Then, again, although the rise of the Hellenistic Movement is rightly associated more particularly with the name of Alexander, it is but simple justice which compels us to recall the fact that the Macedonian empire, which formed the basis of Alexander’s future world-power, owed its creation to his father, Philip (B.C. 359-336). It was only through strenuous struggles with Thracians, Illyrians and Athenians that Philip finally consolidated his kingdom, and thus made the necessary preparations for his son’s greater work. The decisive battle of Chæronea, in B.C. 338, when Philip defeated the allied forces of Athens and Thebes, may legitimately be pointed to as one of the preliminary determining factors which prepared the way for the Hellenistic Movement. In the first instance the influence of the newer Hellenism was, of course, exercised by means of the Greek language. But it was a form of Greek which differed in many respects from the older Attic Greek, though based on this; it is now known by the name of Hellenistic Greek. “It was the literary language of the cosmopolitan Hellas, created by the genius of Alexander. The change [i.e., from Attic Greek] had begun indeed before Alexander. Even Xenophon allows himself to make free use of words of provincial origin, and to employ Attic words with a new connotation; and the writings of Aristotle mark the opening of a new era in the history of the Greek language.”[5] The discovery and study of immense numbers of Greek _papyri_ and _ostraka_ (potsherds) has shown the fallacy, universally prevalent a generation ago, of speaking of “Biblical Greek,” i.e., the Greek of the Septuagint and of the New Testament, as though it were a form of Greek peculiar to the Bible, to be separated off from “profane” Greek. The Septuagint and the New Testament were written in a late form of Greek, i.e., Hellenistic Greek which, as we have just seen, came into vogue during the fourth century B.C. and onwards. This late Greek, including the Greek of the Bible is, in the words of Deissmann, “neither good nor bad; it bears the stamp of its age and asserts its own distinctive position in a gradual process of development in the language, which, beginning in the earliest times, has lasted down to the present day. Late Greek has stripped off much that was customary in the earlier period, and it contains germs of future developments destined to be completed in modern Greek. We may, then, speak of a certain peculiarity and uniformity in original ‘Bible’ Greek, but solely as opposed to earlier or later phases of the history of the language, not as opposed to ‘profane’ Greek.”[6]