Bible Studies

In the preface to this work, Deissmann writes, "Bible Studies is the name I have chosen for the following investigations, since all of them are more or less concerned with the historical questions which the Bible, and especially the Greek version, raises for scientific treatment." This book revolutionized New Testament scholarship by demonstrating convincingly from Egyptian papyrus scraps that the Greek of the New Testament was not a specialized, spiritual language or "Holy Ghost Greek." One of the great biblical scholars of the 20th century, Adolf Deissmann strongly opposed the idea that New Testament writers used a sacred language and worked to show that it was, indeed, the ordinary language spoken by common people. In Bible Studies, Deissmann shares his observations from then-newly-discovered papyri and inscriptions, shedding light on the language, literature and religion of Hellenistic Judaism and the New Testament church.