The Expositor 6th Series Vol. IX
(1904): 310-20
The
digital form was graciously edited by Christopher Pfohl
at
310
CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW
TESTAMENT GREEK. (Pt. 3)
J.H. Moulton
III.
WE
proceed to examine the history of the vernacular
Common Greek. Some features of its
development are
undoubted, and may be noted first. The impulse which
produced it is, beyond question, the work of
Alexander the
Great. The unification of
step in the accomplishment of his dream of
Hellenizing the
world which he had marked out for conquest. To
achieve
unity of speech throughout the little country which
his
father's diplomatic and military triumphs had
virtually
conquered for him, was a task too serious for
Alexander
himself to face. But unconsciously he achieved
it, as a by-
result of his colossal schemes, and the next
generation found
that not only had a common language emerged from the
chaos of Hellenic dialects, but a new and nearly
homo-
geneous world-speech had been
created, in which Persian
and Egyptian might do business together, and Roman
proconsuls issue their commands to the subjects of
a mightier
empire than Alexander's own. His army was in itself a
powerful agent in the levelling
process which ultimately
destroyed nearly all the Greek dialects. The
Anabasis of the
Ten
Thousand Greeks, seventy years before, had doubtless
done something of the same kind on a small scale.
Clearchus
the Lacedaemonian, Menon the Thessalian, Socrates
the
Arcadian,
Proxenus the Boeotian, and
the rest, would find it
difficult to preserve their native brogue very
long free from
the solvent influences of perpetual association
during their
march; and when Cheirisophus
of Sparta and Xenophon of
that the historian himself had suffered in the
purity of his
Attic,
which has some peculiarities distinctly foreshadowing
CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK. 311
the. Koinh<.1 The assimilating process would, of course, go
much further in the camp of Alexander, where, during
pro-
longed campaigns, men from all parts of
fellows and messmates, with no choice but to
accommodate
their dialect in its more individual characteristics
to the
average Greek which was gradually being evolved
among
their comrades. In this process naturally those
features
which were peculiar to a single dialect would have
the
smallest chance of surviving, and those which
most success-
fully combined the characteristics of many dialects
would be
surest of a place in the resultant “common speech.”
The
process was of course only begun in the army. As
Hellen-
ism swept victoriously into
all the shores of the eastern
nationalities in the new-rising
communities demanded a
common language as the medium of intercourse, and the
Greek
of the victorious armies of Alexander was ready for
the purpose. In the country districts of
dialects lived on for generations; but
paratively little by this time for
the great Hellenising
movement to which the world was to owe so much,
nor
were the dialects which strikingly differed from the
new
Koinh< those spoken by races
that counted for anything in
the movement. History gives an almost pathetic
interest to
an inscription like that from Larissa, engraved at
the end
of the third century B.C., where the citizens
record a rescript
from King Philip V., and their own consequent resolu-
tions:—2
Tageuo<ntoun ]Anagki<ppoi Petqalei<oi k.t.l. , Fili<ppoi toi?
1 Cf. Rutherford, New Phrynichus,
160-174. The same may be said of
the language of the lower classes in
B.C., consisting as they did of immigrants from
all parts.
So [Xenophon]
Constitution of
manner of life and fashion of their own, but the
Athenians have what is
compounded from all the Greeks and barbarians.” The
vase-inscriptions
abundantly evidence this. (Kretschmer, Entstehung d. Koinh<,
p. 34.)
2 See Michel, Recueil d'Inscriptions Grecques,
no. 41, or other collections.
312 CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK.
basilei?oj
e]pistola>n a]puste<llantoj po>t to>j tago>j kai> ta>n
po<lin ta>n
u[pogegramme<nan:
Basileu>j Fi<lippoj Larisai<wn toi?j tagoi?j kai> th?i
po<lei
xai<rein (and so on in normal Koinh<).
