This chapter examines the first stages in the history of the transmission of the Old Testament text over a period of approximately 500 years, starting with 300 BC. The Old Testament books were translated into other Semitic languages, Aramaic and Syriac and also into non-Semitic languages, Greek, and subsequently Latin. The demand for a translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Aramaic probably arose during the Babylonian Exile or immediately after the return of the exiles to Palestine in the Persian period. Aramaic being the lingua franca of the time, it was adopted by many Jews in their intercourse with the non-Jewish world. The biblical manuscripts from Qumran have added a new dimension to the criticism of the biblical text and to the study of its history, both in the original Hebrew and in the earliest ancient versions, especially in Greek.

Hebrew and Aramaic are two of the main representatives of the Semitic family of languages, named after Shem, the reputed ancestor of the Semitic peoples. Ancient Ethiopic first appears in epigraphic materials of the first Christian centuries and in the Aksum inscriptions of the fourth century AD. It is the language of an extensive Ethiopian Christian literature. The modern Semitic languages of Ethiopia are represented by Tigrina, Tigre, Amharic, Harari and Gurage. Classical Hebrew is the language of the Old Testament scriptures. The Lachish letters of the sixth century BC inscriptions, like the Gezer Calendar, the Siloam inscriptions have all added substantially to the knowledge of the ancient Hebrew language. The New Testament is written in a form of biblical Greek, the language of the Greek Old Testament and related writings, which are itself a deposit of the widely diffused Hellenistic language, usually designated the Koine form of the Greek language in the post-classical or Hellenistic era.