Abstract
The language of the Septuagint is not only a linguistic question: evaluations of the language have been intertwined with presuppositions on the social context of Jews in antiquity, in particular their linguistic competency, educational background, and position within the Graeco-Roman society. Recent work has rehabilitated the position of Jews in ancient society and with it came a renewed quest for understanding the social locus of the language of the Septuagint and related Jewish-Greek writings. In order to appreciate the language of the Septuagint, we need to contextualize it appropriately within the history of Greek, diachronically and synchronically. The dedication of a special issue to the present topic by Journal for the Study of Judaism signals the recognition of the importance of the Septuagint for the wider discipline. In this introduction, the editors lay out recent trends in the field and discuss its challenges.
The language of the Septuagint is not only a linguistic question: evaluations of the language have been intertwined with presuppositions on the social context of Jews in antiquity.1 The construction of Jews in antiquity as a separate entity, excluding themselves from the wider Graeco-Roman society, has informed the perception of the language of Greek-speaking Jews as either ethno-linguistically distinct (i.e., a dialect)2 or socially distinct (i.e., a sociolect).3 This perception is supported by detailed studies of the Septuagint that draw attention to the Hebraistic flavor of the Greek, without further refinement or description of the Greek itself.4 At the same time, studies of “biblical Greek” have reinforced the construction of the Greek of the Septuagint as something other than Post-classical Greek.5 This perspective on the language of the Septuagint as essentially non-conventional is reflected in historical studies summarizing the translators as in some ways struggling with writing Greek, such that it has even been suggested of the Greek Pentateuch that “it was probably a disappointment to those who commissioned it.”6 This presumed level of linguistic ability reflected in the Septuagint has often become the basis for judgments regarding the educational background of the translators, positioning them as outsiders in the Greek-language educational system.
Recent work has rehabilitated the position of Jews in ancient society and with it came a renewed quest for understanding the social locus of the language of the Septuagint and related Jewish-Greek writings.7 In order to appreciate the language of the Septuagint, we need to contextualize it appropriately within the history of Greek, diachronically and synchronically. The dedication of a special issue to the present topic by Journal for the Study of Judaism signals the recognition of the importance of the Septuagint for the wider discipline. The Septuagint is no longer primarily a source for textual critical studies; as a socio-cultural document it can effectively inform us on Judaism in antiquity. The timing of this issue reflects the current shift in Septuagint studies regarding its approach to understanding its linguistic character, from primarily an artificial, inference-based language (linked to the study of translation technique in function of textual criticism) to predominantly standard Post-classical Greek (linked to a renewed understanding of the practice of translation, language contact, and multilingualism in antiquity).8 The study of Septuagint vocabulary was reoriented already by Deissmann in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century,9 providing new avenues into lexicography that are still worthy of being pursued further.10 In addition, we are now also studying the more complex aspects of the language, such as grammar and syntax, building particularly on the research from the so-called Helsinki school.11 In situating the Septuagint within the history of Greek, the present issue is also an attempt to open up Septuagint studies to the field of Greek studies. As such, this issue represents the fruitful cross-fertilization of Jewish, biblical, and Septuagint studies and Greek studies, and a step forward towards integrating them.
1 The Framework of Post-classical Greek
Dated to the third century BCE to the first or even second century CE,12 and thus as a document of the Post-classical period, the Septuagint needs to be contextualized within the framework of Post-classical Greek, from both a diachronic and a synchronic perspective.
