„Problema limbilor” la Sfântul Augustin
Saint Augustin and the “Problem of Languages”

Summary/Abstract: This article is about how much Greek St. Augustin knew. This is an old and overdiscussed issue. My small intervention approaches three questions related to “the problem of languages”. First: How familiar was the Greek language to St. Augustin? Second: to what purpose did Greek language and culture appear in his texts? Third: How deep did Greek language and culture penetrate Western thinking at that time? All these can be brought under the formula of G. Madec: quaestio vexata. St. Augustin’s relation to the Greek language and its philosophical vocabulary can be seen in three dimensions: quotation, transliteration and translation. Regarding the “Greek language” of Saint Augustin, commentators are either skeptics or optimists. The problem is not whether Augustin knew Greek at all, but how much Greek did he know. In the end, we must not throw over his times the shadow of the times that followed.

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