The language of the New Testament long constituted a perplexing problem to the Biblical scholar, for while the earliest extant manuscripts were undoubtedly written in Greek, it was equally obvious that this Greek could not be said to conform strictly to classical standards. Those who had been trained to study and use the highly polished phrases and elaborate construction favored by such classic authors as Euripides or Plato, were at a loss to account for a certain bluntness of expression, a homeliness and seeming irregularity of form and of sentence structure characteristic of all, or of nearly all, of the New Testament writers; and, for a time, it became the custom to condemn the style, grammar, and vocabulary of the apostles and evangelists, or, at best, to make excuses for them. It was assumed that "New Testament Greek" constituted a strange and indeed a unique dialect, and that its departure from the literary models then approved was due either to the admittedly humble origin of its writers or to the fact that they were unconsciously influenced by Aramaic, which most of them had known from childhood. Other critics went further, bluntly affirming that the language of the New Testament was simply "bad Greek." However, of late years, and especially during the last few decades, archaeological discovery has come forward to play its part in vindicating the authors of the New Testament.
About the turn of the century, very ancient papyrus manuscripts began to be unearthed in increasing numbers, particularly in Egypt. where the dry sand had aided in their preservation for almost two thousand years. Moreover, as the work of deciphering these first, second, and third century fragments proceeded, it became increasingly evident that they were inscribed with the very same kind of Greek which is used in the books of the New Testament.
Thus it was proved that "New Testament Greek," so far from being an isolated phenomenon, as had been supposed, was simply the language or dialect almost universally used in the early centuries of our era. It was the graphic, homely speech of everyday life. It had not, and had never claimed to possess, the rigid accuracy beloved of the pedant, but exhibited that peculiar vividness which comes from daily conversational use. So when the evangelists and apostles recorded for all ages the truths of the Christian revelation, they were not using what had long been regarded as the only legitimate language of literature, but were setting down the story of the gospel and of its development in the familiar colloquial Greek of the day, known among scholars as the "Koine" (or, more fully, "Koine Dialektos"), that is, the dialect "common" to the people as a whole.
