Hebrew, Aramaic, and The Greek of The Gospels

Extract

It is frequently remarked of the κοινή Greek of the Gospels that it bears distinct traces of Hebrew and Aramaic influence, conscious or unconscious. The average reader of the Gospels may often wonder just which of the many linguistic oddities he encounters are common to all or most forms of κοινή and which are the genuine Hebraisms or Aramaisms; he can, if of a heroic cast of mind, learn Hebrew for this one purpose (a plan which will commend itself to few), or he can read various weighty tomes, from those of Wellhausen and Burney, who see Aramaic influence everywhere, to those of Moulton and Milligan, who minimize that influence wherever possible, to that of Lagrange, who placidly pursues a via media. But he would probably prefer a brief essay which tries to sum up the main facts without a footnote, without an appendix, and without an axe to grind.

First, influence on syntax. Every κοινή scholar would agree that one of the commonest Semitisms in the Gospels is the initial position of the verb in the sentence. In both Hebrew and Aramaic the verb almost invariably appears first: ‘the king saw the man’ would (though in the Hebrew right-to-left order in which the first becomes last and the last becomes first) be expressed as ra'ah (verb) hammelech (subject) 'eth (sign of the accusative) ha'ish (object). Obviously the average Aramaic-speaking Jew would write εἶεν ὁ βασιλεύς τòν ἄνλpα. Now it is perfectly true that there is nothing un-Greek in the position of ενεν here; but it is the frequency of the occurrence, not the fact, which is significant; the initially placed verb meets us on every page of the Gospels—examples are unnecessary.