The Expositor 6th Series vol. IX (1904): 359-68.
The
digital form was graciously edited by Christopher Pfohl
at
CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK (Pt. 4).
J. H. Moulton
IV
BEFORE
we begin to examine the conditions of Hellenistic
syntax, which must obviously hold the first place for
the
student of New Testament exegesis, it will be
well to spend
some time upon the forms, which give us the surest evi-
dence as to the position
occupied by the sacred writers
between the literary and the illiterate Greek of
their time.
The
question naturally arises, how far we can be sure that
we possess the exact forms that were used by the
writers
themselves. May not our best MSS. have conformed
the
orthography to the popular style, just as those of
the
“Syrian”
text conformed it in some respects to the literary
standards? We cannot give a universal answer to the
question, for, as we have seen already, the rise
of an
artificial orthography undoubtedly left the door
open for
not a few uncertainties. But there are some
suggestive
signs that the great uncials, in this respect as in
others,
are not far away from the autographs. A very
instructive
phenomenon is the curious substitution of e]a<n for a@n after
o!j, o!pou, etc., which W.H. have faithfully reproduced in
numberless places from the MSS. This was so little recog-
nized as a genuine feature of
vernacular Greek that the
editors of the volumes of papyri began by
gravely subscrib-
ing “1. a@n”
wherever this abnormal form showed itself.
They
were soon compelled to save themselves the trouble.
Deissmann (p. 204) gave a considerable list from
the papyri,
which abundantly proved the genuineness of this e]a<n;
and four years later (1901) the material had grown
so much
that it was possible to determine the time-limits of
the
peculiarity with fair certainty. If my count is
right,1 the
1 Class. Rev. xv. 32. I have not brought the
count up to date in the two
subsequent articles (xv. 434, xviii. 106), but the
results would not be
weakened if this were done.
359
360 CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK.
proportion of e]a<n to a@n is 1:2 in papyri dated B.C. But
the estimate was based on only 12 occurrences. The
pro-
portion was soon reversed, being 25:7 in the
first century
A.D., 76:9 in the second, 9:3 in the third, 4:8
in the fourth.
e]a<n occurs last in a sixth
century papyrus. It will be seen
that the construction itself was specially common in
the first
two centuries A.D., when e]a<n greatly predominated,
and that
the fashion had almost died away before the great
uncials
were written. It seems to follow that in this small
point
the uncials faithfully reproduce originals written
under
conditions which had passed away in their time.1 This
particular example affords us a very good test, but
we may
reinforce it with a variety of cases where the
MSS. accu-
rately reproduce the spelling
of the first century. I will
follow the order of the material in W.H. App. 141 ff.
(“Notes
on Orthography”): it will not be necessary to
give detailed references for the papyrus evidence,
which
will be found fully stated in the three Classical Review
papers already cited. We must bear in mind from the
first
Hort's caution (p. 141) that “all our MSS. have to a
greater or less extent suffered from the
effacement of un-
classical forms of words,” and his statement that
the
Western
MSS. show the reverse tendency. “The ortho-
graphy of common life, which
to a certain extent was used
1 The case of a@n, if, is separate.
In the New Testament it is confined
apparently to the Fourth Gospel, where it occurs
six times. In the
papyri it is decidedly a symptom of illiteracy. With
this agrees what
Meisterhans3
255 f. says: “Only six times is a@n found from the 5th to
the
3rd cent. B.C. The form a@n, is entirely foreign to the Attic inscriptions,
though it is often found in the Ionicising
literary prose of the 5th cent.
(Thucydides,
cf. the tragedians).” Since a@n is the modern form, we
may
perhaps regard it as a dialect variant which
ultimately ousted the Attic
e]a<n, but it is hard to say
why the Gospel has it and why the Apocalypse
has not. There is some difficulty in determining
the dialect to which it
is to be assigned. Against Meisterhans’
suggestion of Ionic stands the
opinion of H. W. Smyth (Ionic Dialect, p. 609) that its occasional appear-
ances in Ionic are due to Atticising! Certainly h@n is the ordinary Ionic
form, but a@n may have been Ionic as
well, though rarer. (So Mr. P. Giles.)
CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK. 361
by all the writers of the New Testament, though in
unequal
degrees, would naturally be introduced more
freely in texts
affected by an instinct of popular adaptation.”
He would
be a bold man who would claim that even Hort had said
the last word on the problem of the Western Text;
but
with our new knowledge of the essentially popular
character
of New Testament Greek as a whole, we shall
naturally
pay special attention to documents which desert the
classical spelling for that which we find
prevailing in
papyri written by men of education approximately
parallel
with that of the apostolic writers.
The case of lh<myomai, comes first (p. 142). The intrusion
of the m from the present stem
of lamba<nw
into various parts
of the verb, and into derivative nouns, is well
set after the
Ptolemaic
period, in which there is still some lingering of
the older forms. It is therefore unnecessary to
show that
the late uncials, in restoring the classical forms,
are desert-
ing the unquestioned
pronunciation of the first century.
The
“unusual aspirated forms” (p. 143) e]f’
e]lpi<di, kaq’ i[di<an,
a@fide, etc., and ou]x o]li<goj are supported by a
large body
of evidence from papyri. It is rather strange that
kaq’
e!toj
does not appear in the MSS.; as in the other cases,
there
is a struggle between the two types, but the
modern e]fe<to
shows that the aspirate here triumphed. It is of
course
impossible to set this phenomenon down to the
defunct
digamma: it doubtless originates from analogy
processes
within the Koinh< itself (so Thumb),
which accounts for the
uncertain tradition. We cannot prove either one or
the
other for the New Testament autographs, but we have
already seen good reason for trusting the uncial
tradition
in places where we have the means of checking it.
Occasional
deaspiration (p. 144) is part of the general
tendency towards psilosis
which started from Ionic influ-
ences and became universal,
as Modern Greek shows.
The
mention of tamei?on (p. 146—add pei?n from p. 170)
362 CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK.
brings up a universal sound-change of Hellenistic, the
coalescence of two following i sounds. Tamei?on,
u[gei<a are overwhelmingly
attested by the papyri, where
there are only rare examples of a curious reversion
like that
in Matthew xx. 22. In the form a]leei?j (Mark i. 17 al.) we
have dissimilation instead of contraction. Three
isolated
spellings on p. 148 are instructive. ]Arabw<n “seems to be
only Western.” In the papyri I counted 11 exx. of this
against 12 of rr, a curious modification
of the results of
Deissmann (p. 183), which were obtained from the
and Rainer papyri only. The word will serve as
evidence
of the inaccessibility of the autographs’ spelling
except
where the papyri are unanimous: cf. Deissmann’s observa-
tions, p. 181. Next comes sfuri<j, which is invariable in
the papyri after the Ptolemaic period. Zmu<rna is regarded
by W.H. as Western; but though the papyri and inscrip-
tions waver (Deissmann, 185), it surely ought to be trans-
ferred from margin to text on
the evidence of the first
century Smyrnaean
coins. The next cases of importance
appear on p. 150.
]Erauna<w is certain for the
first century
and after. Hort's account
of te<sserej and tessara<konta
gives us our first example of dissonance between the
papyri
and the uncials. The forms with e are in the papyri
relatively few, and distinctly illiterate, in the
first centuries
A.D. Indeed the evidence for forms of te<sserej is virtually
nil before the Byzantine
age, and there is not the smallest
probability that the Apostles wrote anything but the
Attic
form. For tessara<konta
the case is a little better, but it is
hopelessly outnumbered by the -ar- form in documents which
antedate the uncials; the modern sera<nta,
side by side
with sara<nta,
shows that the strife continued. No doubt
before the fourth century te<sserej -a (not tesse<rwn)
had
begun to establish themselves in the place they hold
to-day.
