Biblical scholars have noticed the significant fact that of the long list of names in the sixteenth chapter of Romans, the greater number belongs to the Greek language, not to the Latin.  “The flexibility of the Greek language gained for it in ancient time a general currency similar to that which French enjoys in modern Europe; but with this important difference, that Greek was not only the language of educated men, but also the language of the masses in the great centres of commerce.”  Westcott in Smith’s Bible Dict., Art.  Hellenist.

5.  Respecting the character of the New Testament Greek there was in former times much controversy, often accompanied with unnecessary heat and bitterness.  One class of writers seemed to think that the honor of the New Testament was involved in their ability to show the classic purity and elegance of its style; as if, forsooth, the Spirit of inspiration could only address men through the medium of language conformed to the classic standard of propriety.  Another class went to the opposite extreme, speaking in exaggerated terms of the Hebraisms and solecisms of the New Testament writers.  The truth lies between these extremes.  The style of the New Testament is neither classical nor barbarous.  Its characteristics are strictly conformable to the history of its origin. (1.) Its basis is not the Greek of Plato and Xenophon, but the so-called Hellenic or common dialect which arose in the age of Alexander the Great, when “the previously distinct dialects, spoken by the various sections of the Hellenic nation, were blended into a popular spoken language.”  Winer, Gram, of the New Test., sec. 2.  The Alexandrine Jews doubtless learned it not so much from books as from the daily intercourse of life, and it probably had its provincial peculiarities in Alexandria and the adjacent region. (2.) In Jewish usage this common Greek dialect received an Hebraic coloring from the constant use of the Septuagint version, which is a literal rendering of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, of course with the retention of many Hebrew idioms.  Only such thorough Greek scholars as Josephus and Philo could rise above this influence.  The New Testament writers manifest its power in different degrees; for, as it respects Hebraisms, they do not by any means stand on a common level. (3.) As the Aramaic—­the so-called Syro-Chaldaic—­was the language of the mass of the people, the style of the New Testament writers received a tinge from this also. (4.) More than all, the style of the New Testament receives a peculiar impress from the fact that the authors were Jews writing under the full influence of a Jewish education and a Jewish faith, with the superadded element of Christianity.  It is the phenomenon of the spirit and thoughts of Jewish Christians embodied in the language of Greece; and this at once separates the writings of the New Testament by a wide interval from all purely classic compositions.  The apostolic writers imposed on the Greek language an arduous task, that of expressing ideas foreign to the conceptions of the most cultivated among the pagan authors; ideas partly common to the old Jewish and the Christian religions, partly peculiar to Christianity.  This could only be done by giving to existing terms a new and higher meaning, whereby they assumed a technical character wholly unknown to the classic writers.