The old and the new survived thus side by side
into the
imperial age, but Christianity had only a brief
opportunity
of speaking in the old dialects of
alone did the dialect live on. To-day scholars
recognize
but one modern idiom, the Zaconian,
which does not
directly descend from the Koinh<. As we might expect,
this
is nothing but the ancient Laconian,
whose broad ā holds
its ground still in the speech of a race impervious
to litera-
ture and proudly
conservative of a dialect that was always
abnormal to an extreme. Apart from this the
dialects died
out entirely. They contributed their share to the
resultant
common Greek, but it is an assured result of Modern
Greek
philology that there are no elements whatever now
existing,
due to the ancient dialects, which did not find
their way
into the stream of development through the channel
of
the Common Dialect of more than two thousand years
ago.
So far we may go without difference of opinion.
The
only serious discussion arises when we ask what were
the
relative magnitudes of the contributions of the
several
dialects to the new resultant speech. That the
literary
Koinh< was predominantly Attic
has been already stated, and
is of course beyond doubt. But was Attic more than
one
among many elements assimilated in the new
vernacular?
It
has always been taken for granted that the intellectual
queen of
ness of establishing a new dialect based on
compromise
between the old ones. This conclusion has
recently been
challenged by Dr. Paul Kretschmer,
a brilliant comparative
philologist, previously distinguished for his studies
on the
language of the Greek vase-inscriptions and on
the dialects
CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK. 313
of the Greeks’ nearest neighbours.1 In
his tractate entitled
Die Entstehung
der Koinh<, published in the
Transactions of
the
the oral Koinh< contained elements from
Boeotian, Ionic and
even North-west Greek to a larger extent than from
Attic.
His
argument affects pronunciation mainly. That Boeotian
monophthongizing of the diphthongs,
Doric softening of
b, d and g, and Ionic deaspiration of words beginning with
h, affected the spoken
language more than any Attic influ-
ence, might perhaps be
allowed. But if we restrict ourselves
to features which had to be represented in writing,
as con-
trasted with mere variant
pronunciations of the same written
word, the case becomes less striking. Boeotian may have
supplied 3 plur. forms in - san for imperfect and optative,
but they do not appear to any considerable extent
outside
the LXX.: the New Testament probably knows them
not,
and they are surprisingly rare in the papyri.2
North-west
Greek
has the accusative plural in -ej, found freely in
papyri and (in the word te<ssarej) in MSS. of the New
Testament
also the middle conjugation of ei]mi,< and the
confusion of forms from –
a<w and –e<w.) verbs.
Doric gives us
some guttural forms from verbs in -
zw, and a few lexical
items. Ionic supplies a fair number of isolated
forms, and
may be responsible for many -w or –w? flexions
from -mi
verbs, and some uncontracted
noun-forms like o]ste<wn
or
xruse<&. But the one peculiarly
Attic feature which
Kretschmer does allow, the treatment of original ā as con-
trasted with Ionic on one side
and the rest of Greek dialects
on the other, is so far-reaching in its effects
that we cannot
but give it more weight than any of the rest. And
while
the accidence of Attic may bequeath to the
vernacular much
matter which it shared with other dialects, one may ques-
1 Die griech. Vaseninschriften, 1894; Einleitung in die
Geschichte der
griech. Sprache,
1896.
2 See Class. Rev. xv.
36, and the addenda in xviii. 110 (March 1904).
314 CHARACTERISTICS OF NETV TESTAMENT GREEK.
tion whether the accidence
of any single dialect would
present anything like the same similarity to
that of the
Koinh<
as the Attic does.
We can hardly resist the conclu-
sion of the experts that Kretschmer has failed to prove his
point. At the same time we may allow that the
influence
of the other dialects on pronunciation may well
have been
generally underestimated. Kretschmer
of course declares
that Attic supplied the orthography, except for
those un-
educated persons to whom we are so much indebted
for
evidence of pronunciation. Consequently, he says,
when
the Hellenist wrote xai<rei
and pronounced it chéri,
his
language was really Boeotian
and not Attic.1 It is obvious
that the question does not seriously concern us,
since we
are dealing with a language which for all its
vernacular
character comes to us in a written and therefore
largely
Atticized form. For our purpose we may
assume that we
have a Greek which includes important contributions
from
various dialects, but with Attic as the
principal factors
although we have hardly anything in it in which
Attic
showed a marked idiosyncrasy.