Finally
might be mentioned one or two notable matters of
pronunciation to which Hort does not refer. The less
CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK. 363
educated papyrus writers very frequently use ā
for au,
from
the first century B.C. onwards. Its frequent
appearance in
Attic
inscriptions after 74 B.C. is noted by Meisterhans
(Gramm. d. Att. Inschr.3 154). In
Luke ii. 1 ( ]Agou<stou)
this pronunciation shows itself, according to x C*
D; but
we do not seem to find a]to<j, e[ato<n, etc., in the MSS., as we
should have expected.1
We pass on to the noun flexion (p. 156). Nouns
in – ră
and participles in – ui?a
in the papyri regularly form genitive
and dative in –hj
-^, except that –ui<aj –ui<% are still found in
the Ptolemaic period. Here again the oldest uncials
alone—
and even they are not without lapses—support the unmis-
takable verdict of the
contemporary documents of the Koinh<.
It
seems best on the whole to regard this as the analogical
assimilation of -ră nouns (and—somewhat
later and less
markedly—ui?a participles) to the
other -ă flexions of
the 1st declension, rather than as Ionic survivals.2
It may
be added that as ma<xaira
produced maxai<rhj
on the model
of do<ca and do<chj,
so Nu<mfhj
as a proper name produced
what is best read as Nu<mfă Nu<mfan
in nom. and acc. (
iv.
15): it is quite feasible to keep the best reading here with-
out postulating a Doric Nu<mfān, the improbability of which
decides Lightfoot for the alternative. The
heteroclite proper
names, which fluctuate between 1st and 3rd decl., are
paralleled by Egyptian place-names in papyri. In
contracted
nouns and adjectives we have abundant parallels for
forms
like o]ste<wn, xruse<wn, and for xrusa?n (formed by analogy of
1 In Modern Greek (see
Thumb, Grammatik, p. 59) we find au]to<j (pro-
nounced aftós) side by side with a]to<j (obsolete except in Pontos), whence
the short form to<, etc. There was
therefore a dialectic difference in the
Koinh<
itself.
2 In connexion
with this I might mention an Ionic Koinh< feature which
I
expected to find more often in New Testament MSS., the spelling
kiqw<n, which (like ku<qra and
e]nqau?ta) occurs not
infrequently in papyri.
I
can only find in Tischendorf's apparatus xeiqw?naj
D* (Matt.
x. 10) and
kitw?naj B* (Mark xiv. 63— “ut alibi X,” says the editor, but
not stating
where).
364 CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK.
a]rgura?n). The fact that we do not find short forms of
nouns in –ioj
-ion (e.g. ku<rij, paidi<n) is a noteworthy test
of
the educational standard of the writers, for the
papyri show
them even as early as the third century B.C., and
always in
company with other indications of comparative
illiteracy.
These
forms, the origin of which is as dark as ever, despite
the various efforts of Hatzidakis,
Brugmann and others to
unravel it, ultimately won a monopoly, as modern
Greek
shows everywhere. Passing lightly over the exact corre-
spondence between uncials and
papyri in the accusatives of
klei<j and xa<rij
(p. 157), we may note the case of xei?ran
in
John xx. 25 x*AB. The great frequency of this
formation
in uneducated papyri, which adequately foreshadows
its
victory in modern Greek,1 naturally
produced sporadic
examples in the MSS., but it is not at all likely
that the
autographs showed it, unless possibly in the
Apocalypse.
Gregory
(Tisch.-Gregory, 118 f.) adds notes of forms
like a]sfalh?n and podh<rhn,
which have also papyrus parallels,
but could be explained more easily from the analogy
of 1st
decl. nouns. Mei<zwn acc. (John v. 36 ABEGMD) is a good
example of the irrational addition of n, which seems to
have been added after long vowels almost as freely
as the
equally unpronounced i.2 Before
leaving the nouns and
adjectives we must mention the indeclinable plh<rhj, which
should be read in Mark iv. 28 (C*, Hort)
and Acts vi. 5
(xAC*DEHP al.), and is
probably to be recognized in John
i. 14. Cf. 2 John 8 (L), Mark viii. 19 (AFGM
al.), Acts vi. 3
(AEHP al.), xix. 28 (AEL 13), which show
that in every
New
Testament occurrence of an oblique case of this word
we find the indeclinable form recognized in good
uncials.
