„Oldal:Equipped-for-every-good-work-1946.pdf/31” változatai közötti eltérés

last book of the Hebrew canon was recorded, some eleven centuries later . Why, then, was not Hebrew used to finish the Bible canon? Why was it not used in recording the Gospels and epistles and other books of the so-called "New Testament"? Why switch to Greek after nearly threefourths of the Bible canon had been set forth in Hebrew? The answer is that God's purpose could be better served by changing over to the Greek tongue . Roughly speaking, some five hundred years separates the last book of the Hebrew Scriptures, Malachi, from the start of writing of the Greek Christian Scriptures . In that intervening period Hebrew ceased to exist as a living language of the people . Aramaic took its place . But before long, world political development dethroned Aramaic as the international language and seated in its place the Greek tongue . This change slowly evolved with the passing of the fourth world power, Medo-Persia, and the coming in of the fifth, Greece . The Greek tongue does not belong to the Semitic family of languages, but to the Indo-European, which is spoken by the descendants of Noah's son Japheth. The name of one of Japheth's sons is "Javan", meaning "younger one", and seems to be the word from which is derived the Greek word Ionian . The Hebrews called the Greeks "Ionians", or, literally, "Javanim ." The early Greeks first settled along the valley of the Danube river near the Black sea, but in process of time migrated southward, overrunning the Balkan peninsula and spreading out from there . As the Greeks spread out groups and colonies were more or less separated by physical features of the country, and naturally many dialects sprang up among the Greek peoples . The Greek language began to take shape about the time of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, and continued in this formative period down till about 900 B .C . From 900 B .C . to 330 B .C . is the so-called "classical period" of the Greek language, when the Attic dialect came to the fore . Within this period, during the fourth and fifth centuries B .C ., arose various Greek dramatists, poets,