The LXX and Historical Greek Phonology: Orthography, Phonology, and Transcriptions

Abstract

The growing trend to see the language of the LXX as an authentic example of post-Classical Greek may be extended to phonology and orthography. We can situate the phonology of the LXX within its historical Greek phonological context by implementing a restrictive methodology that focuses on transcribed names, the clusters of certain spelling conventions in relation to “early” and “late” books in the LXX, and manuscript-specific phenomena. We find that its language exhibits the same sort of phonological and orthographic features attested in contemporary documentary and epigraphic material. Codex Vaticanus provides the earliest explicit evidence for one of the notable phonological developments in the history of Greek, the fricativization of χ. It is demonstrated that the phonology of the LXX is right at home in its contemporary historical Greek phonological setting, and that it has unique contributions to make to the wider field of historical Greek phonology at large.