Although the original biblical texts were written mostly in Hebrew or Greek, there is no denying that Latin was one of the most important languages of the biblical world.
Biblical Greek, as it is commonly known, is a dialect of the ancient Greek language known as hēkoinēdialektos (“the common dialect”) or Koine Greek. This dialect became the lingua franca of the eastern Mediterranean world for almost a millennium.
The Aramaic language constitutes the eastern branch of the Northwest Semitic language family. Its closest relatives are the Canaanite dialects in the western branch of the family, such as Hebrew, Phoenician, and Moabite.
Akkadian, the language of the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians, was once the lingua franca of the entire Near East.
Biblical Hebrew is the dialect of the Canaanite language used by the people of ancient Israel, and the primary language of the Hebrew Bible.
Hittite, the language of the ancient Anatolian kingdom of Hatti, is the oldest recorded Indo-European language.
The Cairo Geniza refers to the cache of about 300,000 documents found in the attic storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue, located in Fustat (in Old Cairo), the capital city of Egypt during the seventh–tenth centuries C.E.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is an ancient Mesopotamian literary work that tells a fantastic story of King Gilgamesh’s failed quest for immortality.
The Rosetta Stone refers to a fragmented Egyptian stela discovered near the Mediterranean port city of Rasheed (also known as Rosetta), in the western Nile Delta.