Thackeray's treatment of the Septuagint's grammar is a masterful
reference work, which moved Septuagintal study forward. ""Why write a
Grammar of a translation, in parts a servile translation, into a Greek
which is far removed from the Attic standard, of an original which was
often imperfectly understood? A sufficient answer might be that the work
forms part of a larger whole, the Grammar of Hellenistic Greek, the
claims of which, as bridging the gulf between the ancient and the modern
tongue upon the attention of philhellenes and philologists have in
recent years begun to receive their due recognition from a growing
company of scholars. The Septuagint, in view both of the period which it
covers and the variety of its styles, ranging from the non-literary
vernacular to the artificial Atticistic, affords the most promising
ground for the investigation of the peculiarities of the Hellenistic or
'common' language . . . Though of less paramount importance than the New
Testament, the fact that it was the only form in which the older
Scriptures were known to many generations of Jews and Christians and the
deep influence which it exercised upon New Testament and Patristic
writers justify a separate treatment of its language. Again, the fact
that it is in the main translation gives it a special character and
raises the difficult question of the extent of Semitic influence upon
the written and spoken Greek of a bilingual people."" -from the Preface
Contents I. Introduction II. Orthography and Phonetics III. Accidence
Henry St. John Thackeray was a Scholar at King's College, Cambridge
University. He was a masterful linguist of classical Greek, Hellenistic
Greek, and the Septuagint, as well as, historian and biblical scholar.
Among his publications are Some Aspects of the Greek Old Testament,
Josephus: The Man and the Historian, and The Letter of Aristeas.
