ATTIC VS. KOINE

Mr. Gary S. Dykes yhwh3in1 at lightspeed.net
Tue Dec 14 00:04:14 EST 1999


Dear Mr. Dewan,

It is a quiet evening here in the Centre, so I thought I would give you my 
two-cents worth and answer your question. I am sure you already have 
received numerous various replies.

I would recommend first mastering NT Greek, which would include such Koine 
texts as the early church fathers, and most of Eusebius's History. When 
comfortable with these texts, you may want to then read a translation Greek 
text (the LXX).

If then, after this mastering, you are curious about the Greek and it 
fluctuations as evidenced in the NT, you many want to study the earlier 
dialects of Greek. The Attic and Ionic would be good starters, and a fine 
tool for quickly seeing some of the major syntactical and morphological and 
semantic shifts, is using C. D. Buck's "THE GREEK DIALECTS", and use of 
Mounce's "Greek Morphology" would also prove useful here.

Yes a good Attic reference grammar is handy. I personally like Zuntz's two 
volume set for LEARNING Attic Greek. But also knowing some of the 
essentials of Modern Greek is just as valuable, as you can see where 
certain elements of the Koine/Byzantine Greek is going.

For Textual Criticism purposes (working with the Greek NT witnesses) 
knowing some Attic and Ionic and Aeolic (et al) is essential so as to 
understand some of the MS changes and readings.

To sum up: first master the NT Greek. Then if you feel the need learn some 
of the essentials of the earlier Greek, learn just that -- some of the 
grammatical essentials. Personally, I do not feel at the entrance level to 
reading NT Greek (Koine Greek) any deep knowledge of Attic is necessary, in 
some ways it can be a hinderance in the early stages of learning the 
paradigms of just say - Koine Greek.

Mr. Gary S. Dykes  email -- yhwh3in1 at lightspeed.net
Swanson's errata List -- http://userzweb.lightspeed.net/yhwh3in1/ 



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