In what languages was the Bible written?

Nobody doubts that scripture without exception has a human element. In it God speaks and writes permanently to man, and therefore in human language. It would be unintelligible otherwise. As the general rule Hebrew was used in the so-called Old Testament, Greek in the New. We can readily see His wisdom in thus writing by man to man… the law with all its variety of meaning in the language of His ancient people; the gospel with all the fulness of grace and truth in the chief tongue of the Gentiles.

In this language, the whole of the Old Testament is written, with the exception of parts of the Books of Ezra and Daniel. And it is remarked how little change the language underwent during the thousand years over which the composition of the book extended. This is due to the natural inflexibility of the language itself; the isolation of the people from the rest of the world; the influence of the Pentateuch in fixing it; and the general belief in its sacredness. For these reasons, the language of Moses is substantially the same as that of Malachi.

In it are also written those parts of the Old Testament, which are not in Hebrew: namely, Daniel 2:4 to Daniel 7:28; and Ezra 4:8 to Ezra 6:18; and Ezra 7:12-26.

The book is not all written in Hebrew: from Daniel 2:4 to the end of Daniel 7 — namely, what concerns the Gentiles — is written in what is there called Syriac, or Aramaic — usually called Chaldee, the Gentiles' tongue.

The only other language that remains to be noticed is the Greek, in which the whole of the New Testament is written: a peculiar dialect of which prevailed in Western Asia and Egypt, as a result of the conquests of Alexander the Great… This dialect is therefore called Alexandrian Greek, and is distinguished from the language of the classics by having many Hebrew and other Eastern ways of speaking grafted into it.

God so ordained it that by the rise of the Greek empire this language was spread over Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, and the countries near them, and it is a language still understood by the learned of all nations. It is acknowledged to be a remarkably flexible language, capable of forming new theological terms with delicate shades of meaning, and of expressing ideas with precision. It was therefore, in every way, the most suitable language in which to make known the gospel of God.

Greek was the current language of the world at the time when Christianity appeared — the language with which a man might travel from end to end of the Roman Empire. And there appears a special providence in the fact that the Gospel was sent out at the very time when there was such a universal language to carry it. It was necessary for the free circulation of the message that it should be written in the speech of the Empire, not in some local dialect.

We should note that the Lord, and the New Testament writers, used a translation as well (the Septuagint, that is, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament), and they quoted from it, saying "it is written". Therefore we can comfortably rely on a good translation and take it as God's word.