GRAMMATICAL FORM OF THE DIALECT OF THE GREEK TESTAMENT.
1. It will not be expected of us to enter in this place upon the wide
subject of the origin, genius, and peculiarities, whether in respect to
grammar or orthography, of that dialect of the Greek in which the N. T.
was written, except so far as it bears directly upon the criticism of the
sacred volume. Questions, however, are perpetually arising, when we come
to examine the oldest manuscripts of Scripture, which cannot be resolved
unless we bear in mind the leading particulars wherein the diction of the
Evangelists and Apostles differs not only from that of pure classical
models, but also of their own contemporaries who composed in the Greek
language, or used it as their ordinary tongue.
2. The Greek style of the N. T., then, is the result of blending two
independent elements, the debased vernacular speech of the age, and that
strange modification of the Alexandrian dialect which first appeared in
the Septuagint version of the Old Testament, and which, from their
habitual use of that version, had become familiar to the Jews in all
nations under heaven; and was the more readily adopted by those whose
native language was Aramaean, from its profuse employment of Hebrew idioms
and forms of expression. It is to this latter, the Greek of the
Septuagint, of the Apocalypse, and of the foreign Jews, that the name of
_Hellenistic_ (Acts vi. 1) strictly applies. St. Paul, who was born in a
pure Greek city (Juvenal, iii. 114-118); perhaps even St. Luke, whose
original writings(322) savour strongly of Demosthenes and Polybius, cannot
be said to have _affected_ the Hellenic, which they must have heard and
spoken from their cradles. Without denying that the Septuagint translation
and (by reason of their long sojourning in Palestine) even Syriac
phraseology would powerfully influence the style of these inspired penmen,
it is not chiefly from these sources that their writings must be
illustrated, but rather from the kind of Greek current during their
lifetime in Hellenic cities and colonies.
3. Hence may be seen the exceeding practical difficulty of fixing the
orthography, or even the grammatical forms, prevailing in the Greek
Testament, a difficulty arising not only from the fluctuation of
manuscript authorities, but even more from the varying circumstances of
the respective authors. To St. John, for example, Greek must have been an
alien tongue; the very construction of his sentences and the subtil
current of his thoughts amidst all his simplicity of mere diction, render
it evident (even could we forget the style of his Apocalypse) that he
_thought_ in Aramaean: divergences from the common Greek type might be
looked for in him and in those Apostles whose situation resembled his,
which it is very unlikely would be adopted by Paul of Tarsus. Bearing
these facts always in mind (for the style of the New Testament is too apt
to be treated as an uniform whole), we will proceed to discuss briefly,
yet as distinctly as may be, a few out of the many perplexities of this
description to which the study of the original codices at once introduces
us(323).
4. One of the most striking of them regards what is called ν ἐφελκυστικόν,
the “ν attached,” which has been held to be an arbitrary and secondary
adjunct. This letter, however, which is “of more frequent occurrence at
the end of words, is itself of such a weak and fleeting consistency, that
it often becomes inaudible, and is omitted in writing” (Donaldson, Greek
Grammar, p. 53, 2nd edit.). Hence, though, through the difficulty of
pronunciation, it became usual to neglect it before a consonant, it always
comprised _a real portion of the word to which it was annexed_, and the
great Attic poets are full of verses which cannot be scanned in its
absence(324): on the other hand, the cases are just as frequent where its
insertion before a consonant would be fatal to the metre. In these
instances the laws of prosody infallibly point out the true reading, and
lead us up to a general rule, that the weak or moveable ν is more often
dropped before a consonant than otherwise. This conclusion is confirmed by
the evidence of surviving classical manuscripts, although but few of them
are older than the tenth century, and would naturally be conformed, in
such minute points, to the fashion of that period. Codices of the Greek
Testament, and of the Septuagint, however, which date from the fourth
century downwards, present to us this remarkable phenomenon, that they
exhibit the final ν before a consonant full as often as they reject it,
and, speaking generally, the most ancient (e.g. Evan. אABCD)(325) are the
most constant in retaining it, though it is met with frequently in many
cursive copies, and occasionally in almost all(326). Hence arises a
difficulty, on the part of modern editors, in dealing with this
troublesome letter. Lachmann professes to follow the balance of evidence
(such evidence as he received) in each separate case, and, while he
usually inserted, sometimes omitted _nu_ where he had no cause for such
inconsistency except the purely accidental variation of his manuscripts;
Tischendorf admits it almost always (N. T., Proleg. p. liii, 7th edition),
Tregelles (I think), as also Westcott and Hort, invariably. Whether it be
employed or not, the practice should at any rate be uniform, and it is
hard to assign any reason for using it which would not apply to classical
writers, whose manuscripts would no doubt contain it as often as those of
the N. T., were they as remote in date(327). The same facts are true, and
the same remarks equally apply to the representing or withdrawing of the
weak ς in οὕτως before a consonant. Each of the aforenamed editors,
however, for the sake of euphony, prefers οὕτω before σ at the beginning
of the next word, except that Tregelles ventures on οὕτως σε δεῖ in Acts
xxiii. 11. Cod. א has οὕτω about fourteen times in the N. T.
