3.  We find, accordingly, that centuries before our Lord’s advent, preparation began to be made in the providence of God for this change in the language of the inspired writings.  One result of the Babylonish captivity was that Hebrew ceased to be the vernacular of the masses of the people, and a form of Aramaean took its place.  Chap. 14, No. 4.  After the return of the Jews from this same captivity and their reestablishment in their own land, the spirit of prophecy was also withdrawn, and the canon of the Old Testament brought to a close.  Thus the cessation of Hebrew as the spoken language of the people, and the withdrawal of the spirit of prophecy were contemporaneous events.  The canon was locked up in the sacred language, and the interpreter took the place of the prophet.  “The providential change of language suggested a general limit within which the voice of inspiration might be heard, as the fearful chastisements of the captivity turned men’s minds to the old Scriptures with a devotion unknown before.”  Westcott’s Introduc. to the Study of the Gospels, chap. 1.

4.  But the conquests of Alexander the Great (B.C. 334-323) brought the Greek language and the Greek civilization into Asia and Egypt, as a sure leaven destined to leaven the whole mass.  To this influence the Jews could not remain insensible.  It reached even Palestine, where they naturally clung most tenaciously to the Aramaean language and to the customs of their fathers.  But out of Palestine, where the Jews were dispersed in immense numbers, it operated more immediately; especially in Egypt, whose metropolis Alexandria was, after the age of Alexander its founder, one of the chief seats of Grecian learning.  To the Jews of Alexandria the Greek language was vernacular.  By them was executed, as we have seen, under the patronage of the Egyptian king, the first version ever made of the Hebrew Scriptures, namely, that called the Septuagint (Chap. 16, Nos. 1-7), which was begun, if not completed, in the latter part of the third century before Christ.  Though this version encountered bitter opposition on the part of the unbelieving Jews after the establishment of the Christian church, in consequence of the effective use made of it against them by Christian writers, it was received from its first appearance and onward with general favor.  The Hellenistic Jews—­those using the Greek language and conforming themselves to Grecian civilization—­made constant use of it, and the knowledge of it was very widely diffused beyond the boundaries of Egypt.  In our Saviour’s day it was in very general use, as the abundant quotations from it in the New Testament show; and it must have contributed largely to the spread of the knowledge of the Greek language among the Jewish people in and out of Palestine.  Though the Roman empire succeeded to that of the Greeks, the Roman could not supplant the more polished Greek tongue, with its immense and varied literature.  On the contrary, the Greek language penetrated into Italy, and especially into Rome, the metropolis of the civilized world, where, in our Saviour’s day, Greek literature was in high repute, and the Greek language was very generally understood.  Thus, in the good providence of God, the writers of the New Testament, also, found ready at hand a language singularly adapted to their service.