Moreover, the text of the Bible will occasionally be elucidated by a knowledge of Modern Greek. Thus Wellhausen (Das Ev. Matthcei, Berlin, 1904) conjectures that the tj ibpa. irapfjKdev of Mt 14'^ means, not ' the time is past,' but ' the time is advanced' — an explanation which is supported bj^ the Mod. Gr. use of Trapd in irapawdvu), ' above' ; while the Greek writer Pallis renders the '^pibixara of Mk 7^^ not by ' meats,' but in the sense of the homonymous Mod. Gr. word, i.e. as ' stench,' ' filth ' — an interpretation which at least merits the attention of exegetes. Modern Greek also throws light upon the question of the Semitisms in Biblical Greek (see below). f The projected thesaurus or idiotikon of Modern Greek, the comjulation of which is being subsidized by the Greek Government, will accordingly prove of gi-eat service in the study of Biblical Greek, especially as regards the vocabulaiy.J
5. Origin of the Koine. — In its essential character
* Cf. Thumb, ' Value of Mod. Gr. for the Study of Ancient Greek,' in Cla^s. Quarterly, viii. [1914] 181 ff.
t On the subject of this paragraph cf. Thumb, Die griech. Sprache im Zeitalter des Hellenismus, p. 10 ff. ; also in A'eM« JahrbUcher fiir das klass. Altertum, xvii. [1906] 247 ff.; A. Pallis, A few yotes on the Gospels, based chiefly on Modem Greek, Liverpool, 1903 (to be read with discrimination).
X Aids to the study of Modern Greek : G. N. HatzidakiS; Einleitung in die neugr. Grammatik, Leipzig, 1892 ; Thumb, Handbook of the Modern Greek Vernacular, tr. S. Angus, Ediu' burgh, 1912 (with a bibliographical appendix).
554 HELLENISTIC & BIBLICAL GREEK HELLENISTIC & BIBLICAL GREEK
the Koine is the natural development of Attic. As early as the time of the Delian Confederation, Attic had spread beyond the confines of its native region, and Ionic elements — an important feature of the Koine — had alread3' begun to find their way into the Attic vernacular.* In the Attic spoken outside Attica — ' Great Attic,' as we miglit call it — the process of rejuvenescence and fusion was much more rapid, and it was here that the founda- tions of the Koine were laid.t Tlie resultant modification of Attic appears most clearly in the vocabulary. Similar features had already mani- fested themselves in the diction of Xenophon and the New Attic Comedy. This moditied Attic was used at the Macedonian court before the time of Alexander the Great. But it was in reality the conquests of Alexander and the institution of kingdoms by his successors that difi'used the new idiom throughout the Oriental world, and made it the universal language of Hellenism. It is never- theless quite wrong to assert that this language was created by the Macedonians. The INIacedonian contribution is barely discernible, and cannot in any case have been large ; it perhaps included the suffix -ia<xa in /Sao-iXtcnra. In this process of expan- sion the Attic, as might be expected, lost some of its characteristic features. Thus the ff<T found in most of the dialects, including Ionic, more and more superseded the Attic tt (which is almost obsolete in Mod, Gr.), and non-Attic forms showing pa- intermingled with forms showing pp. Hence acr prevails — in accordance with the papyri — in the LXX, which, however, still retains t^ttuv and iXoLTTUiv ; while we also find here dpajjv and (rarely) &ppr)v, dappQ), and (rarely) OapffQ. In the NT like- wise TT occurs rarely, while e.g. dappQ and dapaw are both in use. That the use of pp was not due to the influence of the literary language is shown by Mod. Gr. dappQi alongside of crepvLKds {=a.p<Tei'iK6s). Tlie Koine developed more rapidly in the hellenized lands outside Greece than upon its native soil, where the indigenous dialects offered some degree of resistance to its growth. But by the time when the uniform Ionic-Attic alphabet was adopted (400-350 B.C.), the Attic was asserting its power everywhere, and from the 4th cent. B.C. till about the 2nd cent. A.D. the dialects were gradually dispossessed, and at last swallowed up, bj' the Koine ; in its foreign domains, however, tlie Koine had prevailed from the outset, and had thus gained a marked ascendancy alike as regards culture and as regards the numbers of those who spoke it. The absorption of the dialects did not jjroceed everywhere at the same pace. The Ionic succumbed most rapidly ; the Doric resisted longest : in the Doric area, in fact, there emerged first of all a Doric Koine, whicli wedged itself also into the non-Doric Arcadia, between the ancient Arcadian dialect and the common Attic tongue. The various aspects of this whole process of development may be traced in the inscriptions. In many localities, as e.(f. Crete and Rhodes, the gradual subsidence of dialectic forms which is traceable in the inscrip- tions reflects the changes in the living language. In other parts, as e.g. Bceotia, the inscriptions reveal a marked linguistic break, thus indicating either that the local dialect, though no longer spoken, was kept alive for a time as a literary language, or that the Koine had been introduced as a written language before the dialect had en- tirely disappeared. J
* Of. Xenoph. De Republ. Athen. ii. 8.
t Of. the researches of J. Schlapreter in his Zur Laut- und Formenlehre der ausserha'b Attikas gcfundenen attischen Inschriften, Profjrainm, Frtiburir i. B., 1908, and Der ]Vort- schatz der aiisserhalb Altikan gej'undencn attischen Inschri/ten, Strassbiirg, 1912.