1.1 Diachronic Change
Diachronically, Post-classical Greek is the stage in the development of the Greek language between the third century BCE and the sixth century CE.13 It is sometimes referred to by the term “Koine,” from the expression
Descriptions of the subjunctive and optative moods in standard grammars sometimes tacitly assume that the optative was still in full flower in the Koine period. But it was in fact dying out. The reason is that it was too subtle for people acquiring Greek as a second language to grasp fully. You can see why: English-speaking students also have a great difficulty in grasping the difference between these two moods.16
Such an understanding of the nature of Koine has resulted in a negative appreciation of Post-classical Greek in the development of Greek as one signifying a decline in the language. Horrocks and others, however, have shown that Koine was, in fact, not just a low-level register of Greek, but the established language of commerce, diplomacy, and officialdom as well. Furthermore, Koine was not only used in areas where Greek would have primarily been a second language, but also in the Attic-Ionic context.17 Language is continually in flux, and change is universal. Modern linguistics have provided us with significant insight into the dynamics of language change, which is useful in order to contextualize the features of the Greek reflected in the Septuagint. On the one hand, we see a simplification of some aspects of the language, particularly in the realms of morphology and syntax, such as the evolution of irregular verbal conjugations towards regular formation. For example, in Deut 1:33 we find the form
As the Post-classical period spans centuries, Post-classical Greek is diachronically not a monolithic entity either: we see variation in the language across time as it develops into the earliest stages of Byzantine Greek.22 A well-defined set of linguistic criteria for chronological periodization of different stages of Post-classical Greek is unfortunately not (yet) available,23 so that we can only and must always contextualize concrete features of Post-classical Greek within an expansive framework of linguistic development. This is an acknowledgement of the possibility that appreciating the development of the language over a longer period and identifying changes that might only gradually become visible in the Post-classical period, even after the time of the Septuagint, can illuminate features of the Septuagint itself.24
1.2 Synchronic variation
Post-classical Greek not only varies over time. From the synchronic perspective, solely seeing Post-classical Greek as “the language of the street”25 is missing the wide range of context-related variation that is ubiquitous in all languages. There is a possibility of regional or dialectical variation in Post-classical Greek, most likely in pronunciation, probably in lexicon, and perhaps in morphology and syntax, but we cannot prove this definitively with any specificity,26 especially since dialect tends to be more prevalent in spoken language. A related question here is the influence of the local indigenous language on the Greek language used.27 More pertinent, however, is that Post-classical Greek is attested in and consists of a variety of different registers, ranging from the vernacular, the evidence for which we find mostly in papyri, to the high literary register of authors such as Polybius, and everything in between.28
Language users naturally adapt their usage to the sociolinguistic situation in which they are using language—so-called registers. Linguistic register is defined as the “result of an interplay between linguistic behaviour and the sociolinguistic context.”29 Linguistic behaviour, in turn, “is described in terms of its standardness or rather substandardness” within Post-classical Greek.30 Register exists on a continuum.31 Horrocks, for example, has proposed a threefold classification of writing styles in Post-classical Greek: “basic/non- literary,” “official and scientific/technical,” and “literary,” identifying a few typical features for each style.32 While some scholars situate the whole corpus of documentary papyri at the lower end of the register continuum, others have demonstrated that a register continuum can also be found within the corpus itself—high, middle, and low—which are associated with official versus more personal contexts in which language was used.33 The register-continuum itself is regarded “as the sum of a number of linguistic dimensions.”34 These linguistic dimensions pertain primarily to vocabulary, orthography, grammar, and syntax. Register has been studied extensively for the Classical period, but much less has been done for the Post-classical and Byzantine periods, even though the situational characteristics of extant Post-classical textual witnesses diverge much more than for the Classical period.35 The sociolinguistic study of Post-classical Greek has been gaining momentum, especially as more papyri have become available and more tools for study have been developed.36 This means that work on register in the Septuagint is part of the elaboration and substantiation of this research topic and can thus meaningfully contribute to our understanding of the question.
2 Post-classical Register and the Septuagint
We are only in the early stages of understanding register in the Post-classical period, thus complicating any absolute or generalizing statements made about the Septuagint. Traditionally, in Septuagint studies the register of a specific book has often been described along an axis of literary Greek to vernacular language to sometimes even “bad” Greek.37 The question of register has, however, been approached relatively within the corpus of the Septuagint itself, in isolation of the broader context of Hellenistic textual production, and often intuitively.
Firstly, the discovery of new comparative material (particularly papyri and inscriptions) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has enabled a broader understanding of the nature of the Greek language in the Hellenistic era. Documentary sources are particularly useful for sociolinguistic study of Post-classical Greek, because they have been preserved in large numbers, often allow dating, and are contextually diverse.38 In many instances we have information on paratextual aspects such as the sender, receiver, purpose, and handwriting, that can complete our sociolinguistic picture. While our limited knowledge of the precise context and purpose of the translation of each Septuagint book is a significant restriction, avenues for further comparative research have opened up. In contextualizing the Septuagint among other Post-classical writings, much work remains to be done, particularly (a) in relation to biblical books beyond the Pentateuch and (b) in relation to syntax in particular.
