The national Aramaic or Hebrew element influenced Greek-writing Jewish authors of the Greek New Testament in a threefold manner:
(1) It is proable that the speaker or writer quite involuntarily and unconciously rendered a phrase by his mother tounge by an accurately corresponding phrase;
(2) The reading and hearing of the Old Testament in the Greek version of the Septuagint coloured the writer’s style, especially if he desired to write in a solemn and dignified manner (just as profane writers borrowed phrases from the Attic writers for a similar objects);
(3) A great part of the New Testament writings (the three first Gospels and the first half of the Acts) is in all probability a direct working over of Aramaic or Hebrew materials. This was not a translation like that executed by the Septuagint rendered word for word with the utmost fidelity, and almost without any regard to intelligibility; but it was convenient to adhere to the originals even in expression instead of looking for a form of expression which was a good Greek.
The Aramaisms and Hebraisms are, then, for the most part of a lexical kind, i.e. they consist in the meaning which is attributed to a word, or in phrases literally translated.
