Through the Bible - Languages

Old Covenant – mainly in Hebrew, but part of Daniel (2:4 - 7:28) is in a related language called Aramaic, the official language of the Persian Empire, and Aramaic words occur in Esther, Job, the Psalms, Song of Songs and Jonah. See Isaiah 36:11 for a time when Aramaic was preferred, and Mark 5:41 for an example of Jesus using Aramaic.

About 300 BC the Old Covenant was translated into Greek (traditionally by either 70 or 72 Jewish scholars) because Hebrew had fallen into disuse and Greek was the common language of the region. They used texts not available to us now. This translation is called the Septuagint from the Latin for “seventy”, and is abbreviated to LXX.

When people in the New Covenant quote Scripture from the Old Covenant it is usually the LXX, not the Hebrew, because the LXX was, for them, the Bible. This is why New Covenant quotations and the Old Covenant originals don't match exactly - our Bibles use the Hebrew text whereas the New Testament authors used the Greek text. Compare 1 Peter 4:18 and Proverbs 11:31, for example.

New Covenant – Koine Greek (“koine” = ”common”), the language of the region and the same as used in the Septuagint. David Pawson described it as “Cockney Greek” i.e. not the classical Greek language but what the man in the street would use.