Chapter XI. Considerations Derived From The Peculiar Character And 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); [pg 313] 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 [pg 315] 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, [pg 316] 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 [pg 317] 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, [pg 318] 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.