At this point it should be observed that
pronunciation is
not to be passed over as a matter of no practical
importance
for the modern student of Hellenistic. The
undeniable
fact that phonetic spelling—which during the reign of
the
old dialects was a blessing common to all—was
entirely
abandoned by the educated generations before the
Christian
era, has some very obvious results for our grammar
and
textual criticism. That ai and e, ei (^) and i, oi and u were
identities for the scribes of our MSS. is certain.2
The
scribe made his choice according to the grammar and
the
1 Against this
emphasizing of Boeotian, see Thumb, Hellenismus, 228.
2 On the date of the levelling of quantity, so notable a feature in
Modern
Greek, see Hatzidakis in ]Aqhna?
for 1901 (xiii. 247). He
decides
that it began outside
must have been complete, or nearly so, before the
scribes of X B wrote.
CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK. 315
sense, just as we choose between kings, king’s and kings’, or
between bow
and bough. He wrote su< nominative and soi<
dative; lu<sasqai infinitive and lu<sasqe
imperative; filei?j,
ei#don indicative, and fil^?j, i@dw subjunctive; bou<lei verb,
but boul^? noun.
But there was nothing to prevent him
from
writing e]ce<fnhj,
e]fni<dioj, a]feirhme<noj, etc., if his anti-
quarian knowledge gave in;
while there were times when
his choice between (for example) infinitive and
imperative
(as Luke xix. 13) was determined only by his own or per-
haps a traditional exegesis. It will be seen
therefore that
we cannot regard our best MSS. as decisive on such
ques-
tons, except as far as we may see reason to trust
their-
general accuracy in grammatical tradition.
Westcott and
Hort may be justified in printing i!na. . . e]piskia<sei in
Acts
v. 15, after B and some cursives; but the passage is
wholly useless for any argument as to the use of i!na with a
future. Or, let us take the constructions of ou] mh< as exhibited
in Moulton-Geden's
concordance (for W.H. text). There
are
73
occurrences with aor. subj., and 2 more in which the
- sw)
might theoretically be future. Against these we find
8 cases
of the future, and 14 in which the parsing depends
on our
choice between ei and ^. It is evident that
editors cannot
hope to decide here what the autographs had. And if
they
had the autograph before them, it would be no
evidence
as to the author's grammar if he dictated the
text. To this
we may add that by the time X and B were written o and w.
were no longer distinct in pronunciation, which
transfers
two more cases to the indeterminate list. It is not
there-
fore simply the overwhelming manuscript authority
which
decides us for e@xwmen in
the patristic authorities wanting, we might have
some diffi-
culty in proving that the
orthography of the MSS. went back
to a very ancient traditional interpretation. It
is indeed
quite possible that the Apostle's own pronunciation
did not
distinguish them sufficiently to give Tertius a clear lead
316 CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK.
without making inquiry.1 In all these
matters we may
fairly recognize a case nearly parallel with the
editor's
choice between such alternatives as ti<nej and tine<j in Heb.
iii.
16, where the tradition varies. The modern expositor
feels himself entirely at liberty to decide according
to his
view of the context.
Before passing on from the dialect question it
may be
well to make a few more remarks on the nature of the
con-
tributions which we have noted.
Some surprise may have
been felt at the importance of the elements alleged
to have
been brought into the language by the “North-west
Greek,” 2
a dialect which lies altogether outside the
literary limits.
The
group embraces, as its main constituents, the dialects
of
known to us from inscriptions, in which those of
are conspicuous. It is the very last we should have
ex-
pected to influence the resultant
language, but it is soon
observed that its part (on Kretschmer's
theory) has really
been very marked. The
characteristic Achaian accus.
plur. in
-ej successfully established itself in the
common
Greek,
as its presence in the vernacular of to-day sufficiently
shows. Its prominence in the papyri 3
indicates that it was
making a good fight, which in the case of te<ssarej had al-
ready become a fairly assured victory. In the New Testa-
ment, te<ssaraj never occurs without
some excellent author-
ity for te<ssarej :4 cf. W.H.
