The disciples of Christ taught His Faith with the language
of the Kingdom. That language conformeth to all languages, for it consisteth of
celestial meanings and divine mysteries. For the one who becometh conversant
with that language the realities and secrets of creation stand unveiled before
him. Divine truths are common to all languages. The Holy Spirit, therefore,
taught the disciples the language of the Kingdom, and they thus were able to
converse with the people of all nations. Whenever they spoke to those of other
nations of the world, it was as if they conversed in their tongues. The
well-known and outstanding languages of the world number about a thousand. It
was necessary for the disciples to have written the Gospels in at least one of
the languages of other nations. Thus, as it is known, the Gospels were written
only in Hebrew and Greek, and not even in the language of the Romans, although
it was at the time the official language. As the disciples were not well-versed
in it, the Gospels were not written in that language.
(‘Abdu’l-Baha, from a
Tablet; compilation: Extracts from the Baha’i Writings and from letters of the
Guardian and the Universal House of Justice on the Old and New Testaments
included in a memorandum from the Research Department of the Universal House of
Justice on ‘The Resurrection of Christ’, dated 14 September 1987)
