Of the post-biblical historical writing of the Jews occasional fragments are to be found in the Talmud, e.g. B. Kiddushin, f. 66a. The old forms are still retained, though the writer introduces without seruple vulgarismis of his own age. It is probable that the historical portions of the Apoc- rypha were in a style similar to this, but of course we cannot be sure. The Book of Judith is known to have been written in Hebrew from 3°, where the word ‘saw’ evidently is a mistransla- tion of a Hebrew word signifying ‘plain’ (ne) ; the statement of Jerome that Chaldee was the original language of the book, must therefore be regarded as inaccurate. Attempts that have been made to find mistranslations from the Hebrew in the other books, e.g. in Tobit by I. Rosenthal (Vier Apocryphische Biicher, 1885), and in 1 Mac by the same scholar (das erste Makkabderbuch, 1867,
. 6) seem to have produced no convincing result. The title of the latter, which is handed down by Origen, sarbeth sarbane ‘histori historiolarum’ seems certainly Aramaic, and indeed Syriac (7/es. Syr. col. 4323. 4), and it is unlikely that a Hebrew book would have a title of this sort.
The prophetic and apocalyptic tye is repre- sented ἘΣ works ascribed to Baruch, Ezra, and others. ‘The Book of Baruch consists very largely of phrases taken from the OT, and hence the elaborate reconstruction of the original by Kneucker (Leipzig, 1879) probably gives a correct idea of the author’s style. In the Apocalypse of Baruch some
*See now Wisdom of Ben Sira, by Schechter and Taylor, Camb., 1899; and G. Margoliouth in JQR, Oct. 1899.
1 See Kénig and Margoliouth in Expos. Times, August 1809 and foll. months ; also Smend in TAL, Sept. 18990; Léviin REV
' Ap.-June 1899; and Bacher in JQA, Oct. 1899.
86 LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TEST.
LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TEST.
relics of the original Hebrew can, it has been thought (R. H. Charles in his edition, pp. xliv- lili) be discerned in errors of the translation ; and the same is said to be the case with the Assumption of Moses (R. H. Charles in his edition, pp. xxxix-
xlv). Too little of the original language can in any case be recovered to enable us to speak with certainty of its character.
D. S. MARGOLIOUTH.
LANGUAGE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.—The subject of this article is the species of Greek in which our canonical NT Scriptures are written.
A person familiar with Attic Greek, who should take in hand for the first time a Greek NT, could not fail to be struck by its peculiar idiom. Apart from traits which distinguish one portion of the volume from another (see V p. 41 below), the language in general would seem strange to him—by reason of the admixture of popular, not to say plebeian, terms in its vocabul- ary: by its occasional outlandish and hardly intelligible phrases and constructions; by the meagre use of the connectives and other particles by which the earlier writers give balance, shading, and point to their periods; by the comparative avoidance or irregular use of the genitive absolute, attraction, and other syntactical devices for secur- ing compactness and gradation in the presentation of thought; and throughout by a style which, though often monotonous, is conspicuous for its directness and simplicity ; a style which, while it shows occasionally the digressions and broken or anacoluthie sentences characteristic of colloquial and uneducated utterance, is seldom encumbered with parentheses or protracted and entangled periods ; a style obviously the expression of men too simple, self-forgetful, and earnest to pay much heed to literary elegancies or the established rules of the rhetorician.
Before considering in detail the characteristics of this variety of Greek, thus distinctly marked in vocabulary, construction, and style, we must notice briefly its name, its origin, and its history.
(a) Name.—Some of the names proposed for this peculiar idiom are evidently too restricted in their reference, as respects time or place or both (as, ‘the ecclesiastical dialect,’ ‘the Alexandrian dialect,’ ‘Palestinian Greek’). Others, like ‘Jewish Greek,’ ‘Jewish-Christian Greek,’ though intrin- sically appropriate, have failed to gain currency. But the appellation ‘ Hellenistic Greek,’ first sug- gested apparently by the younger Scaliger, is now almost universally accepted. Protests on the ground that this name not only fails to indicate in what direction the language deviates from pramary Gree (and consequently is less descriptive than ‘Hebraic’ or ‘Aramaic Greek’ would be), but is also inherently tautological or meaningless, because tantamount to ‘Greekish Greek,’ are gi to dislodge it. Its adoption has been avoured, doubtless, by the use of Ἑλληνιστής in Ac (6! 9” 11” var. lec.) as the designation of grecizing or Greek-speaking Jews. The applica- tion of the term ‘dialect’ to the Gr. of a particular locality and period is infelicitous, since that term has already been appropriated by the idiom of the several branches of the Greek race.
(6) Origin.—The literary supremacy of Athens (c. B.C, 500-B.C. 300) had caused her dialect, the Attic, peedunlly to supplant the forms of the language used by the other families of the Gr. race; and the diffusion of Greek was much furthered through the conquest and colonization of the East by Alexander the Great and his suc- cessors. In this process of diffusion, however, the Attic dialect ΤΡ: was modified by the speech and usages of the nations among which it spread, till at length there arose a cosmopolitan type of Greek