Languages of the Early Church

The principal languages of early Christian music were Greek, Latin and Syriac. The very first Christians, and indeed Jesus himself, spoke Aramaic (Hebrew had become a literary language by his time), but with the spread of Christianity to the Gentiles by way of Paul's mission, Greek became the dominant early Christian language. In the wake of the Alexandrian conquests, Greek had become the principal language of the eastern Mediterranean basin, particularly in the cities and seaports. This Greek , known as the koinē (the ‘common’ tongue), a grammatically simplified form of classical Greek, was also spoken in parts of the West; the Christian community at Rome itself spoke it until well into the 3rd century, and there were traces of spoken Greek in the Rhône valley as late as the 6th century. Latin, however, had always been the language of Christianity in the western reaches of North Africa, and from the 3rd century was all but universally spoken among Western Christians. Syriac, a dialect of late Aramaic, was the language of the Mesopotamian region.

n the 5th century the Bible and the Syriac liturgy were translated into Armenian. An Armenian hymnody had its beginnings during the same period, but its history belongs more to the Middle Ages than to the early Christian period. (See also ARMENIA, §II.) The same can be said for the music of the Coptic rite. The Coptic language was a survival of the ancient Egyptian tongue, written by and large with Greek letters. The liturgy of Christian Egypt was at first in Greek but was translated into Coptic for the population of the Upper Nile region. The music that survives today from this rite is considerably later than the period under consideration here. The Coptic monks of the 4th century, however, were the dominant force in early Christian monasticism, and their psalmodic practices had a profound influence on the formation of both Eastern and Western Offices.

From: New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians  (personal online subscription: $30.00 month.; $295.00 year.) This excellent general resource has several articles containing information on Music of the Early Christian Church. Music Ref ML100.N48