Accordingly, in a book like the Epistle of St. James, where the Greek is forcible, and often beautiful, there always remains a certain Hellenistic monotony, a lack of flexibility, which mars the general impression. In this connection there are many anomalies displayed by the various writers, difficult of explanation. Thus St. Matthew’s Gospel, which has probably the most Hellenistic and Hebraistic tone of any New Testament book, and the least pretence to style, has fewer actual Hebraisms than the Gospel of St. Luke, and a far more even and natural flow than St. Mark’s work, which is often rugged and inelegant. On the other hand, St. Luke, while capable of perhaps the most truly classical cast of language, goes beyond all the other New Testament writers in the use of vernacular expressions.
No doubt these points have, underneath them, explanatory facts which have never come to light. But the minutiae of individual variations only serve to give greater weight to phenomena of general agreement. Mistakes are often made by affixing the stamp of universal validity to what are only the predilections of individuals. Speaking generally, one may say that the desire after clearness and lucidity, which excludes all other aims, combined with the circumstances of the writers, their Jewish modes of thought, and the decay of the classical speech, made it impossible for classical Greek to be a predominating factor in the language of the New Testament. Yet it can be said with accuracy that its claims are far more powerfully vindicated in the sphere of vocabulary than in any other. Dry statistics render this unassailable. It is unnecessary, after what has been done in the case of the Septuagint, to attempt an analysis of the more ancient portion of the New Testament vocabulary. The elements which compose it are the same, though they are present in a greatly intensified degree, and specially so as regards the more classical portion of them…
