I agree the gospels were written in Greek, but I always thought that was so there was a text to take up to all those churches St Paul had founded.

I knew I'd read something recently, a modern book on the Arab conquests. It claimed that despite centuries of Greek rule, everyday use of Greek was an urban habit, the villages at the time of the arrival of the Arabs in the 7thC still spoke Aramaic, just as Coptic was still the language of Egypt.