ABSTRACT

Eupolemus, a Jewish historian generally dated to the second century bce, is often dismissed as a poor Greek writer. This lack of competency is linked to the assumptions that, as a Jew, he had limited Greek-language education and that he lived in Palestine, where Greek supposedly would have been marginal. The example of Eupolemus is illustrative of two issues in the study of Hellenistic Judaism. First, it calls into question the methods used for determining standard language and the measures by which we assess the style and ability of an ancient writer. Second, it calls for an assessment of the language situation in Palestine in the Hellenistic period. Advances in the study of the history of Greek have enabled a renewed appreciation of post-classical Greek, while twentieth century discoveries have allowed for a better understanding of the extent to which Greek was used in this region. In addition, the study of multilingualism in antiquity has progressed significantly, so that we are able to obtain a more nuanced understanding of Palestine as a multilingual environment where Jews, too, would use Greek alongside Hebrew and/or Aramaic in varying registers and for different purposes. In this article, I describe Eupolemus’s style against the background of post-classical Greek and reassess the link between linguistic proficiency, identity, and provenance.

摘要

Eupolemus，一位犹太历史学家，通常可以追溯到公元前二世纪，经常被认为是一个可怜的希腊作家。这种能力的缺乏与以下假设有关：作为犹太人，他接受的希腊语教育有限，并且他住在巴勒斯坦，那里的希腊语被认为是边缘化的。Eupolemus 的例子说明了研究希腊化犹太教的两个问题。首先，它质疑用于确定标准语言的方法以及我们评估古代作家的风格和能力的措施。其次，它要求对希腊化时期巴勒斯坦的语言状况进行评估。希腊历史研究的进步使人们能够重新认识后古典希腊语，而 20 世纪的发现使人们能够更好地了解希腊语在该地区的使用程度。此外，古代多语言研究取得了显着进展，因此我们能够更细致地理解巴勒斯坦是一个多语言环境，犹太人也会在不同的语域和不同的目的中使用希腊语和希伯来语和/或亚拉姆语。在这篇文章中，我以后古典希腊语为背景描述了 Eupolemus 的风格，并重新评估了语言能力、身份和出处之间的联系。