Jewish Koine Greek, or Jewish Hellenistic Greek, is the variety of

Koine Greek Koine Greek (; Koine el, ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, hē koinè diálektos, the common dialect; ), also known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-reg ...

or "common Attic" found in a number of Alexandrian dialect texts of

Hellenistic Judaism Hellenistic Judaism was a form of Judaism in classical antiquity that combined Jewish religious tradition with elements of Greek culture. Until the early Muslim conquests of the eastern Mediterranean, the main centers of Hellenistic Judaism wer ...

, most notably in the

Septuagint The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint (, ; from the la, septuaginta, lit=seventy; often abbreviated ''70''; in Roman numerals, LXX), is the earliest extant Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible. It includes several books beyond ...

translation of the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' Yevanic Yevanic, also known as Judaeo-Greek, Romaniyot, Romaniote, and Yevanitika, is a Greek dialect formerly used by the Romaniotes and by the Constantinopolitan Karaites (in whose case the language is called Karaitika or Karaeo-Greek). The Romaniote ...

, or Judeo-Greek, spoken by the

Romaniote Jews The Romaniote Jews or the Romaniotes ( el, Ῥωμανιῶτες, ''Rhomaniótes''; he, רומניוטים, Romanyotim) are a Greek-speaking ethnic Jewish community native to the Eastern Mediterranean. They are one of the oldest Jewish comm ...

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 Henry Barclay Swete (14 March 1835 in Bristol – 10 May 1917 in Hitchin) was an English biblical scholar. He became Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge in 1890. He is known for his 1906 commentary on the ''Book of Revelation'', and oth ...

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emphasis on the peculiarity of the Greek of the Septuagint compared to other Greek texts of the period has largely been retracted by later scholars as plentiful non-Jewish Koine domestic and administrative papyri and inscriptions have been better recovered and studied.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 The Dead Sea Scrolls (also the Qumran Caves Scrolls) are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts discovered between 1946 and 1956 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine, near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the ...

. 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 The New Testament was written in a form of Koine Greek, which was the common language of the Eastern Mediterranean from the conquests of Alexander the Great (335–323 BC) until the evolution of Byzantine Greek (c. 600). Hellenistic Judaism Th ...

. Due to 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 Yevanic, also known as Judaeo-Greek, Romaniyot, Romaniote, and Yevanitika, is a Greek dialect formerly used by the Romaniotes and by the Constantinopolitan Karaites (in whose case the language is called Karaitika or Karaeo-Greek). The Romaniote ...

Grammar

Koine Greek grammar Koine Greek grammar is a subclass of Ancient Greek grammar peculiar to the Koine Greek dialect. It includes many forms of Hellenistic era Greek, and authors such as Plutarch and Lucian, as well as many of the surviving inscriptions and papyri. Koi ...

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 Flavius Josephus (; grc-gre, Ἰώσηπος, ; 37 – 100) was a first-century Romano-Jewish historian and military leader, best known for '' The Jewish War'', who was born in Jerusalem—then part of Roman Judea—to a father of priestly ...

and

Philo of Alexandria Philo of Alexandria (; grc, Φίλων, Phílōn; he, יְדִידְיָה, Yəḏīḏyāh (Jedediah); ), also called Philo Judaeus, was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, in the Roman province of Egypt. Philo's de ...

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 a number of pure

neologism A neologism Greek νέο- ''néo''(="new") and λόγος /''lógos'' meaning "speech, utterance"] is a relatively recent or isolated term, word, or phrase that may be in the process of entering common use, but that has not been fully accepted int ...

s (new coinages) or new usage of vocabulary. However hapax legomena may not always indicate neologisms, given the specialist subject matter of the Septuagint. Also some of the "neologisms" of the Septuagint are not totally new coinages and may be combinations of existing terms as ''Neubildungen'' in German, such as the large number of

compound word In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (less precisely, a word or sign) that consists of more than one stem. Compounding, composition or nominal composition is the process of word formation that creates compound lexemes. Compounding occurs when ...

s representing two or more Hebrew words.Tov "...Neubildungen is more precise..."

Examples

* (): "to judaize" (Galatians 2:14, see

Judaizers The Judaizers were a faction of the Jewish Christians, both of Jewish and non-Jewish origins, who regarded the Levitical laws of the Old Testament as still binding on all Christians. They tried to enforce Jewish circumcision upon the Gentile c ...

) * (): "(I) keep the sabbath" * (): "false prophet" (classical texts use )

References

{{Jews in Greece Varieties of Ancient Greek Septuagint Jewish languages

History of scholarship

Grammar

Neologisms

Examples

See also

References