Bibliography on the Language of the Greek Bible

James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language. London: Oxford University Press, 1961.

David Alan Black, “New Testament Semitisms,” The Bible Translator 39/2 (April 1988), pp. 215-223. A good brief discussion of Hebraisms in the New Testament, with examples.

David Alan Black, Linquistics for Students of New Testament Greek: A Survey of Basic Concepts and Applications. Forward by Moises Silva. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1988.

Henry J. Cadbury, “The Language of the New Testament,” in The Abingdon Bible Commentary, ed. Frederick C. Eiselen, Edwin Lewis, and David G. Downey (New York: Abingdon Press, 1929), pages 880-84.

Ernest C. Colwell, The Greek of the Fourth gospel: a Study of its Aramaisms in the Light of Hellenistic Greek. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931.

Ernest C. Colwell, “The Greek Language,” The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. New York: Abingdon Press, 1962, Vol. II, pp. 479-87.

Gustav Adolf Deissmann, Bibelstudien. Beiträge, zumeist aus den Papyri und Inschriften, zur Geschichte der Sprache, des Schrifttums und der Religion des hellenistischen Judentums und des Urchristentums. Marburg: Elwert, 1895. Reprinted Hildesheim: Olms, 1977.

Gustav Adolf Deissmann, Neue Bibelstudien. Sprachgeschichtliche Beiträge, zumeist aus den Papyri und Inschriften, zur Erklärung des Neuen Testaments. Marburg: Elwert, 1897.

Gustav Adolf Deissmann, Licht vom Osten. Das neue Testament und die neuentdeckten Texte der hellenistisch-römischen Welt. Tübingen, Mohr, 1908.

Gustav Adolf Deissmann, Bible studies: contributions chiefly from papyri and inscriptions to the history of the language, the literature, and the religion of Hellenistic Judaism and primitive Christianity. Translated by Alexander Grieve. Edinburgh: T.&T.Clark, 1901.

Gustav Adolf Deissmann, New light on the New Testament: from records of the Graeco-Roman period. Translated by Lionel R. M. Strachan. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1907.

Gustav Adolf Deissmann, The Philology of the Greek Bible. Translated by Lionel R. M. Strachan. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1908.

Gustav Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East: the New Testament illustrated by recently discovered texts of the Graeco-Roman world. Translated by Lionel R. M. Strachan. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910.

C.H. Dodd, The Bible and the Greeks. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1935.

Trevor V. Evans, Verbal Syntax in the Greek Pentateuch: Natural Greek Usage and Hebrew Interference. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Gerhard Friedrich, “Pre-History of the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Kittel and Friedrich, vol. x (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), pages 613-661. See especially § 7 “The Present Problem,” pp. 650 ff., in which criticisms of Deissmann are discussed at length, with bibliography.

Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995. Describes the literary milieu of the first century, and the place of the New Testament within it. Concludes that the epistles are written in the professional prose of the day, similar to official and philosophical letters, and the gospels are similar to other Greco-Roman biographical literature.

H.S. Gehman, “The Hebraic Character of Septuagint Grammar.” Vetus Testamentum 1 (April 1951):81-90.

H.S. Gehman, “Hebraisms of the Old Greek Version of Genesis.” Vetus Testamentum 3 (April 1953):141-148.

Kendrick Grobel, “The Languages of the Bible,” in The Interpreter’s One-Volume Commentary on the Bible, ed. Charles M. Laymon (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1971), pages 1194-1200.

William H. Guillemard, Hebraisms in the Greek Testament: Exhibited and Illustrated by Notes and Extracts from the Sacred Text; with Specimens of (1) the Influence of the Septuagint on its Character and Construction; (2) the Deviations in it from Pure Greek Style. Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, 1879.

Edwin Hatch, Essays in Biblical Greek: Studies on the Value and Use of the Septuagint, on the Meanings of Words and Psychological terms in Biblical Greek, on Quotations from the Septuagint, on Origen’s revision of Job, and on the Text of Ecclesiasticus. With an index of Biblical passages. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889. Reprinted in Amsterdam by Philo Press, 1970.

David Hill, Greek Words and Hebrew Meanings: Studies in the Semantics of Soteriological Terms. Cambridge: University Press, 1967.

G.H.R. Horsley, “Res Bibliographicae: Divergent Views on the Nature of Greek of the Bible,” Biblica 65 (1984).

Edwyn Hoskyns and Noel Davey, The Riddle of the New Testament. London: Faber and Faber, 1931. 2nd edition, 1936.

Wilbert F. Howard, “Appendix on Semitisms in the New Testament,” in Accidence and Word Formation (Vol. II of A Grammar of New Testament Greek), Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1929, pp. 412-85.

Elliott C. Maloney, Semitic Interference in Marcan Syntax. Dissertation series (Society of Biblical Literature); no. 51. Chico, Calif: Scholars Press, 1981. Originally presented as the author’s thesis, Fordham University, 1979.

Raymond A. Martin, Syntactical evidence of Semitic sources in Greek documents. Septuagint and cognate studies; no. 3. Cambridge, Mass: Society of Biblical Literature, 1974.

Edgar V. McKnight, “Is the New Testament Written in ‘Holy Ghost’ Greek?” The Bible Translator, 16 (1965), pages 87-93.

