X Marks the spot

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Two facts about the original languages of the Bible are important in appreciating God’s master plan. First, the fact that the New Testament was written in Greek, which had the same cross-cultural importance as English in the first century, meant that though few of the readers or writers spoke Greek as their mother tongue, everyone understood it and thus the gospel stories and the letters could rapidly and easily be disseminated all over the Roman world.

Second, the fact that much of the Old Testament is written in Hebrew, especially the works of poetry and prophecy, mean that readers of translations of these literary styles can still appreciate the beauty of the language. Why? Unlike English or many other languages, the poetic devices of Hebrew do not depend on the sounds of the original language. In English, traditionally, we have depended mostly on metre (how many syllables in a line and the pattern of stressed or unstressed syllables in a foot) and rhyme (same sounds at the end of a line). For example,

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