Language of the Bible

[Kevin Mowad]

Just a quick one! What was the original language that the Bible was first written in? Was it just Hebrew? Or were there some books in Hebrew and some in Greek? Also when was the first copy of the Bible Composed?

[Stephen Spiteri]

The Sacred Scriptures were originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. At the Council of Rome in 382AD headed by Pope Damasus I, St. Jerome was commissioned by Pope Damasus I to translate the scriptural canon - from Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek - into the common language of empire: Latin. By 396 to 397AD we were given the Latin Vulgate Bible ("vulgate" is Latin for "common tongue").

The Old Testament would have been in Hebrew and Aramaic (obviously) since it was for the Jews, but later it was translated to Greek and this Greek translation of the Jewish Bible became known as the Septuagint. Books of the New Testament were written in all three languages but don't ask me which ones were originally in Greek, Hebrew, etc.

[DavidObeid]

The Deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament (those that are in the Catholic Bible that Christ and the Apostles used but not in the Protestant Bibles that are based on the canon of the Jews from after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD) were also believed to have been penned in Greek originally.