I could put it right back at ya. Where is the evidence for an original text in Greek for the New Testament? Where? The first person that suggested this idea was Voss in the 1650's.
I think you have reading comprehension issues. No where did I say that Josephus didn't write in Greek. Of course he did. AFTER, he first wrote it all in Aramaic. As he says in his works:
Jewish Wars (Book 1, Preface, Paragraph 1): "I have proposed to myself, for the sake of such as live under the government of the Romans, to translate those books into the Greek tongue, which I formerly composed in the language of our country, and sent to the Upper Barbarians. Joseph, the son of Matthias, by birth a Hebrew, a priest also, and one who at first fought against the Romans myself, and was forced to be present at what was done afterwards, [am the author of this work]."
Jewish Wars Book 1 Preface, Paragraph 2 - "I thought it therefore an absurd thing to see the truth falsified in affairs of such great consequence, and to take no notice of it; but to suffer those Greeks and Romans that were not in the wars to be ignorant of these things, and to read either flatteries or fictions, while the Parthians, and the Babylonians, and the remotest Arabians, and those of our nation beyond Euphrates, with the Adiabeni, by my means, knew accurately both whence the war begun, what miseries it brought upon us, and after what manner it ended."
All of these nations OUTSIDE of Judea were able to read Josephus' first version (ie. not in Greek). Their language was the same as what was in Judea during this time. The Greeks and Romans were ignorant of his works because they couldn't read them and so he had to translate them.
"I have also taken a great deal of pains to obtain the learning of the Greeks, and understand the elements of the Greek language, although I have so long accustomed myself to speak our own tongue, that I cannot pronounce Greek with sufficient exactness; for our nation does not encourage those that learn the languages of many nations, and so adorn their discourses with the smoothness of their periods;b ecause they look upon this sort of accomplishment as common, not only to all sorts of free-men, but to as many of the servants as please to learn them. But they give him the testimony of being a wise man who is fully acquainted with our laws, and is able to interpret their meaning; on which account, as there have been many who have done their endeavors with great patience to obtain this learning, there have yet hardly been so many as two or three that have succeeded therein, who were immediately well rewarded for their pains." - Antiquities of Jews XX, XI
Josephus says he went through a lot of effort to learn Greek. It was not a common thing. Some people do try but many do not succeed in it. He had a lot of difficulty in speaking it properly. He would have stuck out to any native Greek speaker.
Antiquities of Jews Book 1, Preface, Paragraph 2 - "Now I have undertaken the present work, as thinking it will appear to all the Greeks worthy of their study; for it will contain all our antiquities, and the constitution of our government, as interpreted out of the Hebrew Scriptures. And indeed I did formerly intend, when I wrote of the war, to explain who the Jews originally were, - what fortunes they had been subject to, - and by what legislature they had been instructed in piety, and the exercise of other virtues, - what wars also they had made in remote ages, till they were unwillingly engaged in this last with the Romans: but because this work would take up a great compass, I separated it into a set treatise by itself, with a beginning of its own, and its own conclusion; but in process of time, as usually happens to such as undertake great things, I grew weary and went on slowly, it being a large subject, and a difficult thing to translate our history into a foreign, and to us unaccustomed language."
Greek was a foreign language to the Jews. They were unaccustomed to it. It was NOT commonly spoken. The vast majority would NOT have used the Septuagint as their Scripture reading.
