Greekish ('EXXr/n/coc, Hellenic'), another term (2 Mace, iv, 10) for Greek (q. v.).
Greek Language, Biblical Relations of THE. In treating of the peculiarities of the Greek found in the Sept. and N. T., we here substantially ado]>t Dr. Donaldson's article in Kitto's Cyclopccdia, s. V. The afTinities between the Greek and the other brandies of the Indo-Germanic family are copioush' drawn out bj' Bopp, Comparative Grammar, etc. (Lond. 1860, 3 vols. 8vo, 2d edit, trans, by Eastwick from the Germ.). For its coincidences with the Hebrew, see Philology, Comparative.
I. Historical Character. — There has been much dis- cussion as to the peculiar nature of tlie language used by the Septuagint translators and by tlie writers of tlie N. T. It would be useless to attempt to give an account of these discussions in this article. We shall simply indicate the main facts which have come out in the course of investigation, stating at the same time the theory which seems to account most satisfactorilj' for the peculiarities of Greek which these writings pre- sent.
In the earliest stages of a language the dialects are exceedingly numerous, ever}' small district having pe- culiar variations of its own. Such we find to have been the case with Greek ; for, though its dialects have generally been reckoned as four, we know that each of these was variouslj' modified in various places. In course of time, however, one of these dialects, the At- tic, drove the rest from the field of literarj' composi- tion, and almost all Greeks who wrote books ■wrote in that dialect, wherever they might have been born. The Attic which they used underwent some changes, and then received the name of the Koivii or common di- alect. This dialect has been used by Greeks for liter- ary purposes from the time of Alexander the Great down to the present age.
While Attic thus became the literarj' language, the various communities spoke Greek as they had learned it from their parents and teachers. This spoken Greek would necessarily differ in different places, and it would gradually become very difl^erent from the sta- tionary language which was used in writings. Now it seems that tlie language used b}' the Sept. and N.- T. writers was the language used in common conver- sation, learned by them, not through books, but most likely in childhood from household talk, or if not, ^ through subsequent oral instruction. If this be the case, then the Sept. is the first translation which was made for the great masses of the people in their own language, and the N.-T. writers are the first to appeal to men through the common vulgar language intelli- gible to all who spoke Greek. The common Greek thus used was, however, consideraljly modified bj' the circumstances of the writers ; and hence some have, but rather unnecessarilj', termed the Greek in question the Hebraistic or Hellenistic dialect. See Hellenist.
II. Hifections. — Max Miiller justlj' affirms that the grammar of a language is " the most essential element, and therefore the ground of classification in all lan- guages which have produced a definite grammatical articulation" (^Lectures on the Science of Lanffuage, p. 74). Now the grammar of the Sept. and N. T., in very many of its departures from tlie common dialect, approximates to the modiivval Greek of Ptochoprodro- mus in the 12th centurj', and to the modern Greek of the present day, both of which are simply the language of the common people, as debased by time and vulgar usage. Thus the N. T. and modern Greek have no dual. In their declension of nouns we find a mixture of dialects, such as, for instance, a in the genitive sin- gular of proper names in aq ; and yjq in the genitive, and ?^ in the dative, of nouns in pa (a-dprjg. Acts xxvii, 1 ; ^laxalpy, Rev. xiii, 10, etc.). There is in both a change from the second to the third declension in the words vovg, itkotoi;, tXsoc, and nXoi'Toc. The N. T., however, declines some of them occasionally as of the second declension. Both displaj- great pecul- iarities in the forms for the comparative and superla- tive of adjectives, such, for instance, as utt'Cortpav, 3 John 4. In modern Greek the optative mood is rare, and occurs only in wishes. It is rare also in the N. T., and in some of the books it does not occur at all. The modern Greek declines the second aorist as the first. This is the case frequently in the N. T. also, as tTTioa for 'iirtaov.- The N. T. sometimes forms the im- perative by means of CKpiijpt, as a^fc tKf3a\io, a<pis 'ti'wfifv. This is now the common form in modern Greek. d(p(Q being contracted into ac- The second
GREEK LANGUAGE
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GREEK LANGUAGE
person singular in the present passive or middle ends in modern Greek in the regular aai ; so in the N. T. Kavx(i<Tai and cvvaaai. The third person plural of the imperfect active of contracted verbs in modern Greek ends in cav; so in Sept. and N. T. tCoXiovaav. There is a striking similaritj' in the conjugation of verbs in both. Both have a tendency to form all the parts regularly. Both also deal arbitrarily with aug- ments. Both avoid the use of verbs in /k, and both generally strengthen pure verbs by the insertion of a V. Sometimes they change the vowel t into a, as tXtdre, in Jude 23 (see Cremer, s. v. tXiUi). In- stances of several of these peculiarities may be found in our texts of the classical writers, and a still lar- ger number in our manuscripts of them ; but it is to be noted that in them they appear as rarities; in the New Testament their occurrence is more fre- quent, and in modern Greek they have passed into customarj' forms. Some of these forms have been set down as Alexandrian or jMacedonian, but Sturz {De Dialecto Macedonica et A kxandrina, Lipsia;, 1808-) has entireh- failed to prove that there was either a Mace- donian or an Alexandrian dialect. The jMacedonian words which he has adduced indicate that the Mace- donians were non-Hellenic. There are no forms ad- duced as Alexandrian which are not to be found in some earlier dialect. In fact, there is nothing in any of the statements to which he appeals to contradict the opinion that Alexandrians, like other Greek-speak- ing people, mixed up various dialects in their spoken language. The written language of the Alexandrian.s, as we know from the works of Pliilo and other resi- dents in Alexandria, was the so-called "common dia- lect." Moreover, the Greek of the New Testament is to be found not in writings of any special locality, but in writings which made no pretentions to liter- ary excellence, such as the fragments of Hegesippus, some of the apocryphal gospels, the apostolical con- stitutions, the liturgies, the Chronicoa Paschale, and Malelas.