5. In the mode of spelling proper names of places and persons peculiar to
Judaea, the general practice of some older codices is to represent harsher
forms than those met with in later documents. Thus in Mark i. 21
καφαρναούμ is found in אBDΔ, 33, 69, Origen (_twice_), the Latin,
Bohairic, and Gothic (_but not the Syriac_: ܒܦܪܢܝܘܡ or ܡܘܝܢܪܦܒ) versions,
and, from the facility of its becoming softened by copyists, this may be
preferred to καπερναούμ of AC and the great numerical majority: yet we see
LP with C in Matt. iv. 13, where Z sides with BD. In other instances the
practice varies, even in the same manuscript, or in different parts of the
N. T. Tischendorf, for example, decides that we ought always to read
ναζαρέθ in St. Matthew, ναζαρέτ in St. John (N. T., Proleg. p. lv, note):
yet the Peshitto in all twelve places that the name occurs, and the
Curetonian in the four wherein it is extant (Matt. ii. 23; iv. 13; xxi.
11; Luke ii. 51), have the aspirate (ܢܨܕܐ or ܐܕܨܢ), and being written in a
kindred dialect, claim all the more consideration. Everywhere the
manuscripts vary considerably: thus in Mark i. 9 ναζαρέτ is found in
אBLΓΔ, 33, 69, and most cursives (seventeen of Scrivener’s), Origen, the
Harkleian Syriac and Old Latin _a_ _b_ _f_: Ναζαράτ in AP: but ναζαρέθ in
D (not its Latin version, _d_) EFHKMUVΠ, 1, and at least sixteen other
cursives (but not Cod. 69 by the first hand, as Tregelles states), the Old
Latin _c_, the Vulgate, the Bohairic and Gothic as well as the elder
Syriac. In Matt. iv. 13 Cod. B has Ναζαρά by the first hand (but -έτ ch.
ii. 23), Cod. א by a later one, with Z, 33 (so Ξ in Luke iv. 16); CPΔ
Ναζαράθ, which is found in Δ nine times, in A twice: so that regarding the
orthography of this word (which is inconstant also in the Received text),
no reasonable certainty is to be attained. For Μαθθαῖος, again (the
variation from the common form Ματθαῖος adopted by Lachmann, Tischendorf,
Tregelles, Westcott and Hort), the authority is but slender, nor is the
internal probability great. Codd. אBΔ read Μαθθαῖος in the title and
headings to the first Gospel, while, in the five places where it occurs in
the text, B (_primâ manu_), the fragment Te, and D have it always, א three
times (but μαθθεος Matt. x. 3, ματθαιον Mark iii. 18 with Σ in the
subscription to the first Gospel), the Sahidic and Gothic each twice: the
Peshitto and title of the Curetonian too (all that is extant) have ܡܬܚ (or
ܚܬܡ). For Ἰωάνης the proof is yet weaker, for here Cod. B alone, and not
quite consistently (e.g. Luke i. 13; 60; 63; Acts iii. 4, &c.), reads
Ιωανης, Cod. א Ιωαννης(328), while Cod. D fluctuates between the two. In
questions of orthography Westcott and Hort, as also the other editors in
some degree, adopt a uniform mode of spelling, without reference to the
state of the evidence in each particular case.
6. Far more important than these are such variations in orthography as
bear upon the dialect of the N. T. Its affinity to the Septuagint is
admitted on all hands, the degree of that affinity must depend on the
influence we grant to certain very old manuscripts of the N. T., which
abound in Alexandrian forms for the most part absent in the great mass of
codices. Such are the verbal terminations -αμεν, -ατε, -αν in the plural
of the second aorist indicative, -οσαν for -ον in the plural imperfect or
second aorist, -ουσαν for -ουν, -αν for -ασι of the perfect, -άτω for
-έτω, -ατο for -ετο, -άμενος for -όμενος. In nouns the principal changes
are -αν for -α in the accusative of the third declension, and (more
rarely) the converse α for -αν in the first(329). We have conceded to
these forms the name of Alexandrian, because it is probable that they
actually derived their origin from that city(330), whose dialectic
peculiarities the Septuagint had propagated among all Jews that spoke
Greek; although some of them, if not the greater part, have been clearly
traced to other regions; as for example -αν for -ασι to Western Asia Minor
also and to Cilicia (Scholz, Commentatio, p. 9, notes w, x), occurring too
in the Pseudo-Homeric “Batrachomyomachia” (ἐπεὶ κακὰ πολλά μ᾽ ἔοργαν, ver.
