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Why did Ulfilas create a 27-letter alphabet for the Gothic Bible?

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Thematic map of Europe displaying the distribution of Germanic languages, with different colors indicating regions where English, German, Netherlandic (Dutch), Frisian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese are spoken. Striped areas mark regions where bilingualism is common, and language regions cover countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and parts of surrounding countries. — Germanic languages Distribution of the Germanic languages in Europe.

Ulfilas, a 4th-century Christian bishop, created the 27-letter Gothic alphabet specifically to translate the Bible into the Gothic language. By devising this writing system, he enabled the propagation of ideas in the Germanic world for the first time, allowing him to establish a vernacular Bible and liturgy for the Gothic people.12

The alphabet was primarily derived from Greek uncial script, with additional characters adapted from the Latin alphabet and runic script. Of the 27 symbols, 25 functioned as both letters and numbers, while two were used exclusively as numerals. This system provided the necessary phonetic representation to record the Gothic language, which was otherwise unwritten, and remains the primary source of our knowledge of this extinct East Germanic tongue.13