App. 150. Moreover I note
in Rev. i. 16 that A has
a]ste<rej—with omission of e@xwn,
1 o and w were confused in
various quarters before this date: cf Schwei-
zer, Pergam. 95; .Nachmanson, Magnet. Inschr. 64; Thumb, Hellenismus,
143.
2 Brugmann,
Griech. Gram.3 17.
3 See Class. Rev. xv.
34, 435, xviii, 109, I must acknowledge a curious
mistake I made there in citing A. Thumb for
instead of against Kretsch-
mer's argument on this point.
4 John xi. 17 X D; Acts xxvii. 29 and Rev.
ix. 14, x ; Rev. iv. 4 x A
(and so W.H. marg.) ; vii. 1 A bis, P semel.
CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK. 317
it is true, but that may well be an effort to mend
the gram-
mar. It is of course impossible to build on this
but taking
into account the obvious fact that the author of the
Apoca-
lypse was still decidedly a]gra<mmatoj at Greek; and remem-
bering the already described
phenomena of the papyri, I
should be greatly surprised if his autograph did not
exhibit
accusatives in -ej, and not in te<ssarej alone. The middle
conjugation of ei]mi<, is given by Kretschmer as a North-west
Greek feature, but the Delphian. h#tai and e@wntai are balanced
by Messenian h#ntai, and Lesbian e@sso, which looks as if
some middle forms existed in the earliest Greek. But
the
confusion of the –a<w and –e<w
verbs,
which is marked in the
papyri 1 and New Testament and is complete
in Modern
Greek,
may well have come from the North-west Greek,
though encouraged by Ionic. I cannot attempt to
discuss
here the question between Thumb and Kretschmer, but an
à priori argument might be pleaded for the latter in the
well-known fact that from the third to the first
century B.C.
the political importance of Ætolia
and Achaia produced an
Achaian-Dorian Koinh<, which yielded to the
other Koinh<
about
a hundred years before
antecedently probable that this
dialect would leave some
traces on that which superseded it. Possibly the
extension
of the 3rd plur. -san, and even the perfect -an, may be due
to the same source2: the former is also
Boeotian. The
features we have been mentioning have in common
their
sporadic acceptance in the first
century Hellenistic, which
is just what we should expect where a dialect like
this con-
tends for survival with one that has already spread
over a
very large area. The elements here tentatively set
down
to the North-west Greek secured their ultimate
victory
through their intrinsic advantages. One (-a<w and –e<w verbs)
1 See Class. Rev. xv.
36, 435, xviii. 110.
2 It is found in Delphian (Valaori, Delph. Dial. 60) rather
prominently
both in indic. and opt.
The case for -an (ibid.)
is weaker.
318 CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK.
fused together two grammatical categories which
served no
useful purpose by their distinctness; another (accus. in -ej)
reduced the number of separate forms to be
remembered, at
the cost of a confusion which English bears without
difficulty,
and even Attic bore in po<leij,
basilei?j, plei<ouj, etc.;
while the others both reduced the tale of equivalent
suffixes
and (in the case of -san) provided a very useful
means of
distinction between 1st sing. and
3rd plur.
We come to securer ground when we bring in the
part
taken by Ionic, for here Thumb and Kretschmer are at one.
The
former observes that only the establishment of an en-
tirely new type can be
conclusive for our recognition of a
particular dialect as the source of some modern
phenomenon.