Secondly, if register may indeed be understood as a deviation from standard features, we have to determine the standard we may use against which to measure register in the Septuagint. Some work has been done to establish a Post-classical Greek standard based on signs of educated language in papyri,39 but the challenge in constructing a notion of “standard language” faced by Septuagint scholars in this regard is twofold. First, there is the absence of entirely fitting comparative material. While the papyri show similarities in language use, they are of a different nature than the Septuagint. We do not have many literary writings in prose from the early Hellenistic period at our disposal beyond those deemed canonical in the tradition of Greek studies, such as Polybius or Plutarch. Yet, we do know that the literary output of the Hellenistic era was substantial,40 implying a need to be aware of the amount of literature that may have gone lost. We also do not have any extensive translated texts outside of the Jewish tradition to which the Septuagint can be compared, and research in ancient translation practices, such as the study of Egyptian translation into Greek,41 is only emerging.42 This lack of comparative material does not equate the need for having to propose arguments out of silence; it simply signals an awareness of one of the hermeneutical challenges that Septuagint scholars face in their endeavors to characterize its language.
A second challenge is that “standard” language in the Septuagint is not just an easily measurable and concretely attested form of Greek: rather, the language of specific books is influenced by a given translator’s approach to rendering the source text. Behind the idea that the language of the Septuagint is poor or indicative of uneducated language users lies the notion of linguistic prescriptivism. Prescriptivism assumes that there is one correct way of speaking and/or writing and that deviations from this norm are the result of illiteracy or barbarism and generally indicative of ignorance or lack of education.43 Linguists have shown that these assumptions are incorrect, pointing out that variation is inherent in language and that no language variety is, in itself, deviant.44 A “standard” language is sociolinguistically just as valuable as any language described as “non-standard,” and a user’s engagement with non-standard language features is governed more by socio-cultural dynamics than ability. When it comes to the Septuagint, the question of what standard language would be is complicated by the fact that it is at this point that “style” and “translation technique” meet. These two aspects of the Greek of the Septuagint have often been confused in scholarship, most notably by Thackeray,45 but also in recent scholarship beyond those still referring to Thackeray’s classification, such as Sollamo.46 In such perspective, “literal translation” is often related to “poor Greek,” and “good Greek” is associated with “free translations” such as Job and Proverbs. While elements of “freedom,” such as deviation from Hebrew word order, may facilitate the translator’s stylization of the Greek text, translation technique and style pertain to distinct aspects of language use in the Septuagint. The term “translation technique” only refers to the nature of the relationship between the Hebrew source and its Greek rendering and the various approaches of translating, while “style” pertains to a contextual characterization of the book’s language and features within the realm of the Greek linguistic and textual world. The translation approach will influence the extent to which the translator focuses on rendering the form and meaning of the Hebrew, thus affecting the style of the translation product, but style encompasses more than the result of the translation technique. Oftentimes, “literalism” is seen as a sufficient explanation for the Greek translation, so that the translation itself is often not considered as a Greek text, and investigated to what extent exactly it deviates from a well-considered “standard” Greek. In doing so, scholarship stresses the level of interference in the Septuagint. Examples are generalizing descriptions of the language of the Septuagint as “idiomatic Hebrew in Greek dress,”47 as “Hebraic” or “translation Greek.”48 Related to this is the observation that scholars frequently reproduce the same examples of interference in the Septuagint.49 Comparative linguistic analyses have shown that the language of the Septuagint essentially reflects the contemporary language, but the precise balance between conventional Greek and Semitic interference is a question that needs further elaboration within a nuanced framework of “standard” language and register in contemporary sources. As such, we do not deny the existence of interference in the Septuagint—it is, after all, a universal feature of translation50 —but we argue for a multicausal approach to the Septuagint that considers the Greek more accurately as a Greek textual and linguistic product. Positioning the Septuagint within the history of Greek is one major aspect of that.
When it comes to examining interference, the distinction between negative and positive interference may be a productive approach to understanding the nature of contact-induced language features in the Septuagint. Positive interference refers to those instances in which a “normal” item in the target language is used disproportionally often in the translation, because it happens to resemble a feature in the source language. Negative interference, in turn, pertains to “non-normal” items in the target language.51 An example of the former is the frequency of parataxis and of the resumptive pronoun, while an example of the latter is the construction
As mentioned, in Septuagint research, features of interference are often correlated with low-level Greek,54 thus leading to generalizations about the register of Septuagint books. While the register of many Septuagint books appears to be on the lower end of the spectrum of Post-classical register, at the same time, the Septuagint also contains significant features reflecting a higher register.55 Particularly interesting are the inclusion of features that are in decline by the third to second century BCE and considered indicative of a higher register.56 The translators at times use what we see as literary vocabulary, or they may introduce particles and genitives absolutes, for example—features in the Septuagint that have no formal link to the Hebrew source, but reflect awareness of Greek style. There are also features in the Greek text which, even though they may be the result of an isomorphic translation method in terms of word order or word choice, are, in fact, indicative of higher register Greek, such as the prepositioned pronoun.57 Since the issue of interference needs much further consideration, so, too, needs the question of the register, especially as we gain further insight into register in Post-classical Greek. We need more consideration of all the linguistic dimensions which, taken together, create the register-continuum.
