Adelbert Denaux 36 culture, punk fashion, etc.), or of periods (e.g. in architecture one speaks of roman, gothic, renaissance, baroque, classicist period, etc.). Language usage also displays a great variety whereby the border between language and style is not always easy to draw. One may speak of deviations from standard language that are linked to region (regional, dialect), groups (technical language and jargon), and style (informal style: spoken language; children’s language; formal style: written, archaic or literary language)21. Buffon’s famous aphorism, Le style, c’est l’homme, rightly refers to style as the idiosyncratic manner of an individual22. One should not deny, therefore, that style can also be the idiosyncratic manner of a group. Is the sometimes semitizising Greek of Luke a personal idolect or is it just one example of what Walser and Blomqvist would call the “Pentateuchal”, “synagogal” or “Jewish-Christian” variety of Koinè Greek23? In short, (literary) style is not only bound to persons, but also to groups and times. Speaking of style as a “deviation from standard language” points to another current opposition ‘Norm/Deviation’ which, to a large extent, also seems a tributary of the Saussurian paradigm langue/parole (or code/message). In this approach style is seen as an aberrant message which “surprises” the code24. It seems undeniable that features of style are drawn from a code, or at least from some kind of systematic space, and that style connotes distance, difference. However, the whole question is in reference to what25? Is it the spoken language, the standard language, the normal, grammatical, well-formed language, or something else? In any Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst, ed. by G. Geerts, W. Haeseryn, J. de Rooij en 21 M.C. van den Toorn (Groningen-Leuven 1984) 12-13. On the meanig of Buffon’s aphorism, see L.T. Milic, “Rhetorical Choice and Stylistic 22 Option. The Conscious and Unconscious Poles”, in S. Chatman (ed.), Literary Style: A Symposium (Oxford 1971) 77-80. G. Walser, The Greek of the Ancient Synagoge. An Investigation on the Greek of the 23 Septuagint, Pseudepigrapha and the New Testament (Stockholm 2001); J. Blomqvist, The Languages of the Synagogue: An Evaluation, in B. Olsson and M. Zetterholm (eds.), The Ancient Synagogue From Its Origins until 200 C.E. Papers Presented at an International Conference at Lund University October 14-17, 2001 (CB, NTS, 39; Stockholm 2003) 303- 11. Cf. R. Barthes, “Style and Its Image”, in S. Chatman (ed.), Literary Style: A Symposium 24 (Oxford 1971) 4: “Style is seen here as an exception (though coded) to a rule; it is the aberration (individual, yet institutional) from a current usage, a usage which is either colloquial (if one defines the norm in terms of the spoken language) or prosaic (if one opposes poetry as ‘the other thing’)”. He adds that this vision has a moral undertone and is rather sociological in nature: “the code is what is statistically determined by the greatest number of users”. R. Barthes, “Style and Its Image”, 6. 25