Jewish Koine Greek

Jewish Koine Greek, or Jewish Hellenistic Greek, is the variety of Koine Greek or "common Attic" found in numerous Alexandrian dialect texts of Hellenistic Judaism, most notably in the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible. The term is largely equivalent with Greek of the Septuagint as a cultural and literary concept rather than a linguistic category. The minor syntax and vocabulary variations in the Koine Greek of Jewish authors are not as linguistically distinctive as the later language Yevanic, or Judeo-Greek, spoken by the Romaniote Jews in Greece.

The term "Jewish Koine" is to be distinguished from the concept of a "Jewish koine" as a literary-religious—not a linguistic—concept.

History of scholarship

Primary work on this area was conducted by scholars such as Henry Barclay Swete in chapter 4 of his ''Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek''. However, Swete's emphasis on the peculiarity of the Greek of the Septuagint compared to other Greek texts of the period has largely been retracted by later scholars as plentiful non-Jewish Koine domestic and administrative papyri and inscriptions have been better recovered and studied. Since Swete the equation of Jewish common Attic with the "Greek of the Septuagint" has also been broadened, placing the Septuagint in the context of a wide range of Jewish texts of the period, most recently including the Greek texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls.

No ancient or medieval writer recognizes a distinct Jewish dialect of Greek. General academic consensus is that the Greek used in the Jewish Koine Greek texts does not differ significantly enough from pagan Koine Greek texts to be described as "Jewish Greek." This also applies to the language of the New Testament. Because of the dominant influence of the Septuagint the first documents of "Christian Greek" and early "Patristic Greek" are both an extension of classical Greek on the one hand, and of biblical and Jewish-Hellenistic Greek on the other. Only a thousand years later did there arise a true Jewish dialect of Greek, Yevanic.

Grammar

Koine Greek grammar already departs from earlier Greek grammar in several areas, but the Jewish texts are generally consistent with Gentile texts, with the exception of a small number of grammatical semitisms. As would be expected, many Jewish texts show virtually no departures from the Koine or "common Attic" used by Gentile authors. Authors writing for Gentile audiences such as Josephus and Philo of Alexandria observe a standard of Greek grammar well above that of many surviving pagan sources.

Neologisms

A major difference between the Septuagint and associated literature, and contemporary non-Jewish Koine texts is the presence of pure neologisms (new coinages) or new usage of vocabulary.T. Muraoka ''A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint'' 2009 Preface to the 3rd Edition However, '' hapax legomena'' may not always be neologisms, given the specialist subject matter of the Septuagint.The Greek and Hebrew Bible: Collected Essays on the Septuagint – Volume 72 – Page 140 ed. Emanuel Tov "There is another reason for a cautious use of the label 'neologism': a word described as a neologism on the basis of our present knowledge may, in fact, be contained in an as yet unpublished papyrus fragment or the word may never have been used in written language." Also, some of the "neologisms" of the Septuagint may not be wholly new coinages but rather "morphological neologisms"—new combinations of existing words (in the same manner as German ''neubildungen''), such as the large number of compound words made up of two or more Hebrew words.

Examples

* (): "to judaize" (Galatians 2:14, see Judaizers)
* (): "(I) keep the sabbath"
* (): "false prophet" (classical texts use )

See also

* Koine Greek phonology
* History of the Jews in Alexandria
*

References

{{Jewish languages

Koine Greek
Septuagint
Jewish languages
Hellenic languages
Extinct languages of Africa
Extinct languages of Asia