179). Now when we come to examine our manuscripts closely we find the
forms we have enumerated not quite banished from the most recent, but
appearing far more frequently in such copies as אABC (especially D) LZ
than in those of lower date. It has been usual to ascribe such anomalous
(or, at all events, unclassical) inflexions to the circumstance that the
first-rate codices were written in Egypt; but an assumption which might be
plausible in the case of two or three is improbable as regards them all;
it will not apply at all to those Greek-Latin manuscripts which must have
been made in the West, or to the cursives in which such forms are sparsely
met with, but which were certainly not copied from _surviving_
uncials(331). Thus we are led to the conclusion that the older documents
retained these irregularities, because they were found in _their_
prototypes, the copies first taken from the sacred originals: that some of
them were in all likelihood the production of the skilful scribes of
Alexandria, though their exhibiting these forms does not prove the fact,
or even render it very probable: and that the sacred penmen, some perhaps
more than others, but all to some extent, were influenced by their
recollections and habitual use of the Septuagint version. Our practical
inference from the whole discussion will be, not that Alexandrian
inflexions should be invariably or even usually received into the text, as
some recent editors have been inclined to do, but that they should be
judged separately in every case on their merits and the support adduced in
their behalf; and be held entitled to no other indulgence than that a
lower degree of evidence will suffice for them than when the sense is
affected, inasmuch as idiosyncrasies in spelling are of all others the
most liable to be gradually and progressively modernized even by faithful
and painstaking transcribers.
7. The same remarks will obviously apply to those other dialectic forms,
which, having been once peculiar to some one race of the great Greek
family, had in the Apostles’ time spread themselves throughout the Greek
colonies of Asia and Africa, and become incorporated into the common
speech, if they did not enter into the cultivated literary style, of the
whole nation. Such are the reputed Dorisms ὀδυνᾶσαι Luke xvi. 25, καυχᾶσαι
Rom. ii. 17, 1 Cor. iv. 7 of the Received text, with no real variation in
any known manuscript: all such examples must stand or fall on their own
proper grounds of external evidence, the internal, so far as it ought to
go, being clearly in their favour. Like to them are the Ionisms μαχαίρης
Luke xxi. 24 (B*Δ _only_); Heb. xi. 34 (אAD*); 37 (אD*): μαχαίρῃ Luke
xxii. 49 (אB*DLT _only_); Acts xii. 2 (אAB*D**, 61): συνειδυίης Acts v. 2
(AB3E _only_, συνιδυης א, συνιδυιης B*): σπείρης Acts xxvii. 1 of the
common text, where the only authorities for the more familiar σπείρας seem
to be Chrysostom, the cursives 37, 39, 56, 66, 100, 111, 183, 186, 188,
189. To this class belong such changes of conjugation as κατεγέλουν Mark
v. 40 in K, 228, 447, 511 or cscr; or _vice versâ_, as ἀγανακτῶντες Cod.
69, in Mark xiv. 4. The form ἔστηκεν for ἕστηκεν John viii. 44; Apoc. xii.
4, adopted by Westcott and Hort as the imperfect of στήκω (Mark xi. 25,
&c.), does not seem suitable to the context in either place, although οὐκ
precedes in the former passage in אB*DLXΔΛ*, 1, 69*, 253, 507, 508, Evst.
234.
8. One caution seems called for in this matter, at least if we may judge
from the practice of certain critics of high and merited fame. The sacred
penmen may have adopted orthographical forms from the dialect of the
Septuagint, or from the debased diction of common life, but they did not,
and could not, write what was merely inaccurate or barbarous. Hence
repudiate, in St. Paul especially, expressions like Tischendorf’s ἐφ᾽
ἐλπίδι Rom. viii. 20, as simply incredible on any evidence(332). He may
allege for it Codd. אB*D*FG, of which the last three are bilingual
codices, the scribes of FG showing marvellous ignorance of Greek(333).
That Codd. אB should countenance such a _monstrum_ only enables us to
accumulate one example the more of the fallibility of the very best
documents, and to put in all seriousness the inquiry of Cobet in some like
instance: “Quot annorum Codex te impellet ut hoc credas?... ecquis est,
cui _fides veterum membranarum_ in tali re non admodum ridicula et inepta
videatur?” (N. T. Vatic., Praef. p. xx). In the same way we utterly
disregard the manuscripts when they confound οὐχ with οὐκ (but _see_ p.
318), μέλλει with μέλει, sense with nonsense.
The reader has, we trust, been furnished with the leading principles on
which it is conceived that dialectic peculiarities should be treated in
revising the text of the N. T. It would have been out of place to have
entered into a more detailed account of variations which will readily be
met with (and must be carefully studied) in any good Grammar of the Greek
New Testament. Dr. Moulton’s translation of Winer ought to be in the hands
of every student, and leaves nothing to be regretted, except that accurate
scholarship and unsparing diligence should have been expended on improving
another man’s work, by one who is well able to produce a better of his
own(334).