ABSTRACT
A brief look at the language situation in the first few centuries of the Roman Empire will not only provide us with a general sociopolitical and cultural background for the subject, but also introduce us to some of the issues to be examined in detail in later chapters. Which were the international languages of commerce and trade? Which languages were official, state-supported languages and which remained local or minority languages? What led to the isolation of some languages as ‘sacred’? How do political and economic factors affect such things as education, literacy, book production, translation and the like? What specifically religious factors, such as missionary zeal, conservatism and the power of a priestly hierarchy, have to be taken into account? What effect did the translation of a sacred text from one language into another have, if any, on the religion of those who believed it to be sacred? Does translation from a Semitic language to an Indo-European language (Hebrew to Greek, for example) raise particular problems? What languages became associated with particular religions, and why?
