Paul's Pidgin Greek?

From: Shaughn Daniel (shaughn.daniel@student.uni-tuebingen.de)
Date: Thu May 30 1996 - 18:53:00 EDT


http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~lingsoc/whatisit.htm#12

Would someone refer me to any modern discussions of the issue of Paul's
Greek in relation to his Hellenistic contemporaries, please. I'm wondering
if anyone has considered Paul's written Greek as a pidgin language of
sorts. I think it is a new understanding of the old linguistic issues of
semiticisms. My studies have gone through the rhetorical criticism aspects
of analysing the intensity of Paul's arguments, but I'm not convinced from
the get-go that Greek rhetoric provides the main key to understand
letter/speeches; it more often provides two separate discussions with very
tenative results and one asks oneself if the author has tried to be more
exact in language concerning the data which defies exactness. Even
recently, it is stilled assumed by many rhetorical scholars that Greek
rhetoric was part and parcel of Hellenistic secondary education, but how
does this fit in with Paul? We are left in the end at a pass where Paul's
rhetoric is primarily influenced by his Jewish synagogue experience, of
which, unfortunately, almost nothing exists for comparison at the textual
level. Furthermore, re: all these categories of legal speeches, etc.--where
is the data from the first century synagogue and court procedures outside
the NT?

Sincerely,
Shaughn Daniel
Tuebingen, Germany



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