to the classic standard of propriety. Another class went to
the opposite extreme, speaking in exaggerated terms of the Hebraisms and
solecisms of the New Testament writers. The truth lies between these
extremes. The style of the New Testament is neither classical nor
barbarous. Its characteristics are strictly conformable to the history
of its origin. (1.) Its basis is not the Greek of Plato and Xenophon,
but the so-called Hellenic or common dialect which arose in the age of
Alexander the Great, when "the previously distinct dialects, spoken by
the various sections of the Hellenic nation, were blended into a popular
spoken language." Winer, Gram, of the New Test., sec. 2. The Alexandrine
Jews doubtless learned it not so much from books as from the daily
intercourse of life, and it probably had its provincial peculiarities in
Alexandria and the adjacent region. (2.) In Jewish usage this common
Greek dialect received an Hebraic coloring from the constant use of the
Septuagint version, which is a literal rendering of the Hebrew
Scriptures into Greek, of course with the retention of many Hebrew
idioms. Only such thorough Greek scholars as Josephus and Philo could
rise above this influence. The New Testament writers manifest its power
in different degrees; for, as it respects Hebraisms, they do not by any
means stand on a common level. (3.) As the Aramaic--the so-called
Syro-Chaldaic--was the language of the mass of the people, the style of
the New Testament writers received a tinge from this also. (4.) More
than all, the style of the New Testament receives a peculiar impress
from the fact that the authors were Jews writing under the full
influence of a Jewish education and a Jewish faith, with the superadded
element of Christianity. It is the phenomenon of the spirit and thoughts
of Jewish Christians embodied in the language of Greece; and this at
once separates the writings of the New Testament by a wide interval from
all purely classic compositions. The apostolic writers imposed on the
Greek language an arduous task, that of expressing ideas foreign to the
conceptions of the most cultivated among the pagan authors; ideas partly
common to the old Jewish and the Christian religions, partly peculiar to
Christianity. This could only be done by giving to existing terms a new
and higher meaning, whereby they assumed a technical character wholly
unknown to the classic writers.

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