Abstract
The paper outlines the characteristics of the astronomical and cosmologi- cal vocabulary pertaining to the sky as a whole in the Greek Septuagint and New Testament, focusing in particular on the presence, status and function of technical terms. The exposition is grounded on a methodical analysis of all the occurrences of the names for the sky, its partitions and some general phenomena associated to it in the given texts. It also takes into account the relationship between such words and their extra-linguistic referents, whose identification is conducted on the basis of both lexicological information and contextual and intertextual clues, occasionally involving a comparison with other ancient versions of the Bible. Indeed, the peculiar nature of the texts, which are mostly the result of a translation process conducted in sev- eral stages on linguistically, chronologically and thematically heterogeneous sources _ not primarily written for the purpose of science _ makes a close and dynamic interaction with the information provided by philology necessary. Although the results mainly comprove the preliminary intuitive notion of a largely asystematic lexical field, they also point out a few occurrences of technical terms, mostly defunctionalized and selected in order to confer a vaguely scientific or willfully obscure connotation to the text. On the other hand, by analyzing the evolution of specific lexemes and collocations in a diachronic perspective, the study provides further proof of the linguistic and cultural influence the wording of the Bible exerted on contemporaries and posterity, both in learned and popular milieus.