The
nouns in -aj –a?doj and –ou?j –ou?doj are by this principle
recognized as an undeniable debt of Modern Greek to
Ionic
elements in the Koinh<. Like the other
elements which came
from a single ancient dialect, they had to struggle
for ex-
istence. We find them in the
Egyptian Greek, but in the
New
Testament -aj makes gen. –a?, as often even in
Minor,
where naturally a?doj
is at home.1
Kretschmer
gives as Ionic elements in the Koinh< the forms kiqw<n (=xitw<n)
and the like, psilosis
(which the Ionians shared with their
Æolic neighbours), the uncontracted noun and verb
forms alluded to already, and the invasion of the –mi verbs
by thematic forms (contract or ordinary). He does
not
accept the declension spei?ra spei?rhj, normal in the Koinh<
from the first century B.C., as due to Ionism, but to the
analogy glw?ssa
glw<sshj. To his argument here
we
might add the consideration that the declension -ră -rhj is
both earlier and more stable than –ui?a –ui<hj,
a difference
which I would connect with the fact that the
combination
ih was barred in Attic at
a time when rh (from rFa) was no
longer objected to (contrast u[gia?
and ko<rh):
if Ionic forms
1 It is in a minority
both at Pergamon and at Magnesia: Schweizer
139 f., Nachmanson,
120.
CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK. 319
were simply taken over, ei]dui<hj
would have come in as early
as spei<rhj.
But this discussion may be left to the
philological journals,
for we must endeavour to
bring the generalities to a close to
make way for a survey of the syntax in its several
divisions.
What
concerns the student of the written vernacular is
rather the question of dialectic varieties in itself
than in its
previous history. Are we to expect persistence of
Ionic
features in Asia Minor, and will the Greek of
Egypt,
we can detect after two thousand years? Speaking gener-
ally, we may reply in the negative. Dialectic
differences
there must have been in a language spoken over so
large an
area. But the differences need not in theory be
greater than
those between British and American English, which
when
written conceal the main differences, those of pronuncia-
tion. The analogy of this
modern Weltsprache
is in fact
very helpful for our investigation of the old. We
see how
the educated colloquial closely approximates
everywhere
when written down, differing locally to some extent,
but in
vocabulary and orthography rather than in grammar.
The
uneducated vernacular will differ more, but its
differences will
still show least in the grammar. The study of the
papyri
and the Koinh<
inscriptions
of
have essentially the same phenomena in Hellenistic.
There
are few points of grammar in which the New
Testament
language differs from that which we see in other
sources of
common Greek vernacular, from whatever province it
comes.
We
have already mentioned cases in which what may have
been quite possible Hellenistic is used beyond the
limits of
natural Greek because of coincidence with
Semitic. Apart
from these, we have a few small matters in which the
New
Testament
differs from the usage of the Papyri. The
prominence of ou]
mh< is the most important of these, for
certainly the papyri lend no countenance whatever
to any
320 CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK.
theory that ou]
mh< was a normal unemphatic
negative in Hel-
lenistic. I must return to this
when the negatives come to
be discussed; but meanwhile I may note that in the
New
Testament
ou] mh< seems somehow necessarily connected
with “translation Greek”—the places where no Semitic
original can be suspected show it only in the
very emphatic
sense which is common to classical and Hellenistic
use.
Among
smaller points are the New Testament construction
of e@noxoj c. gen. of penalty, and
the prevailing use of
a]pekri<qhn
for a]pekrina<mhn: in both of these the
papyri
agree with the classical usage, but that in the
latter case the
New
Testament has good Hellenistic warrant is shown by
Phrynichus (see
Greek
a]pokri<qhka.
The whole question of dialectic differences
within the
spoken Koinh< is judicially summed up
by our greatest living
authority, Dr. Albert Thumb, in chap. v. of his
book on
Greek
in the Hellenistic age, already often quoted.
He
thinks that such differences must have existed
largely, in
Bible,
intended for wider circulation, employed a Durch-
schnittsprache which avoided local
individualisms. (The
letters of
intended for single localities, for he would not
be familiar
with the peculiarities of Galatian
or Achaian, still less of
Roman Koinh<). To the question whether
our authorities
are right in speaking of a special Alexandrian
Greek, Thumb
practically returns a negative. For nearly all the
purposes
of our own special study, Hellenistic Greek may be
regarded
as a unity, varying almost only with the education
of the
writer, his tendency to use or ignore features of
literary lan-
guage, and his dependence
upon sources in a foreign tongue
which could be either freely or slavishly rendered
into the
current Greek.
James
Hope Moulton.