I think what you're noticing is true with a certain type of Christian who is maybe more enamored with the Jewish culture than those of Christians. It's a strange phenomenon, these "Messianic Jews" or whatever they call themselves. I don't mean that as a slur against any who identify as such, as I've had plenty of civil, friendly conversations with people who identify as that here on CF, but it's an interesting approach to history, if nothing else. I've heard one EO priest (can't remember who) assess it by saying that this phenomenon is what happens when you have Christians that want to have some sense of historical rootedness to their worship and theology, but since they confine themselves to a very particular reading of the scriptures only, in isolation from the fathers who are our witness as to what the early Christian community was actually like, they can only see and hence identify with the Jewish culture. It's almost as though the Greeks, Aramaeans, etc. don't really exist, or are secondary to the Hebrews. This is all ahistorical, of course, but I get a sense that he is right about the mindset that devalues Greek and uplifts Hebrew.
In my communion, of course ,we are fine with using Greek and Classical Syriac (a descendant of Aramaic, spreading out from Edessa in the kingdom of King Abgar V, the first kingdom to accept Christianity, in the first century). Coptic has so much Greek in it that some linguists classify it as a mixed language of Greek and Egyptian parentage. I'm fine with that. We're all fine with that. To this day, something like 10% of the 'Coptic' hymnody is actually Greek, though I'm told that the Egyptians have a weird pronunciation of it relative to the Greeks.
I don't think Egypt would've taken to Christianity as it did had it not passed through the medium of Greek, which had long been the language of prestige among the elite at Alexandria, where St. Mark first preached. Our Church, like our liturgical language, is definitely of mixed Greek and Egyptian heritage, though we may be somewhat unique in that. I don't know how much Greek the Syriacs preserved, and I'm told that most classical Armenian religious vocabulary comes from Syriac, which is the language the Armenians worshiped in before St. Mesrob Mashtots invented their alphabet which enabled them to translate the liturgy and the scriptures into their own language, in the beginning of the fifth century.
"Asomen to Kyrio" (see, there it is! We definitely use this word
), one of the Greek hymns of the Coptic Orthodox Church, in Coptic, Greek, and Arabic prayed by head cantor Ibrahim Ayad and chorus.
We love Greek. It's also what all the deacon's replies will usually be in, harkening back to the time when Copts and Greeks worshiped together in one church.