1 It seems most probable
that the modern levelling of 1st and 3rd decl.
started with this accusative : the n has vanished again now.
See Thumb,
Grammatik, pp. 28, 35.
2 Thus a!lwi is acc. sing., while h#n (=^#) may be subjunctive. For exx.
see Class.
Rev. xviii. 108.
CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK. 365
My
papyrus citations for this1 virtually begin, however, with
the second century, and I should hardly credit the
New
Testament
autographs with the form. This probably means
that in John i. 14 an
original plh<rh was
corrupted to the
vulgar plh<rhj
in an early copy. Weiss and others would
make it depend in sense upon au]tou?,
but do<can seems more
appropriate, from the whole trend of the sentence:
the
“glory” or “self-revelation” of the Saviour
is “full of grace
and truth.” One may doubt whether it would have
occurred
to any one to make a parenthesis of -kai e]qeasa<meqa.
. .
patro<j, had it not been for the supposed
necessity of
construing plh<rhj with
a nominative. In fine, we regard
the Codex Bezae as having
either preserved or successfully
restored the true reading.2
I might cite very many more noun forms in which
the
MSS.
prove to have retained the genuine Hellenistic, as
evidenced by the papyri; but these typical
examples will
serve. Verbs naturally produce yet more abundant
material,
but we need not cite it here, as our present
purpose is only
to show how such a text as Westcott and Hort's, scrupulously
reflecting the best uncials, is in all important
features, and
in most of the minutiae, supported as genuinely
Hellenistic
by papyrus evidence published long after their
text was
made—a conclusion valuable because of the criteria it
gives
us for estimating the general grammatical
condition of our
texts. Pursuing the order of W.H. app., we pause a
moment on the dropped augments, etc., in pp. 161 f.,
which
are well illustrated in papyri. The attachment of 1st
1 See also C. Turner in Journ. Theol. Stud.,
i. 120 fr. and 561 f.;
Rademacher in Rhein. Mus., lvii. 151 ;
Reinhold De Graecitate
Patrum,
53.
2 Winer,
p. 705, compares the “grammatically independent” plh<rhj
clause with the nom. in Phil. iii. 19,
and Mark xii. 40. Dr. Moulton
makes no remark there, but in his joint commentary
with Dr. Milligan
he accepts the construction of John i. 14 found in the R.V., or permits his
colleague to do so. Of course the case for the
indeclinable plh<rhj was.
before him only in the LXX. (as
Job xxi. 24 BxAC).
366 CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK.
aorist endings to 2nd aorists
is universal in our Koinh<;
documents, and the MSS. here undeniably reproduce
in
general the forms of the autographs. Whether the
intrusion
should be allowed in the imperfect (as ei#xan Mark viii. 7)
is more than doubtful, as the papyri give hardly
any war-
rant. The imperfect and aorist 3rd pl. -osan receives little
encouragement, and the 2nd sing. perf. -ej still less: they are
both marks of illiteracy. The 3rd
pl. perf. -an makes a much
better show in the papyri, but though already common
in
Ptolemaic
documents can hardly be regarded as established
for the New Testament autographs: like the perf. -ej, it
might be allowed in the Apocalypse. Passing on to
con-
tract verbs, we note how the confusion between -aw) and –e<w
forms (p. 166) are supported by our external
evidence, and
by Modern Greek. Our first serious revolt from
Westcott
and Hort will be in the
infinitive in –oi?n (and by analogy
-%?n).
The evidence for it is “small, but of good quality”
(p.
166—cf. Introd.
§ 410): it is in fact confined to B*D in
Matthew xiii. 32, B* in Mark iv. 32, x*
in 1 Peter ii. 15, BD*
in Hebrews vii. 5 (where see Tischendorf's
note), and a lection-
ary in Luke ix. 31. This
evidence might pass if the object is
merely to reproduce the spelling of the scribe of B,
but there
is absolutely no corroboration that I know of
earlier than
the date of B itself, except a second century
inscription cited
in Hatzidakis’ Einleitung,
p.193.1 Blass, Gram. 48,
does not
regard the form as established for the New Testament.