The definition of register in terms of an interplay between context and behaviour means that there is no one-on-one relationship between a book’s register and the educational background of the translator. Oftentimes, elements that can be explained as the result of word-by-word translation of the source text are used to make claims about the low-level Greek of the Septuagint. Those features may, however, be present in the translation, not primarily because the translators did not know Greek well enough, or deliberately aimed at locating their product on the lower end of the Post-classical spectrum, but because these features are the result of the translation technique. The translator’s “linguistic behaviour” is governed in part by the translation approach, as one of the factors alongside, not indicative of, their mastery of Greek. The translation approach may have been a natural constraint on the Septuagint translators, preventing the demonstration of the full range of their linguistic abilities. Precisely because of the limitations of the translation approach, the evidence of the Septuagint shows us only the baseline of the translators’ abilities and levels of education, not the full range or the upper limit. As a result, the ways in which they show their competency and sensitivity within the translation approach is of high value. While for the Pentateuch at least, there is no evidence that the translators would have achieved the highest educational level, they were educated enough in rhetoric and Classical literature to use it in their work, and may probably have been of similar educational backgrounds as the more skilled of the bureaucratic scribes in Egypt.58
As a result of this complex problem, we can only identify specific features that indicate some level of education on the part of the author/translator, in order to move away from views resulting from presuppositions regarding Jews as outsiders in the Hellenistic world, unwilling or unable to participate fully in Greek-language education and literary creativity. What is important is that the end product, our evaluations aside, was deemed acceptable to the translator and the target audience. The existence of alternate versions for some books, such as Judges and Tobit, as well as the revisional activity of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, for example, indicate that notions regarding what was acceptable and desirable in Jewish scriptural translation changed over time. Because of the existence of a register-continuum and the absence of an established “standard” language within the framework of ancient translation, we must refrain from making generalizing comments about the register of a given Septuagint book. Instead, our task is to study individual features that can be associated with (a) specific sociolinguistic context(s), and reconstruct a more nuanced picture of the linguistic profile of each book.
The placement of the Septuagint within the history of Greek thus functions in three ways. It recognizes that “biblical” Greek is a natural part of the history of the language and is not to be considered abnormal or divergent. This has long been recognized through comparison with contemporary documents, as already observed, but this approach emphasizes the fact that translation does not lead to the creation of a different language system, such as “translation Greek.” Second, it draws attention to the fact that the Septuagint holds its place within the linguistic history of Greek, reflecting a particular stage in that history. It can only be understood within the change and development of the language since the Classical period and into the Byzantine period. Third, it is an acknowledgement that we not only need further diachronic contextualization, but also synchronic awareness of sociolinguistic variation.
