Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/30

4 mark on all that followed. But no sooner was the gospel launched on the sea of the great world's life than it passed into a Hellenic form, being at once expounded in the Greek language and becoming gradually shaped in the mould of Greek thought. It is probable that Jesus Christ knew the popular Greek dialect of His day, although it is nearly certain that He habitually spoke in Aramaic, the language of His home and people. The apostles must have preached in Greek when they passed the narrow bounds of Palestine. Paul, Barnabas, Stephen, Philip the Evangelist, Apollos, Timothy—in fact, all the early missionaries of whom we know anything, except the Twelve, James, and Mark—were Hellenists, or even in some cases actually Greeks by race, such as Luke and Titus. All the books of the New Testament were written in Greek, in spite of the fact that two of them seem to have been intended for Jews, and one was addressed to Rome and another to a Roman colony. All the writings of the Apostolic Fathers are in the Greek language, although they originated in places so far apart as Rome, Asia Minor, and probably Egypt and Syria. Greek was the literary language of the Church in the West as well as in the East down to the end of the second century, except in North Africa where Latin was used, and in the Valley of the Euphrates where Syriac was employed. Until we reach the third century we meet with no Latin writing of importance in the Roman Church. Hippolytus, whose martyrdom is dated between 233 and 239, wrote in Greek. The early bishops of Rome bear Greek names. Justin Martyr, a native of Samaria, but a travelling evangelist who carried his mission as far as Rome where he ended it by death, wrote his appeals to the emperors and the Senate, as well as his dialogue with a Jew, in Greek. In Gaul we have the Churches of Lyonne and Vienne sending an account of the persecution they had passed through under Marcus Aurelius to their brethren