Pronomen Abundans and Pronomen Coniunctum. A ... - DWC

PRONOMEN ABUNDANS AND PRONOMEN CONIUNCTUM 81
type, a kind of "Fachprosa", mixed, either on purpose, or by accident,
with new elements originating from the spoken language 259.
1.2. The texts used in this part belong to the so-called "vulgar" type.
They do not give us a picture of the language as it was actually spoken.
The texts of Ancient Greek literature may give us a clearer notion of the
spoken language of their period. At that time literary Greek was still
based on the language as it was actually spoken and the Greek of the
great literary masterpieces, on the other hand, still affected common
speech and may have even slo wed down its development 260. The life-line
between the two was not cut yet. The yawning chasm which separated
the written language from the spoken language later did not yet exist
then. The vulgal' texts of this period are works like the Apophthegmata
Patrum, the Historia Monachorum, the Historia Lausiaca of Palladius,
the works of Moschus, Leontius of Neapolis, Malalas and Theophanes
Confessol'. These are texts written in a more or less simple "written
language", mixed with elements from common speech. Sometimes these
elements were admitted into the text: people like, for instance, Moschus
and Leontius must have been quite ab Ie to write the atticistic literary
Koine. Another time the presence of these elements may be regarded as
being caused by intrusion : one gets the impression that a man as Malalas,
for instance, did not admit these elements on purpose, in order to be
better understood, but wrote them down accidentally.
In this part some other texts will be studied, which actually belong to
the Modern Greek period because of their time of origin. Their use of
language, however, is such that it seems better to discuss them in this part.
1.3. The main question which has to be answered in th is part has already
been answered by Jannaris, who said, referring to Mk 7,25 ... yvv~ ~ç
elXe -rà Ovyá-r(!wv av'l"ijç nvevfla àxáOa(!-rov 261: "This is apparently a
Hebraism initiated by the Septuagint, imitated by the NT writers, and
spread through their subsequent imitators to common speech". And
indeed, the Hebrew nota relationis + resumpt. pronoun is an exact parallel
of the Modern Greek nov + pronomen coniunctum 262. Jannaris, however,
did not take into account the fact that the idiom which he signalized in
Mk 7,25 also occurs in Ancient Greek and other Koine-texts. Those
cases cannot easily be considered as Semitisms.
Psichari denied that the Modern Greek idiom should be viewed as a
Semitism, but saw more in it than Thumb, who called it a "spontanes
Zusammentreffen" 263. He maintained 264: "Le grec de la Sept ante préludait
2:;9 Cf. Costas, pp. 50 ff. and Weierholt, pp. 10 ff.
260 See note 54.
261 Jannaris, § 1439.
262 Cf. Tabachovitz, LXX und N.T., p. 105.
263 Thumb, Hell., p. 128.
264 Psichari, p. 858.