Bruce M. Metzger, “The Language of the New Testament,” in The Interpreter’s Bible vol. vii (New York: Abingdon, 1951), pages 43-59.

George Milligan, Here & There Among the Papyri. New York: Doran, 1921.

Charles F. D. Moule, An Idiom Book of New Testament Greek. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953. 2nd edition, 1979.

James H. Moulton, et al., A Grammar of New Testament Greek. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1906-1976. 4 vols. Contents: Vol. 1, James H. Moulton, Prolegomena (1906); v. 2, James H. Moulton and Wilbert F. Howard, Accidence and word-formation, with an appendix on semitisms in the New Testament (1929); v. 3, Nigel Turner, Syntax (1963); v. 4, Nigel Turner, Style (1976).

James H. Moulton, “Language of the New Testament,” in Dictionary of the Bible, ed. James Hastings. one-volume edition (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1924), pages 528-530.

James H. Moulton and George Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, Illustrated from the Papyri and other Non-Literary Sources. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1930. Originally issued in eight parts from 1914-1929. Reprinted 1957.

Alviero Niccacci, “Marked Syntactical Structures in Biblical Greek in Comparison with Biblical Hebrew,” Liber Annuus (Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, Jerusalem) 43 (1993) pp. 9-69. Argues that Biblical Greek (the LXX and to a lesser extent the NT) is an artifical “translation language” as far as the syntax of the verb is concerned. 110 examples are quoted, mostly from the lxx, together with their Hebrew original.

Stanley E. Porter, Idioms of the Greek New Testament. Biblical languages: Greek series; 2. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992.

Stanley E. Porter, ed., The Language of the New Testament: Classic Essays. Journal for the study of the New Testament supplement series; 60. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991. A very convenient volume in which some important older essays are reprinted, with an introduction by Porter. Included are:

• Stanley E. Porter, “Introduction: The Greek of the New Testament as a Disputed Area of Research.” (written for this volume).
• Adolf Deissmann, “Hellenistic Greek with Special Consideration of the Greek Bible” translated from the third edition of the Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche edited by A. Hauk (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1899).
• James Hope Moulton, “New Testament Greek in the Light of Modern Discovery,” from Essays on Some Biblical Questions of the Day by Members of the University of Cambridge edited by H.B. Sweete. (London: Macmillan, 1909).
• Charles C. Torrey, “The Aramaic of the Gospels,” from Journal of Biblical Literature 61 (1942).
• Matthew Black, “Aramaic Studies and the Language of Jesus,” from In Memoriam Pahl Kahle (Berlin: Töpelmann, 1968).
• Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “The Languages of Palestine in the First Century AD,” from Wandering Aramean: Collected Aramaic Essays (Scholars Press, 1979).
• Henry S. Gehman, “The Hebraic Character of Sepruagint Greek,” from Vetus Testamentum 1 (1951).
• Nigel Turner, “The Language of Jesus and His Disciples,” from Grammatical Insights into the New Testament (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1965).
• Lars Rydbeck, “On the Question of Linguistic Levels and the Place of the New Testament in the Contemporary Language Milieu,” translated from Fachprosa, vermeintliche Volkssprache und Neues Testament: Zur Beurteilung der sprachlichen Niveauunterschiede im nachklassischen Griechisch (Uppsala, 1967).
• Moises Silva, “Bilingualism and the Character of Palestinian Greek,” from Biblica 61 (1980).

Stanley E. Porter and D.A. Carson, eds., Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics: Open Questions in Current Research. Journal for the study of the New Testament. Supplement series; 80. Sheffield, England: JSOT Press, 1993.

Archibald T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research. New York: George H. Doran, 1914.

Archibald T. Robertson, “Language of the New Testament,” in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (Chicago: Howard-Severance Co., 1915), vol. iii, pages 1826-1832.

William Henry Simcox, The Writers of the New Testament: Their Style and Characteristics. (volume 2 of The language of the New Testament). London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1890. Reprinted Winona Lake, Indiana: Alpha Publications, 1980.

Joseph H. Thayer, “Language of the New Testament,” in A Dictionary of the Bible, ed. James Hastings (Edinburgh: T &: T Clark, 1898), vol. 3, pages 36-43.

Steven Thompson, The Apocalypse and Semitic Syntax. Society for New Testament Studies monograph series 52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.

Emanuel Tov, The Greek and Hebrew Bible: Collected Essays on the Septuagint. Vetus Testamentum Sup 72. Leiden: Brill, 1999. ISBN: 9004113096.

Nigel Turner, Syntax (Vol. III of A Grammar of New Testament Greek). Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1963.

Nigel Turner, Christian Words. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1980. Reprinted 1997. 532 pages. ISBN: 0567085643.

Nigel Turner, “The Language of Jesus and His Disciples” in The Language of the New Testament: Classic Essays. JSNT supp. series # 60. Edited by Stanley E. Porter. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991.

Nigel Turner, “The Unique Character of Biblical Greek,” Vetus Testamentum 5 (1955).

Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996.

Georg Walser, The Greek of the Ancient Synagogue: an Investigation on the Greek of the Septuagint, Pseudepigrapha and the New Testament. Studia Graeca et Latina Lundensia; 8. Lund, Sweden: Lund University Press, 2001.