II. Κοινὴ

During the development described, Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) spoke out. He forever overthrew the boundaries of the Greek regions, and with them the Greek dialects, and brought the Greek language to the vastness of the whole world. All possible Greek dialects were encountered in the army of Alexander the Great. If campaigns like the “Anavasis” of ten thousand with Greeks of various tribes contributed to the disintegration of Greek dialects, then this happened under Alexander the Great to an even greater extent. The same thing happened here that we saw when the Attic dialect was “equated” with the Ionian dialect - only now Attica gave more than it took 22. One dialect after another contributed to this. Even the stubborn Dorians had to exchange their dialect with the common Greek language. Apart from Attico-Ionian, no other dialect had such a rich internal history as Dorian with its “acute” and “soft” periods, and - along with Attico-Ionian - only it developed its own “common language”, Achaean-Dorian, as the language of the Achaean union, uniting here all the Dorian dialects, especially those used in Arcadia, and spreading it abroad Peloponnese. But after the Dorian common language leveled the way for the Attic, the first had to give way to the second around the birth of Christ. The efforts to artificially revive the Dorian language (as well as Ionian in New Ionian) had absolutely no success. Even for the 1st and 2nd centuries. along the river Chr. Suetonius and Pausanius testify to the existence of ancient dialects in Rhodes and Messenia, but around 500 AD. Chr. All of them became extinct except Laconian (see above). During the formation of κοινὴ, those areas where Greek was opposed to other languages ​​also played a significant role: primarily Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor. Here the Greeks, in contrast to foreign tribes, were more likely to unite into a closed whole in language, and on the other hand, foreign-speaking peoples, especially Jews, were not inclined to adopt any particular dialect. In this way, Hellas itself, the further, the more strongly it should have experienced the influence of such extra-Greek regions. A highly important factor in this process of linguistic alignment in favor of a “common language” was Christianity in its New Testament. It used the “common language” as a means of dissemination and its sacred books, in the language of which preaching was performed, more and more contributed to the mutual agreement of dialects. Apart from the translation of the LXX, which was intended for a limited circle and received wider use only through Christianity, the New Testament is the first literary work in this new language. As we have seen, for non-Christian circles the artificially revived ancient Attic written language served for a long time as a literary language, and κοινὴ was the spoken language of everyday use and mutual relations 23 . According to Helbing'a 24, κοινὴ is characterized by “the desire for equation and simplification.” “This trend is quite noticeable in many particulars. Thus, κοινὴ tries to eliminate the category of duality; the desirable mood must give way to the subjunctive; superlative – comparative; aorist II str. begins to prevail over the aorist I, and in action. in the voice, on the contrary, the sigmatic aorist overcomes the so-called. strong: where in a number of times different roots appear next to each other, one, for example, aor, strives to achieve dominance. ἐνέμησα instead of ἔνειμα, ἐγάμησα instead of ἔγημα; an increment that is unnecessary is discarded: ὦσα – ἔωσα; Wed finally, phenomena like ἐδώκαμεν, ἐδώκατε and much more. In some cases, the principle of equation and simplification is also accompanied by the principle of clarity, which appears in orthography, where words and elements of words are isolated and therefore a reluctance to elision, krasis and assimilation is revealed.” This is an apt description of Gelbing. Another evidence in favor of the principle of simplification could be mentioned the desire to eliminate the dual number. This began already with Homer, and before the formation of κοινὴ it reached completion among the Ionians, meanwhile, in the Attic this process of dying went on for a very long time (410–329). Further, this also includes the desire to “equalize” the declinations. Already in northern Western Greek and others we find ἀγώνοις instead of ἀγῶσιν, in Cypriot Greek, especially in Edalion and Tamas (in Cyprus) 25, we find ἀνδρίανταν, ἰατῆσαν, μέν (vm. μέ), equally occasionally in Thessalian κίοναν, etc., where the equation of wines is noticeable. pad. 3rd declination to wine. pad. 2nd declension, which process reached complete completion in Modern Greek. The