3 Outline of the Issue
The contributions in this issue all present avenues into how we may position the Septuagint within the history of Greek. The vocabulary of the Septuagint in its Post-classical context has been studied broadly since the nineteenth century. Particular attention has been paid to how the linguistic context of Post-classical Greek can inform our understanding of the language used in the Septuagint. However, the Septuagint is also the most substantive corpus of early Post-classical prose at our disposal, and so the question arises what the Septuagint can contribute to our understanding of language use in the Hellenistic period. While the Septuagint spans some centuries (up to first or second centuries CE), for the larger part it is derived from the third to first centuries BCE, thus encompassing the Hellenistic period proper. There is a remarkable lack of Greek literature from this period. Therefore, the Septuagint as largely datable from a period where other evidence is slight stands out as important. This importance could encompass a number of issues in the study of Greek. As a discipline we tend to draw on our neighboring fields rather than contribute to them (e.g., the contribution it can make to Greek language, history of the book, bilingualism, literacy, Jewish history, Jewish literature). This question has not been explored yet to the same extent; Sofía Torallas Tovar demonstrates a possible path in this direction. Her contribution focuses on the Septuagint and the question of Egyptian Greek.59 Benjamin Kantor, too, extends the contextualization of the language of the Septuagint as an authentic example of Post-classical Greek to phonology and orthography and shows how Septuagint manuscripts may provide the earliest evidence for phonological and orthographic developments in the Greek language, thus demonstrating the value of the Septuagint for Greek studies.60
The other contributions in this volume, then, focus on aspects of grammar and syntax to show how the Septuagint fits within the history of Greek and how this approach can inform us on the linguistic and socio-cultural background of the translators. Trevor Evans discusses issues of methodology when studying syntax in the Septuagint through a review of Muraoka’s Syntax of the Septuagint.61 William Ross challenges the notion of “Septuagint Greek,” adding further weight to the considerations presented in this introduction.62 Marieke Dhont analyzes syntax and word order in relation to pronouns, showing that a scholarly focus on a “literal” translation technique as sufficient explanation for the Greek rendering has caused us to overlook some telling features of conventional, even high-register usage in the Septuagint.63 The final contribution in this issue, co-authored by Tyler Horton, Andrew Keenan, Timothy Lee, Robert Walker, Travis Wright, and Marieke Dhont, gathers six case studies demonstrating various ways in which the Septuagint can be positioned within the history of Greek on the level of word formation, verbal syntax, and word choice.64 This joint article, in honor of James Aitken, serves as an epilogue to the issue as a whole. Together, the contributions in this special issue reflect a comprehensive step towards the study of the Septuagint within the history of Greek, while also demonstrating the various ways in which this line of research can be developed further.
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Sollamo, Raija T. Repetition of the Possessive Pronouns in the Septuagint (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995).
Sollamo, Raija T. “The Study of Translation Technique.” In Die Sprache der Septuaginta / The Language of the Septuagint, Handbuch zur Septuaginta / Handbook of the Septuagint, vol. 3, ed. Eberhard Bons et al. (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlag, 2016), 161–171.
Stolk, Joanne V. “Orthographic Variation and Register in the Corpus of Greek Documentary Papyri (300 BCE–800 CE).” In Varieties of Post-classical and Byzantine Greek, ed. Klaas Bentein and Mark Janse (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), 299–326.
Thackeray, Henry St.J. A Grammar of the Old Testament in Greek according to the Septuagint (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909).
Toury, Gideon. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond, 2nd rev. ed. (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2012).
Torallas Tovar, Sofía. “How Egyptian is the Greek of Septuagint?: Some Lexical Notes.” Journal for the Study of Judaism 54 (2023), this issue.
Wacholder, Ben Zion. Eupolemus: A Study of Judaeo-Greek Literature (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College & Jewish Institute of Religion, 1974).
Wallace, Daniel. The Basics of New Testament Syntax: An Intermediate Greek Grammar (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000).
Wright, Benjamin G. “Access to the Source: Cicero, Ben Sira, The Septuagint and their Audiences.” In Praise Israel for Wisdom and Instruction: Essays on Ben Sira and Wisdom, the Letter of Aristeas and the Septuagint (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 247–273.
See Aitken, “Language.”
See, for example, Gehman, “Hebraic Character”; Wacholder, Eupolemus, 63.
See, for example, the language of the Septuagint explicitly described as such by Mulroney, Translation Style, 6, but the concept of a Jewish sociolect is also implied by scholars such as Rajak. For example: “The very character of this special language in itself served from the beginning as a means of self-identifying, with a primary ethnic indicator, the language of the patria, and self-distancing from Alexandrian society” (Rajak, Translation, 152).
See, for example, Aejmelaeus, Parataxis; Muraoka, Syntax.
For a discussion with bibliography, see Evans, “Nature,” 92.
Satlow, Bible, 159.
See, for example, Scialabba, Pouchelle, and Bons, Vocabulary, and Bons, Lexicon; Lee, Greek.
Evans, “Embracing Advances.”
Deissmann, Neue Bibelstudien; Deissmann, Licht vom Osten.
For a discussion, see Evans, “Nature,” 92–93.
See, e.g., Aejmelaeus, Parataxis; Sollamo, Repetition.
On dating the Septuagint, see Dorival, Harl, and Munnich, Bible grecque, 111; for caveats, see Dines, Septuagint, 45.
Bentein, Verbal Periphrasis, 6.
See, e.g., Democritus, Fragm. 300, 18.10; Hecataeus, Fragm. 25.129.
Gibson and Campbell, Reading Biblical Greek, 2.
Wallace, Basics, 462.
Horrocks, Greek, 80–83; Brixhe, “Linguistic Diversity,” 230–31.
