ATTIC VS. KOINE
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Dec 13 17:37:19 EST 1999
At 5:01 PM -0500 12/13/99, James Dewan wrote:
>This is a rather ignorant question, but I'm afraid I must ask it. My I
>hear what exactly the benefit is of learning Attic Greek for improving
>one's grasp of koine Greek? Is there a benefit? Should I take the time
>and effort to learn it, or continue to learn koine Greek? Much thanks
>
>Jim Dewan
>Pastor, Sinclairville, NY
I would not insist that anyone MUST learn Attic Greek, but I would uphold
the notion that the benefit of learning it and of reading Greek from the
era earlier than and later than and even contemporaneous with the NT but
outside of the GNT is significant for numerous reasons (we've discussed
this repeatedly over the months and years and nothing I say now is new):
one's understanding of ANY body of Greek literature will ordinary be
enhanced by acquisition of familiarity with other literature being written
at the same time and earlier in the same language; for one who wants to go
ahead from NT Greek and read patristic writers, it soon becomes evident
that by the middle of the second century A.D. the Greek being written by
educated church fathers such as Clement or later Origen is Attic rather
than Koine, owing to the "Atticist" movement that did for Attic Greek much
of what Renaissance rediscovery of classical Latin did for Latin prose,
establishment of the older language as the standard of good language. Other
benefits: a greater familiarity with the cultural background of the
Mediterranean World, inasmuch, however much weight one assigns to the OT
and Judaism in the NT background, it would be hard to demonstrate that the
Greco-Roman background is negligible for, say, the Pauline letters or even
the gospels of Luke and Mark; yet another reason: the older Greek
literature is worth reading for its own sake, and by "older" I mean
everything from Homer and Hesiod on down through the Periclean era and the
Hellenistic era.
Lest I be misunderstood, I repeat once more: I would not argue that one
whose only Greek is the Koine of the NT is not equipped at all for the
primary purpose for which he or she learned Greek, BUT I do believe that
one will read even the NT Koine better if one knows more of the Greek
written before, during and after the NT corpus itself. But this is a
question that will certainly be answered differently by different
list-members; I offer no more than my own opinion.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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