Language

[Haipule]

The OT was written in Hebrew and Aramaic and translated into Greek, the Septuagint, BCE complete with an Apocrypha. The NT was written in mostly KoinE Greek in the mid to late first century. As far as 700 AD, we have some earlier manuscripts copies of some books and partials since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. However, all Greek was the Codex Vaticanus which is paleographically dated to the fourth century.

Despite the claim that there's such a thing as Koine Greek no one has been able to produce such a Greek alphabet.  Can you do it?  And there was no comprehensive Bible until around 690 A.D.  BTW, the Apocrypha was included from the start and was in almost every version.  Do you know when someone got a bug up his butt and deleted it?  I'll tell you if you want to know.

It's cool that you know these things. I go with the alphabet of the autographed language Scripture commonly accepted in the several interlinear bibles I own. KoinE(Jerusalem area Greek creole street language) was a dialect of the Attic Greek of Alexander the Great. Which itself, is a dialect of the Classical Greek.

As far as the Apocrypha, the Jewish "Holy Scriptures(OT)" books, are the same as English KJV, NIV and NASV only in a different order. However, there is a much longer version of Jeremiah somewhere but, I don't remember where? Yet, the Apocrypha is not included in the versions of the Jewish "Holy Scriptures" I have seen. So, if someone did take them out I would guess its was post-Septuagint(Torah was early koinE 3rd century BC).

I hope your not going to say, "That dude from Hippo" because that dude was a complete clown! How did he become a saint?

Many of the older versions of Scripture such as the Coptic are translated from the Septuagint and not the Hebrew/Aramaic texts. So yes, they include the Apocrypha.

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Having studied a little more, I realize this is an old argument with out a consensus. I though Max Muller list of speculative theories was interesting:

Bow-wow
Pooh-pooh
ding-dong
yo-he-ho
ta-ta

I'm going with tic-tac-toe because no one wins!