Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom
Adam, Professor AKM
AKM.Adam at PTSEM.EDU
Thu Jul 9 08:20:42 EDT 1998
Jonathan suggested that I forward this to the list--
>Jonathan--
>
>When you wrote,
>
>The local Bishop wrote a 20 minute letter in a form of Greek
>which was neither New Testament nor modern, but seemed to be a flowery,
>archaic form of modern Greek.
>
>it wasn't clear whether you knew that modern Greek persists in two
dialects, the DHMOTIKH and the KAQAREUOUSA. The former is the spoken
Greek of every day, what is truly "modern" Greek; the latter is (as you
suggest) a deliberately archaizing dialect of "purifying" Greek, used
for judicial, legislative, official documents. If I recall correctly, it
is something of a nineteenth-century invention which excised
identifiably "modern" innovations in demotic Greek (but allowed for some
development in vocabulary and syntax).
>
>Grace and peace,
>AKMA
>akm.adam at ptsem.edu
>Princeton Theological Seminary
>
>"Violent zeal for truth hath an hundred to one odds to be either
petulancy, ambition, or pride."
>J. Swift
>
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