forerunners of this “equation” are also cases of metaplasm, diversity, when a word declined according to the consonantal declension, at the same time, changes in the form of the words to -α or -o. Also, the strong aorist, at least, had to accept the endings of the sigmatic aorist where the latter did not completely prevail, for example, εἴπαμεν, εἴπατε, ἐπέσαντο 26; equal to 3 liters. plural The perfect number has the ending -αν instead of -ασι. The endings of the sigmatic aorist appear even in the past imperfect tense, for example, ἐλέγοσαν, which refers to the influence of Boeotian. But when we say that the New Testament Greek language also belongs to κοινὴ, this raises the question: how do we know this κοινὴ? For this there are actually six sources: inscriptions, papyrus texts, ostraca, borrowed words, modern Greek and LXX. a) Inscriptions are carved, poured and engraved, scratched (with something sharp) monuments of the language of government and private origin. The latter are closer to folk Greek than the former, where, naturally, the “classical” character is more noticeable. Government inscriptions contain mainly the texts of laws, popular definitions, tax rates, etc., while private inscriptions are mostly gravestones. Already humanists began to collect inscriptions, but only the 19th century, thanks primarily to the Corpus inscriptionum Aug. Boeckh'a, became the century of epigraphy. They are drawn from all the areas surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, which were previously under the influence of Greek and Roman culture itself. We have a lot of them, but many are still hidden in the ground and even more were spent over the centuries as building material, sent to kilns or otherwise destroyed. For us, the inscriptions from Asia Minor are valuable first of all, especially from Ephesus, Pergamon, Magnesia, Priene, Miletus, etc., then from Greece, Syria and Egypt, and they are available to the general public in their various scientific collections (for example, the Berlin Academy of Sciences). Some inscriptions, especially from the era of persecution, are extremely important for church history. b) Papyri. The papyrus plant (not counting Italy, especially Sicily) grew only in Egypt, and it was here that writing material was produced from it, which was used for about 3 ½ millennia: the oldest hitherto known papyrus dates back to about 2600 BC. Chr., and the youngest dates back to a time much after 640 AD. Chr. Only under the hot sun could Egypt preserve an amazing amount of such ancient documents and - surprisingly - not even in archives, but in places for landfills and garbage. The first papyrus document (from 191–192 AD) was received in Europe from Egypt in 1778, and since then, successively, especially since 1877, thanks to systematic research, whole masses of papyri were extracted from there to Europe. They contain texts mainly of a non-literary nature: “Legal (legal) documents of the most varied content, for example, lease and rental agreements, bills and receipts, marriage documents, divorce letters and wills, orders of officials, announcements and fines, court records, many tax deeds, then also letters and notes, schoolchildren’s notebooks, magical texts, horoscopes, diaries, etc. The content of these non-literary monuments are as diverse as life itself. Greek - many thousands, and these papyri cover a period of about 1000 years. The oldest go back to the early times of the Ptolemies, which means to the 3rd century BC. Chr., many of them extend already into the Byzantine era” 27. From all of them, especially from the letters, we can fully see how the people thought and spoke. However, in the papyri there are also many Greek remains of a literary nature, even of Christian origin. Another abundant source of papyri is Herculaneus (or, more correctly, Herculaneum); here the papyri darkened from the heat, but still preserved rich treasures for us 28. c) Ostraca. Anyone who studies ancient Greek history knows that Aristides was expelled from Athens (in 483) through ostracism, that is, through a sentence through shards. True to their name, these were clay shards that were often used as writing material in Athens from the 6th century, but were also common in general, primarily in areas adjacent to the Mediterranean Sea from the east. And again, mainly the soil of Egypt has preserved for us thousands of shards from the time of the first Ptolemies to the 8th century with hieratic, demotic and Coptic, with Greek and Latin, as well as with Aramaic and Arabic texts. “They have a wide variety of contents, concluding letters, contracts, accounts, census statements (announcements), decrees, and sometimes even extracts from classical authors. In general, on ostraca we find the same texts as on