I Of. Thumb, Diegrieck. Spracheiin Zet'talterdes IlelleniKmus, p. 28 ff. ; Wahrniann, Prolegomena zueinerGeachickte der grieck-
The process of absorption, of course, could not but react upon the Koine itself. But it is quite wrong to suppose, with P. Kretschmer (Die Entsteh- ting der Koine), that the Koine arose from a manifold intermingling of the various Gr. dialects. This hypothesis finds no real support either in the documents of the Koine or in Modern Greek. Thus, to take but a single instance, Kretschmer, in citing the Mod. Gr. accentuation in dv6pi2-!roi { — di'dpuwoi), icpdyav {=i<pajoi') as a survival of the ancient Doric accentuation, overlooks the fact that other Mod. Gr. accentual changes of the same kind, as in dudpioirov, ?<pa'ya/j.e, have nothing to do Mith Doric at all ; so that, if the latter forms are due to the operation of analogy (in conformity with dvdpwTTos, ^(payav), the examples cited by Kretschmer must be explained in the same way, i.e. as due to accentual shifting on the analogy of 6.v6pihirov%, icpdyaixev. What took place in the districts of the ancient dialects was simply that the Koine was at first slightly coloured by the native idiom ; and doubtless this local character showed itself still more plainly in the pronunciation, just as, e.g., the domicile of those who speak English — whether it be the north of England, the south of England, Scotland, or North America — can be inferred from their 'accent,' even though they use the forms of the literary language. But the recognizable pro- vincialisms of tliese local Koine types left only the slightest traces in the process of development to- wards Modern Greek, the reason being that they had no source of support outside their native region. Thus, e.g., as early as the 3rd cent. B.C. the veterans in tlie Arsinoite Nome of Egypt— men drawn from the most diverse quarters of Greece — wrote the Koine without any admixture of dialectic forms. Taken all in all, the elements derived from the local dialects of the Koine — apart from the Ionic — are confined to certain forms, such as Aaos, j/afis, \aTo/j.ia, the preposition 'ivavn, and a fe^\' special words, as e.g. ^owds (attested for Cyrene and Sicily by the ancients).
We cannot easily determine the influence of the vocabularies of the various dialects, as these voca- bularies are much less known to us than that of Attic. It was the Ionic dialect alone that, from the period of the Attic naval league, made a distinct contribution to the development of the Koine. But even in the case of Ionic, the extent of its dialectical influence cannot always be defined with precision. Thus, while forms like <x<pvpr]s in the LXX and the NT, or dpovpr]s in early Christian literature, seem to bear a genuinely Ionic character, they may well be later variations formed on the analogy of 86^a, Si^T/j ; OdXaTra, OaXdTTTjs, and the like (cf. Moulton, EinUitung, p. 70 f.). On the other hand, words like ^ddpaKos, irddv-q, voaabs in- dicate clearly the phonetic form of Ionic, while, again, e.g. the aorist Svikov (in the papyri) instead of ■fjveyKov, and the preference for nouns in -fia. are Ionic, or at all events not Attic, features. A specially characteristic indication of Ionic influence appears in the inflexion of nouns in -as, -SiSos and -ovs, -oOdos. Such syntactical usages as the pre- ference of IVa to fiTTws and the final infinitive {e.g. Mt 5^'' : ovK J)\6ov KaraXvaat, dWd TrXrjpLoaai) maj' likewise be shown to be Ionic. Of most importance, however, are the Ionic elements of the vocabulary, as it is these that give the Koine a character difierent from that of Attic. Thus a calculation of Scldageter {Der Wortschntz, etc.) shows that the Attic inscriptions outside Attica (till 200 B.C.) contain 18% of Attic, 18% of new (Hellenistic), and a little over 6% of Ionic, but only -75% of
ischp.n Diafekte im Zeilalter des Ilellenismns, Programm, Vienna, 1907; Kieckers, 'Das Eindringen der Koine in Kreta," in rnilii'ierm. Forsch. xxvii. [1910] 72 ff.; Buttenwieser, 'Zur Geschichte des bootisohen Dialekts,' in ib. xxviii. [1911] Iff.
HELLENISTIC & BIBLICAL GREEK HELLE:N"ISTIC & BIBLICAL GREEK 555
distinctively Doric words. The proportion of lonie words increases till ahout 250 B.C., and then de- creases, so that the process of interfusion virtually ceased about the middle of the 3rd cent. B.C.
This feature of the Koine appears, as Ave might expect, also in Biblical Greek. Words like dTraprtj'w (in dTrapTi.crfj.6s), eKTpui/xa, KOTrd^cj (of the wind), oKvvdos, (TavSd\i.ov, (TKopTrii'co, etc., in the LXX or NT are of Ionic origin. The Ionic element includes, further, the so-called poetical words of tlie Koine, i.e. Hellenistic words which formerly were to be found only in the poets, but which from the fact of their occurrence in papyrus te.xts concerned with matters of everyday life, and partly also from the fact of their survival in Modern Greek, are now seen to have belonged to the colloquial language. They include, e.g., ^apiij, ifTpeTrofj-at, da/j.^eu3, iJ.ecrovvKTi.ov, TreLpd^d}, pdicos, wpvofiai in the LXX and the NT, and d^^KTCjp, ^aaTdi;'w, ipicpos, (pavTd^uj, (pruii'^d) in the NT. Words of this class were imported, first, from the literary Ionic of the earlier period into the language of poetry, and then again from the vernacular Ionic of the later period into the Koine, and there was no direct link of connexion between the two processes.* In the literary criticism of the Hellenistic writers, and especially of the biblical books, the facts just indicated yield an important guiding principle, viz. that their use of Ionic words does not argue a knowledge of, or any dependence upon, the earlier Ionic literature. Thefact, e.^'., that St. Luke makes use of medical terms found in Hippocrates and other physicians in no way implies a studj' of medical writings ('Luke the phj-sician'), but only some acquaintance with the ordinary terminology of his age; many such medical words, indeed, as e.g. 'iyKvos, crTupa, or ^eXovrj (' the surgeon's needle') had passed into such general use in the vernacular that they prove nothing more than St. Luke's familiarity with tlie language of his time.