The Use of Greek in Palestine: Eupolemus as a Case Study

Abstract

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.