I
can quote against it from centuries 1-4 eleven
examples
of -ou?n in papyri. That -ou?n and -a?n (not -%?n) are the correct
Attic
forms may be seen from Meisterhans3 175 f., which
Hort's hesitation as to –
a?n prompts me to quote:
for the
reason of the apparent irregularity see Brugmann, Griech.
Gramm.3 61, or Winer-Schmiedel 42. Next
may be named
for -aw verbs the 2nd sing.
pres. mid. in -asai (kauxa?sai, o]dun-
1 So Winer-Schmiedel,
p. 116 (note). There are two other inscriptions
cited by Hatzidakis, but
without dates.
CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK. 367
a?sai), which has been formed
afresh in the Koinh< with the
help of the -sai that answers to 3rd
sing. -tai in the perfect.1
It
is well paralleled by the early Ptolemaic future xariei?sai.
I
have, unfortunately, no examples of the subjunctive of –o<w
verbs, with which to attack the parsing of i!na
zhlou?te and
the like (p. 167). Blass (Kühner3 i. 2. 587, and New Testa-
ment Gram. 48) accepts Hort's
view that the subjunctive of
these verbs became identical with the indicative,
just as it
always was in the –a<w verbs. But he, rightly
I think, rejects
the supposition that eu]odw?tai, (1 Cor. xvi. 2) is anything but
a pres. subj. To read eu]o<dwtai, as perf.
indic., is possible,
though the editors do not seem by their printing to
have
favoured that alternative. That
it is a perfect subjunc-
tive is extremely unlikely.
The parallels on which Hort
(p.
172) relies—set forth with important additions in Blass's
Kühner, i. 2. 100 f.—do nothing to make it likely that the
Koinh< had any perf. subj. apart from the
ordinary peri-
phrastic form.2 It is
hard, moreover, to see why the present
subjunctive is not satisfactory here: see Dr.
Findlay's note
in loc.
The verbs in -mi, were naturally in
Hellenistic pursuing
the process of painless extinction which began even
in
Homeric
Greek, and in modern Greek has eliminated every-
thing outside the verb “be.” The papyri agree with
the
New
Testament uncials in showing forms like du<nomai,
and
-e<deto
(as well as –e<doto), and various
derivatives from con-
tract verb types. New verbs like i[sta<nw
are formed, and
new tenses like e!staka, and the doubly
augmented form
1 To suppose this (or fa<gesai, similarly formed from fa<getai) genuine
survivals of the pre-Greek -esai, is a characteristic feat of
the antediluvian
philology which still frequently does duty in this
country.
2 To argue this would
demand a very technical discussion. It is
enough to say that the Attic kektw?mai and memnw?mai are not derivative
verbs, and that the three derivative verbs which can
be quoted, from
Doric,
Cretan, and Ionic respectively, are very small encouragement for a
supposed Koinh< parallel.
368 CHARACTERISTICS
OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK.
a]pekatesta<qhn
is well attested. What is more important
the subjunctives didoi?, and doi?, are set on a completely satis-
factory basis, so that the idea that they are
irregular
optatives (as they may possibly
be in late documents) need
trouble us no more. From oi#da we have as in New Testa-
ment the flexion as an
ordinary perfect, but there are rarely
found survivals of the old forms. Finally there is
ei]mi< which
shows middle forms h@mhn, etc., and h@tw parallel with e@stw,
just as in the New Testament.
With this we may leave spelling and
inflexions and push
on to the syntax, which will compensate the New Testa-
ment student, I hope, for
the dry bones he has had to be
satisfied with in this chapter of our subject. But
though
the minutiae of accidence may be dull to those who
are not
professed philologists, it will be allowed that
forms must be
settled before we can start discussing their
uses; and it is
also very clear that they give us our surest
criteria for local-
izing texts and for testing
the detailed accuracy of our
documents. With this plea I hope to be forgiven on
promise
of an effort to be more interesting next time.
James
Hope Moulton.