GREEK LANGUAGE (BIBLicAL). There has been much discussion as to the peculiar nature of the language used by the Septuagint translators and by the writers of the N. T. It would be use less to attempt to give a history of these discus sions 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 us to account most satisfactorily for the peculiarities of Greek which these writings present.
In the earliest stages of a language the dialects are exceedingly numerous, every small district having peculiar variations of its own. Such we find to have been the case with Greek, for though its dialects have been generally reckoned as four, we know that each of these was variously modified in various places. In course of time, however, one of these dialects, the Attic, drove the rest from the field of literary composition, 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 common dialect.' This dialect has been used by Greeks for literary purposes from the time of Alexander the Great down to the pre sent age.
While Attic thus became the literary 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 different from the stationary language which was used in writings. Now it seems to us that the language used by the Septuagint and N. T. writers was the language used in common conversation, learned by them, not through books, but most likely in child hood from household talk, or if not, through sub sequent oral instruction. If this be the case, then the Septuagint 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 lan guage intelligible to all who spoke Greek. The common Greek thus used is indeed considerably modified by the circumstances of the writers, but these modifications no more turn the Greek into a peculiar dialect than do Americanisms or Scoti cisms turn the English of Americans and Scotsmen into peculiar dialects of English.
In considering a language we have to look at its inflections, its syntax, and its vocabulary.
.1uflections.—It is in the inflections that the main proof of our theory in regard to the N. T. Greek lies. Max Milner justly affirms that the grammar of a language is the most essential clement, and therefore the ground of classification in all lan guages which have produced a definite grammati cal articulation' (Lectures on the Science of Lan guage, p. 74). Now the grammar of the Septua gint and N. T., in very many of its departures from the common dialect,' approximates to the modern Greek of Ptochoprodromus in the 12th century, and to the modern Greek of the present day, both of which are simply the language of the common people. The modern Greek grammar of our own time is only a full development of the tendencies which shew themselves in the Septua gint and N. T. Thus the N. T. and modem
Greek have no dual. In their declension of nouns we find a mixture of dialects, such as, for instance, a in the genitive singular of proper names in as; and ns in the genitive, and n in the dative, of nouns in pa (arcipsis, Acts xxvii. ; paxalpv, Rev. xiii. to, etc.) There is in both a change from the second to the third declension in the words min, crk6Tos, Acos, and rXoDros. The N. T., however, declines some of them occasionally as of the second declension. Both display great peculiarities in the forms for the comparative and superlative of adjec tives, such, for instance, as act,01-69av, 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 OCCIIQ at all. The modern Greek declines the second Aorist as the first. This is the case frequently in the N. T. also, as greo-o for gsrarov. The N. T. sometimes forms the imperative by means of dOinAtt, as acbes ercpoiXto, ZiOes racopev. This is now the common form in modern Greek, acbes being contracted into as. The second person singular in the present passive or middle ends in modern Greek in the regular cat ; so in the N. T. Kauxacaz and 315vaaou. The third person plural of the imperfect active of contracted verbs in modem Greek ends in o-av ; so in Septuagint and N. T. noNtoliaav. There is a striking similarity in the conjugation of verbs in both. Both have a tendency to form all the parts regularly. Both also deal arbitrarily with augments. Both avoid the use of verbs in Az, and both generally strengthen pure verbs by the inser tion of a v. Sometimes they change the vowel e into a, as AcarE, in Jude 23. These are some of the points in which the grammar of the N. T. Greek, and that of modern Greek, agree. Many more might have been added. Instances of several of these peculiarities may be found in our texts of the classical writers, and a still larger number in our inanuscripts of them ; but it is to be noted that in them they appear as rarities ; in the N. T. their occurrence is more frequent, and in modem Greek they have passed into customary forms. Some of these forms have been set down as Alexandrian or Macedonian, but Sturz (De Dialecto Macedonia; et Alexandrina Liber, 18oS) has entirely failed to prove that there was either a Macedonian or an Alexandrian dialect. The Macedonian words which he has adduced indicate that the Macedonians were non-Hellenic. And 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 con tradict the opinion that Alexandrians, like other Greek-speaking people, mixed up various dialects in their spoken language. The written language of the Alexandrians, as we know from the works of Philo and other residents in Alexandria, was the so-called common dialect.' Moreover, the Greek of the N. T. is to be found not in writings of any special locality, but in writings which made no pretensions to literary excellence, such as the frag ments of Hegesippus, some of the Apocryphal gospels, the Apostolical constitutions, the liturgies, the Chronicon Paschale and Malelas.