all their writings destroyed by the early gentile Christian Church?

<snip>

Maybe they didn't write much, because they were a small time movement with mostly illiterate members.

<snip>

The difficulty with this question is that some will contend that the gospels and paul's letters were early Jewish Christian writings. They were early Christian writings that might have been done by Hellenized Jews for sure, but did they represent the beliefs and activities of the Jewish Christian Church? Not as the early Jewish Christian Church seems to have been based on the conflicts reported in the NT between the goup led by James and the group led by Paul.

[a_unique_person]

The big schism, is my guess. The writings of the 'heretics' were destroyed.

[drkitten]

That would explain why the extant writings from the more gentile-inclusive Antioch branch (under Paul, and to a lesser etxent Peter) of early Christianity were written in Greek, but if you read the OP, the question, that is not the question. What the OP asked was why are there no extant writings from the more exclusive Jerusalem branch (under James), which would presumably have been written in Aramaic:

You've more or less answered your own question.

A more exclusive branch would have fewer members, fewer copies, and therefore fewer opportunities for the documents to be preserved. And as the smaller branches whithered, fewer and fewer people in the later generations would still be interested in preserving the documents.

The earliest actual Biblical manuscripts we have are (I believe) from the mid 5th century. Was the Jerusalem branch still a substantive group of people at that point?

[ceo_esq]

The earliest actual Biblical manuscripts we have are (I believe) from the mid 5th century. Was the Jerusalem branch still a substantive group of people at that point?

That's a good question to which I don't know the answer, but we do have some NT manuscripts from earlier than the mid-5th century. The Codex Vaticanus is believed to date from roughly 300; the Codex Sinaiticus from roughly 350. Fragments of individual NT books (ranging from tiny to substantial) survive from perhaps the early- to mid-2nd century onward. Here (http://odyssey.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/texts/manuscripts.html) is an interesting essay on the subject from the Duke University Special Collections Library website.

Some scholars argue that 7Q5 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7Q5) (mid-1st century) is actually a minuscule fragment of the Gospel of Mark (also in Greek).

[Meadmaker]

Christianity never caught on very much at all in Israel. They were very much a fringe group. Furthermore, Christianity was still considered a branch of Judaism for some time after Jesus' death. Therefore, the Christian community in Israel would have been dispersed with the Jews after the destruction of the temple.

Christianity spread most rapidly among the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria, who were already using their Greek bible (the Septuagint). So, most of the writings were in Greek because that was the language spoken by most Christians.

Meanwhile, the Hebrew/Aramaic speakers would have been much more conservative. The Jewish exiles who clung to their religion probably would have been even more hostile to the Christians among them. Eventually Christianity died out in that community altogether, as the Christians assimilated into the surrounding Greek/Roman culture.

There is one document, of dubious authenticity, that may have been written in Hebrew and survived. It is called the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew. Google the phrase for more info. There is no way that it could ever possibly be authenticated, as there was one known manuscript, and it was centuries younger than the Bible (I think 14th century?) However, there is some possibility that it was handed down relatively unchanged, and that it might be the document scholars refer to as "Q".

[Bikewer]

Bart Ehrman points out that literacy was a rare commodity at the time, and so scribes, trained in reading/writing, would probably have been fluent in the Greek dialects. (much as Latin became the language of scholars later)
The early Christian writings were meant to be read at gatherings by individuals with such skills, rather than owned and read individually.

[drkitten]

Bart Ehrman points out that literacy was a rare commodity at the time, and so scribes, trained in reading/writing, would probably have been fluent in the Greek dialects. (much as Latin became the language of scholars later)
The early Christian writings were meant to be read at gatherings by individuals with such skills, rather than owned and read individually.

I'm not sure I accept that.

I mean, yes, literacy was a rare commodity at the time and most literate people knew (still know) the high-prestige dialects and languages.

But the idea that one would write in Greek for public reading.... Er, no.

Unless the population to which one was reading was already fluent in (spoken) Greek, reading a Greek document aloud to them would make no sense. A document "meant to be read at gatherings" would be written in a language that could be understood at gatherings. A document to be read at Aramaic-speaking gatherings would have been written in Aramaic to be read aloud by Aramaic-speaking scribes. If there weren't enough Aramaic-speaking scribes, you simply wouldn't have written the document in the first place. But it does no good to write an epistle that you know your target audience won't understand a word of.

[davefoc]

Some scholars argue that 7Q5 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7Q5) (mid-1st century) is actually a minuscule fragment of the Gospel of Mark (also in Greek).

I was a little surprised to see this scrap brought up in the context of this discussion. This just looks to me like wishful thinking on the part of an author that wants to sell books to Christians. Do you think there's more here than that?

[davefoc]

Christianity spread most rapidly among the Greek-speaking Jews of Alexandria, who were already using their Greek bible (the Septuagint). So, most of the writings were in Greek because that was the language spoken by most Christians.



Are these Jewish Christians in Alexandria still mostly followers of Jewish laws? Are they followers of a movement started by James or by Paul or perhaps by somebody else? Are there any particular early Christian writings that might have been written by or derived from writings by these Hellenized Jews in Alexandria?

[Meadmaker]

Are these Jewish Christians in Alexandria still mostly followers of Jewish laws? Are they followers of a movement started by James or by Paul or perhaps by somebody else? Are there any particular early Christian writings that might have been written by or derived from writings by these Hellenized Jews in Alexandria?


I don't know if they exist today, but at the time of Christ they were followers of Jewish law, although I don't know if there had already been some divergence between practices in Israel, vs. practices in Alexandria. One suspects there might have been, but I don't know if that's true or not.

As for writings, some of the material that is in the Septuagint, but was not included in the Jewish Tanach, were probably written in the Greek speaking world, especially Alexandria. To find this material, compare a Catholic Old Testament, and a Protestant Old Testament. The Catholic one was based on the Greek translation. The Protestant Old Testament is based on what the Jews eventually accepted as scriptural. (The Tanach) The Catholic one contains seven "extra" books. (1 and 2 Maccabees, Baruch, Sirach, Wisdom, Tobit, Judith, plus parts of Daniel and Esther, if I remember correctly.) I'm fairly certain that the "extra" parts of Daniel, plus the book of Wisdom, were both originally in Greek, but you'd have to look that up for yourself to be accurate.

[ceo_esq]

I was a little surprised to see this scrap brought up in the context of this discussion. This just looks to me like wishful thinking on the part of an author that wants to sell books to Christians. Do you think there's more here than that?

Most academics want to hype their research and writing, I suppose. 7Q5=Mark 6:52-53 is clearly a minority position among scholars, but at least the people who have argued in favor of it include several respectable professional papyrologists. It's not just one person's pet theory or an obvious marketing ploy. As to whether the theory is correct, I provisionally classify it in the "doubtful" category based largely on my perception of the weight of scholarly opinion coming down on the opposite side.