papyri, but - by their very nature - ostrac texts are mostly shorter than papyrus ones. But the overwhelming majority of ostraca consist of tax receipts” 29. It was writing material primarily for the poor, who picked up what was of no value to others. However, a fair amount of biblical texts have been preserved on the ostraca. It is assumed that the latter were written out for the purpose of (liturgical) reading or as examination copies by poor Christians who were seeking diaconate and, for the sake of testing, were obliged to copy some kind of Gospel texts for their bishop 30 . d) Borrowed words. Everyone knows how many foreign words there are in the Russian language, which sometimes do not lend themselves to the slightest Russification. The same thing happened in the Greek language, where, for example, some words from Phoenician were adopted, as well as a whole series of sayings from different foreign-language peoples. This especially happened since Alexander V. subjugated the entire East to Greek influence, that is, when κοινὴ reached its full development. And, as we see, this is primarily in Judeo-Modern Hebrew, Judeo-Aramaic, Christian Syriac, Mandaean, Arabic, Armenian, Latin and especially also in Coptic - they represent an extremely abundant source regarding the state of the Greek language at the time when these borrowed words were adopted - mainly regarding sounds (pronunciation), less for forms and very little and weakly for syntax. If you look at the edition of Coptic texts, everyone will see that they are teeming with Greek, “foreign” words for them. e) The modern Greek folk language, the language of today's Greek peasants 31, is also of great importance for the study of the “common language”. In its true form, this folk language represents an organic development from the ancient folk κοινὴ described by us. Regarding its usefulness for the question of the language that concerns us, the works of such scientists as Hatzidakis and Thumb are especially valuable. And indeed, in the modern Greek folk language there are in full development such properties that were only in embryo in the κοινὴ we are studying, for example, a mixture of forms of the 1st and 2nd declension with forms of the 3rd declension; some verbal forms, which were there in the stage of beginning decomposition, completely died out in Modern Greek. However, surprisingly, the modern Greek folk language still retains remnants of ancient Greek dialects, especially pre-Rism. f) A valuable source for κοινὴ is the Greek translation of V.Z. LXX-ti. Although the grammatical study of the language of this translation is just beginning, it has already been established by Gelbing 32 that, being entirely a translation, the LXX is written in the language of its time or κοινὴ. The actual translation features of the LXX closely include Semitisms, which, according to Thumb 33, act as traces of an alien linguistic genius in word meanings, in phraseology, in the method (structure) of expression and constructions, or even in the grammar itself. Previously, Semitism was suspected in all such phrases, but in modern times they turned out to be characteristic of κοινὴ according to the inscriptions: thus, the frequent repetition in the V.Z. “and” (καί) was actually traced back to the Jewish construction, which everywhere prefers the “composition” of assumptions, putting them side by side (parataxis), however, this phenomenon is already found in Homer 34 and, of course, because he was closer to the natural soil of language than the Attic literary language, which on artificial grounds prefers the “subordination” of sentences. Folk speech loves such fragmentary sentences, connected one to another, and teachers are well aware of the predilection of schoolchildren for constant “and” - especially in biblical and world-historical stories 35. In this way, a whole series of imaginary Semitisms were found in κοινὴ, for example, the repetition of the demonstrative pronoun in relative clauses after the corresponding relative pronoun, which is also found in Herodotus and Iperides. And, in general, many other features of the LXX language are clarified from κοινὴ, for example, the oath formula εἰ μή. But despite all this, it cannot be denied that the LXX actually has Semitisms, and even in the field of grammar. However, researchers agree to recognize only the so-called. “accidental” Semitisms, which, being translated, do not actually relate to κοινὴ, as such 36. However, Thumb himself notes 37: “So, perhaps, it would be possible to deny the grammatical influence of Semitic languages ​​in the living development of the Greek language in general, but this, of course, would be an exaggeration for Syria and Egypt. In these countries, undoubtedly, there was an alien syntactic