136 UNIVERSAL LANGUAGES. 



Greek slaves acting as masters, spoke Greek better than 

 their Latin mother tongue. Cicero went to Athens in 

 order to study, others sent their sons there just as we 

 now send our sons and daughters to Paris and Berlin to 

 be educated, and learned men in Rome preferred to 

 speak Greek just as we find similar conditions on the 

 European continent now where we may find whole 

 nations, or at least whole classes of them, that speak an 

 adopted language, not their mother tongue. 



Thus Greek became the language, not only of com- 

 mercial intercourse in the Orient, all over the Adriatic, 

 in Spain and Southern France, everywhere where Greek 

 colonies had made their appearance, but it had develop- 

 ed as the language of all the thinkers of the world. So 

 it is clear that it became by necessity the language of 

 the world-moving doctrine of Jesus of Nazareth. In- 

 deed, the latter did not teach in the Greek language, 

 although he knew it, but being obliged to address the 

 humbler class of the people, spoke Aramaic, then the 

 principal language in Palestine. But those who spread 

 his doctrine by writing as well as by oral teaching and 

 preaching, could necessarily use only the finely develop- 

 ed Greek language, and wrote their epistles in it. So 

 the New Testament has, with a few exceptions, come 

 down to us in Greek from beginning to end, and most of 

 its parts, to the writing of St. Paul, are preserved with 

 their original features. Could it be otherwise? A uni- 

 versal religion, for as such Christianity appeared at 

 once in opposition to Judaism, was obliged to use a uni- 

 versal tongue, and that was the Greek. 



Meanwhile the Romans had conquered nearly the 

 whole Orient, and they were nearing the time when they 

 could justly consider themselves as masters of the whole 

 world (then known.) Palestine was a Roman province 

 when Christ was born, and when the Roman Emperors 

 had embraced the Christian religion themselves, and de- 



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