Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-cnmwb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-21T01:27:36.109Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

CHAPTER IV - Ancient Versions based upon the Septuagint

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2011

Get access

Summary

The Christian Churches of Greek-speaking countries throughout the Empire read the Old Testament in the Alexandrian Version. Few of the provinces were wholly non-Hellenic; Greek was spoken not only in Egypt and Cyrenaica, in Western Syria, Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Achaia, but to a great extent in the West, in Italy and at Rome. Roman satirists of the first century complained that the capital had become a Greek city; the upper classes acquired Greek; the freedmen and slaves in many cases spoke it as their mother tongue. Official letters addressed to the Roman Church or proceeding from her during the first two centuries were written in Greek; only four of the Bishops of Rome during the same period bear Latin names. In Gaul the Greek tongue had spread up the valley of the Rhone from the Greek colony at Marseilles to Vienne and Lyons; the Viennese confessors of a.d. 177 used it in their correspondence both with the Roman Bishops and with their brethren in Asia Minor; the Bishop of Lyons wrote in the same language his great work against the false gnosis of the age. The Old Testament as known to Clement of Rome and Irenaeus of Lyons is substantially the Greek version of the Seventy. To the Church of North Africa, on the other hand, the Greek Bible was a sealed book; for Carthage, colonised from Rome before the capital had been flooded by Greek residents, retained the Latin tongue as the language of common life.

Type
Chapter
Information
An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek
With an Appendix Containing the Letter of Aristeas
, pp. 87 - 121
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010
First published in: 1900

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×