coloring in the folk κοινὴ, although it is still barely revealed in our language texts. This is partly because one’s own free development and alien influence are difficult to distinguish (or only possible in individual cases), which is why one must be especially careful in stating alien turns of expression.” As a basic rule, it should be accepted: just as the current Jewish jargon predominates where many Jews live together, so the Judeo-Greek language was especially in such places as Alexandria, Cyrenaica and Cyprus, where many thousands of Jews lived. In general, it cannot in any way be ruled out that Semitism penetrated into the Greek language, into the lexicon and grammar 39 . Naturally, the extra-Ionian dialects, for their part, contributed something to the formation of κοινὴ. However, the views of P. Kratzshmer, supposedly the latter represents a motley mixture of all dialects, do not seem consistent in such a sharp form, as if “dialects were (only) the substrate on which κοινὴ was deposited - not without locally accepting their influence.” It cannot be assumed that there was a completely homogeneous κοινὴ. According to Strabo (VIII, 1,2) they spoke differently in different cities. Among the Ionians there should have been a κοινὴ with Ionian coloring, among the Dorians of the islands and in the Peloponnese - with Dorian, and Attica - with Attic. Equally, Asia Minor, Syria, especially the most accurately known from this side, Egypt, of course, were independent districts of κοινὴ with their own characteristics in it. Dr. Robert Helbing, Grammatik der Septuagintä Laut-und Wortlehre (Göttingen 1907), S. VII. There is a lot of material in Neutestamentliche Grammatik dargestellt von Prof. Dr. Ludwig Radermacher (Tübingen 1911). What is noteworthy here is the linguistic contact with the Phoenicians, who are alien by blood. So in the apocryphal Gospel of Peter v. 18. Prof. Adolf Deissmann, Licht vom Osten: das Neue Testament und die neuentdeckten Texte der hellenistisch-römischen Welt (Tübingen 21909, S. 19). The dates of the Greek papyri are determined by the time from 361 BC. Chr. to the 9th century along the river Chr. Deisman also provides examples typical of folk writing. Such, for example, is Anton Long’s letter to his mother, Nilusa, whom he asks for forgiveness for his frivolity; it is from the 2nd century, from the Fayum, now in the Berlin Museum and reads as follows (Deissmann. S. 128-130; see also Prof. George Milligan, Selections from the Greek Papyri, Cambridge 1912, pp. 93-95, and The New Testament Documents, Their Origin and Early History, London 1913, pp. 259-260, equal to Hans Lietzmann, Griechische Papyri, Bonn 2 1910, S. 5): “Antony Long to Nilus, his mother, (sends) many greetings! I constantly pray that you are healthy. I offer my daily prayers to Lord Serapis for you. Let me tell you that I did not expect you to go to the metropolis. That's why I didn't come to this city. And I was ashamed to go to Karanis, because I was wandering around ragged. I am writing to you that I am naked. I beg you, mama, have mercy (forgive) me! Because I know that I brought all this on myself. I am punished in every way. I know that I have sinned. I heard from Postumus, who met you in the Arsinoe district and inopportunely told you everything (about me). Do you know that I would rather be crippled than to know that I owe anyone else even an obol?.. I beg you... I beg you...” Remarkably found in Oxyrhynchus, now in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, is a letter from the boy Theon to his father Theon from the 2nd or 3rd century AD. Chr. (Deissman. S. 137 ff. H. Lietzmann, S. 2 13–14; G. Milligan, Selections from the Greek Papyri, p. 102–103): “Theon To Theon, his father, hello! You did well: you didn’t take me to the city with you! If you do not want to take me with you to Alexandria, then I will not write you a single letter, I will not tell you or wish you health. And if you (after all) go to Alexandria, I do not ask for your hand and in the future I will not welcome you at all. If you don't want to take me with you; then so be it. And my mother told Archepai: “He’s driving me crazy! To hell with him! How good you have been to me: after all, you send me great gifts - (sweet) pods (araki)!! They deceived us here on the 12th day after you sailed. However, please send it to me. If you don't send it, I won't eat or drink. So! I wish you good health. Tibi on the 18th.” Letter dated 346 AD Chr., now in the British Museum, serving at Ermoupolis, in the Fayum, the Christian priest Cahors to the commander of the camp in Dionysiad, Flavius Avinnaeus, concerns a fugitive soldier (see G. Milligan, Selections from the Greek Papyri, pp. 123-124) and to some extent parallels Paul's letter to