Five years ago Vasilis Orfanos published an excellent monograph on the Turkish lexical borrowings attested in the Cretan dialect of Modern Greek (Orfanos 2014). In this paper the present authors increase the number of the possible Cretan Turkisms, providing and explaining additional items not listed in Orfanos’s book.
The paper deals with the problem of defi nite article in the Gothic Bible. More specifically, it concentrates on the differences and similarities of use between the target language, i.e. Gothic, and the source language, i.e. Greek, with special attention being paid to the case of the article – nominative, genitive, dative or accusative. It is part of a larger endeavor aiming at the analysis of the whole Gothic Bible in this respect. This time the Gospel of John is taken into consideration, following an earlier study which concentrated on the Gospel of Matthew. In the paper it will not only be observed how frequently Gothic omits the definite article in places where Greek uses it in the Gospel of John, but also in what way the cases of the definite article vary in both languages due to their grammatical specificities.
The article gives a brief presentation of the identity of Septuagint and its history. The issues dealt with are: the literary unity of LXX, its basic terminology and origins, its canon as well as its significance for Judaism and for modern biblical studies.
Exegesis of Matthew 16:13-20, made in the light of historical and doctrinal terms occurred after 70 years in Judea, in which the evangelist Matthew was presented with its Judeo-Christian Church, indicates clearly existing in the text emphasis and related them to universalist objectives . They primarily guided him to define the saving message of Jesus the Risen of being Christological and Ecclesiological, in the final version edited by himself, in the Gospel of the Kingdom at the turning point for the fate of the Palestinian Church. The scene from Caesarea Philippi is edited in a manner which allows Peter to run his church in the Hellenistic world in order to gain complete doctrinal confidence that the same power of binding and resolving in heaven and on earth which he received from Jesus Simon Barjon to exercise it in the land of Israel, is also possessed by Simon Peter to celebrate it with the same saving efficiency in the lands of the heathen. Without this doctrinal certainty, it would probably be impossible to guarantee its further Judeo-Christian existence in the world of ethnochristians and gentiles.
The Corpus Ignatianum, usually included in the works of the Apostolic Fathers, is made up of seven letters in koiné Greek, probably written by Saint Ignatius of Antioch. These texts, which have a complicated literary history, are very interesting and original from a linguistic and stylistic point of view. A lexical analysis of the Corpus Ignatianum, in particular, allows identifying first of all a noteworthy lexical creativity. There are indeed some hapax, unusual words and neologisms, which are often compound words. Moreover, in these texts some words already used in classical Greek are first attested in Christian literature. There are also some latinisms. Another noteworthy lexical characteristic of the Corpus Ignatianum is the presence of words and metaphors which are typical of Hellenistic philosophy, especially of Stoicism, and which are present also in Christian literature.
In general the iconographic details recorded in the hagiographic literature are pretty meagre. Authors focus on the miraculous properties of icons. The Coptic lives of the saints may be selected as representative for the Early Christian and Byzantine hagiography. The Martyrdom and Miracles of Saint Mercurius the General and other lives contain stories about the Saint’s icons. We have some information about church decoration in the East, but, it does not look as impressive as John of Gaza’s extensive ecphraseis of St. Sergius’ and St. Stephen’s complex decorative programmes. However, we actually find a number of interesting minor descriptions in the church histories, in the theological polemic on icons, and in the hagiographies. A Syriac manuscript from the British Museum preserves a chronicle of the monastery of Qartamin, Mor Gabriel. I focus on a chapter which describes the church’s construction and its interior decoration. The essential part of the art terminology, which we know from the Coptic texts, consists of the Greek borrowings. The Syriac texts show an entirely different pattern. The Syriac description compiled by an anonymous monk from Qartamin resembles the hymn on the Edessa Cathedral. The Syriac art description in general evolved along entirely different lines from the Greek ecphrasis. Greek borrowings in the discussed Syriac texts are rare, and if they do appear, they are limited to only certain words.
The Epistle of Barnabas, usually included in the works of the Apostolic Fathers, is an anonymous text written in koiné Greek. It was probably composed between the end of the First and the beginning of the Second Century in an Egyptian or Syro-Palestinian setting. The text is made up of two parts: the first one has an anti-Judaic apologetic nature; the second one is instructive and paraenetical. The Latin version of the Epistle (L), which is useful in the constitutio textus of the original too, concerns the first of the two parts. An analysis of the language and of the technique of translation allows asserting that L was probably compiled in Rome between the end of the Second and the beginning of the Third Century. Moreover, its main features may be identified in the literality and in the linguistic and stylistic popularity. The literality is both quantitative and distributional: the changes are usually narrow (except expressions which introduce Biblical quotations) and concern parts which may be considered accessory by a semantic point of view. The popular style is due to the attention the translator pays to the needs of the sociocultural situation of the readers and is confirmed by the presence of rhetorical figures as alliteration. These two characteristics, which are typical of Latin translations of Greek Patristic texts compiled between the end of the Second and the beginning of the Third Century, are due to stylistic choices which are homogeneously and congruently applied. Moreover, in L these characteristics are strictly bound, because the sermo humilis characterizes the Greek text too.