Bybee, Language Change, 95.
Bentein, Verbal Periphrasis.
Hewlett, Articular Infinitive; Bentein, “Going Nominal.”
On verbal periphrasis, see Horton et al., “Additional Evidence.”
Bentein (Verbal Periphrasis, 6) proposes three subdivisions in the Post-classical period from a linguistic perspective: early (III–I BCE), middle (I–III CE), late (IV–VI CE).
Browning, Medieval and Modern Greek, 12; Rafiyenko and Seržant, “Postclassical Greek,” 1.
For an example of this, see the section on neologisms by Keenan in Horton et al., “Additional Evidence.”
Gibson and Campbell, Reading Biblical Greek, 2.
Horrocks, Greek, 84; Horsley, “Fiction,” 9–10.
See Horsley, 11–19.
Horrocks, Greek, 84.
Stolk, “Orthographic Variation,” 301.
Stolk, 301.
Biber, Dimensions, 31. See also Stolk, 300.
Horrocks, “Syntax,” 630–31. Stolk (301) uses the term “vernacular” for the lowest stratum. The term “vernacular” seems to imply at least some degree of knowledge of the spoken language. Our insight into spoken language is minimal, however, and we must remember that the written word is inevitably different from any spoken variety of language (see Milroy and Milroy, Authority in Language, 47–59). Yet, historical linguistics sometimes characterizes language in terms of vernacularity. For example, “The lower this [vernacularity] is the more formal the register and hence the more standard the language will be […] A high level of vernacularity implies a high incidence of non-standard features which are indicated by unexpected spelling and grammar” (see Stolk, 301, who cites Hickey, “Linguistic Evaluation,” 8).
James, “Retention and Retreat,” 35–36. Compare also Bentein, “Register and Diachrony.”
Bentein, “Greek Documentary Papyri,” 479.
Bentein and Janse, “Varieties,” 2.
Bentein and Janse, “Varieties”; Depauw and Stolk, “Linguistic Variation”; Rafiyenko and Seržant, Postclassical Greek.
See Thackeray, Grammar, 13 (“indifferent”). For a fuller discussion, see Ross, “Some Problems.”
Bentein, “Finite versus Non-Finite Complementation,” 6.
Evans, “Standard Koine Greek.”
Clauss and Cuypers, Companion, passim (many contributions in this issue note how limited the preserved materials are); Samuel, From Athens to Alexandria, 67.
Aitken, “Egyptian Translations.”
See, e.g., Mairs, “Hermēneis”; Mairs, “Demotic-Greek Translation.”
Milroy and Milroy, Authority in Language, 33.
See, for example, Greenbaum, “Language Variation,” 165.
Thackeray, Grammar, 13.
Sollamo, “Study,” 165–66.
Wright, “Access to the Source,” 250.
See, respectively, Brock, Phenomenon of the Septuagint, 32: “The fact that the translation is in Hebraic Greek, that is Greek that is at times subservient to Semitic syntax and modes of expression, …” and Lust et al., Lexicon, xviii: “LXX Greek cannot simply be characterized as Koine Greek. It is first of all translation Greek.”
See Horton et al., “Additional Evidence,” for further elaboration.
Toury, Descriptive Translation Studies, 310–15. See also, e.g., Laviosa-Braithwaite, “Universals of Translation,” 291.
Toury, 311. This difference, too, has been noted by biblical scholars trying to describe the language of the Septuagint, see, for example, Dines, Septuagint, 117; George, “Jewish and Christian Greek.” Compare also “positive” and “negative transfer” in Maurais, Characterizing Old Greek Deuteronomy, 80.
See Aitken, “Neologisms,” as well as the case study of Keenan in Horton et al., “Additional Evidence.”
Dhont, Style and Context, 151–55; see also Dhont in Horton et al., “Additional Evidence.”
See, e.g., Aejmelaeus, Trail, 91.
See, e.g., Aitken, “The Significance of Rhetoric,” and, within this issue, the examples of Horton and Dhont in Horton et al., “Additional Evidence.”
E.g., Evans, “The Last of the Optatives.”
See Dhont, “Syntax.”
Aitken, “Language,” 132.
Torallas Tovar, “How Egyptian.”
Kantor, “The LXX and Historical Greek Phonology.”
Evans, “The Grammarian Cannot Wait.”
Ross, “Some Problems.”
Dhont, “Syntax and Pronominal Competence.”
Horton et al., “Additional Evidence.”