Philemon: “His master and beloved brother Avinnaeus, preposita, greets Kahors, pope (priest) of Ermupolis. I greet your many children. Let me tell you, sir, about the soldier Paul, about his escape, so that this one time I can give him forgiveness; I don’t have time at all to go to you today. If he doesn't stop, he'll fall into your hands again another time. I wish you well-being for many years to come, my lord brother.” This letter appears to have been handed by the author to a repentant deserter for transmission to his superior. Examined from the grammatical side in Crönert, Memoria graeca Herculanensis (1903). Ad. Deissmann, Licht vom Osten, S. 2 29. Ad. Deissmann ibid., S. 2 34. Here are some examples of ostraca. From 63 AD Chr. from Thebes: “Psenamunius, son of Pecisius, priest of Isis, to the tenant Pibuchius, son of Patheesius, greetings! I received from you 4 drachmas and 1 obol of the Isis tax for public duties. In the 9th year of Nero the Lord. 11th Mesori." From 32–33 years along the river Chr. from Thebes, a receipt for collection from foreigners: “Pamarii, son of Hermodorus, Abu. I received from you a tax from foreigners for the months of Tout and Faofi 2 drachmas. In the 19th year of Tiberius Caesar Augustus." And here is a (fragmentary) note about wheat from the 2nd century. along the river Chr. from Thebes: “Crispus on Na... Order in the name... for the western part... Vestidia Secunda, represented by Pollia Maria the Younger, who replaces her, two, half, third and fourteenth artavs of wheat.” And how important ostraca can be for textual criticism of the New Testament, shows those published by Lefebure (Fragments grecs des Évangiles sur Ostraca in “Bulletin de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale” IV, Caire 1904: cp. Ad. Deissmann in “Die Christliche Welt” XX, 1906. Sp. 19 ff.) texts that contain, first of all, quite a lot of passages from the Gospel of Luke. If they happened only in the 7th century AD. Chr., they nevertheless confirm with undoubted certainty what texts were then authoritatively circulated in Upper Egypt, and this we, naturally, cannot establish with such confidence through manuscripts, because their topographical genealogy is often dubious. Here are some examples from here (see Ad. Deissmann, Licht vom Osten, S. 2 32). (Luke 22:70–71) is written out here almost punctually according to the textus receptus: “And they all said: Are you then the Son of God? And He said to them: You say that I am. And they said: What more evidence do we need? We ourselves heard this from our own lips...” Ten of these ostraca can be located sequentially and, therefore, belong to the same series; here, primarily, the story of the suffering of Christ the Savior is reproduced. It should not be confused with the artificially archaized written (literary) language, which represents the renewal of the most ancient Byzantine literary language, that is, the literary κοινὴ of later antiquity, and is artificially retained in newspapers, biblical translations and prose literature. Grammatik der Septuaginta (Göttingen 1907), S. III Griechische Sprache im Zeitaltes des Hellenismus (Strassburg 1901), S. 120. Prof. K. Brugmann, Griechische Grammatik. S. 3,555 ff. As an example, we can cite one Fayum fragment from 171 AD. Chr. (see Ad. Deissmann, Licht vom Osten, S. 3 91): “Yesterday..., when we were returning early near the village of Feadelphia in the Themist district, some villains attacked us between Polydeucia and Feadelphia and tied us together with the tower watchman and tormented us a lot with beatings and wounded Pasion and took away 1 pig from us and they took away Pasion’s tunic... and...” A. Thumb, Griechische Sprache, S. 122. † Prof. E. Schürer, Geschichte des judischen Volkes 3 III, S. 21. For literature on the history of the Greek language and especially about κοινὴ, see the above-mentioned Stokes translation of Robertson's grammar (p. 271 ff.; see the new edition: A. T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historica Prof. 1. Research, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1915, and about it see y Rev. Prof. James Moffatt The Expositor, 1915, II, pp. 183–188, that “it is a remarkable achievement, from whatever it considered”), but to the literature shown there (on page 277) about borrowed words should be added that given by † Prof. K. Krumbacher'a, Byzantinische Literaturgeschichte, München in 3 1897, S. 1135 ff., for Armenian - A. Thumb in “Byzantinische Zeitschrift” IX, S. 183 ff., for Aramaic in general - Th. Nӧldeke, Mandäische Grammatik (Halle 1875), S. XXIX f., for Coptic – K. Wessely, Griechische Lehnwörter der sahidischen und boheirischen Psalmenversion in “Denkschrifte der Wiener Akademie” LIV, Heft 3 (Wien 1910). You might be interested in: