Basic HTML Version
iota
kappa
lamda
mu
nu
xi
@
omicron
pi
sigma
$
tau
upsilon
"0 -0
phi
chi
A
psi
$
omega
B
rough breathing mark
PREFACE
T
O
ascertain the exact meaning of the words and phraseology of the originals of the
Holy Scriptures is of great importance, particularly those which have a variety of
meanings in English. The research work of the past fifty years, with the discovery of a
large number of inscriptions and documents, and especially of the non–literary writings
in the tombs and dust heaps of Egypt, has yielded much light upon the use and meaning
of the language of the originals. The importance of the Egyptian papyri writings etc. lies
in the fact that they were written during the period in which the writers of the New
Testament lived. Proof has thus been provided that the language of the New Testament
was not a debased form of literary Greek corrupted by Hebrew idioms, but that in the
main it was the vernacular, the speech of the everyday life of the people in the countries
which came under Greek influence through the conquests of Alexander the Great. As the
result of those conquests, the ancient Greek dialects became merged into one common
speech, the
E
or ‘common’ Greek. In one form this language became the literary
E
or Hellenistic, of such writers as Josephus. In its spoken form it was the everyday