what was used/needed in1c

Randall Buth ButhFam at compuserve.com
Tue Jun 4 17:38:48 EDT 2002


TOIS PASI
CAIREIN

I've enjoyed watching some of the discussions on presenting Greek verbs
to students, questions about classical lit and even accents. 

These may be brought together when someone considers the Greek
NT and the background that the first century audience brought to the
reading of the text. 

Firstly-- for many in the audience, they heard the text read outloud in an
assembly. Accents are related to that. While there were undoubtedly 
dialects around that preserved some kind of 'sing-songy' lilt from the 
acute versus circumflex accents, their phonemic status appears 
to have gone the way of "long" vowels. When the distinction between
long vowels versus short vowels dropped from pronunciation of common
Greek so did circumflex accents (being linked to long vowels).
[[NB: The word 'long' here has to do with real time, the vowels actually
covered a longer time. It does not primarily relate to vowel 
quality, to positional changes of the vowels.]] Studies of spelling from 
around the Mediterranean show that vowel lengths dropped during the 
Ptolemaic period 3c-1c BCE. 
(The above argues for using word-stress accent for Koine.)

Secondly, 
more importantly, a Greek audience in the first century did not distinguish
two languages, classical and Koine. There was Greek. 
(Cf. Paul quoting poets without thinking it a 'different' language.)
There were high styles, the literary Greek both "Koine" and imitated 
classical, and lower styles. 

In addition, educated people read the older works, in fact were raised
on them in their schools. Luke, Paul, Josephus and Philo could all
understand
and follow something like Plato's APOLOGIA or KRITWN, not to 
mention Attic poetry. 
Little kids were expected to learn AISWPOS, written in Attic Greek. 

All of this is to say that reading the older literature was part of a first

century education. And that is the lesson for those wanting "koine". 

Anyone who reads very far outside of the Greek NT will gradually become 
acquainted with the fuller Attic dialect, AS PART OF the 1st century. In 
that sense, it is not a luxury.
Josephus will use those extended subjunctives with "ai/oi" (optative) along

with SFISI. 
Learning Koine Greek would seem to entail the 'whole nine yards'. 
For brevity, both papyri letters and Aesop's fables provide beginning 
students with nice material on the two sides of the spectrum from the 
NT. Carl's mention of the JACT course also has a nice collection of 
graded readings and selections. 

Thirdly, and lastly, 
a practical concern on verbs. I would be more concerned about whether
a verb can 'pop' out of someone, prepackaged, automatically: QELW 
DRAMEIN EIS THN POLIN "I want to run to the city", 
edrames 'you ran', etrexon 'I was running'. 
Classifying a verb as 1, 2, 3, or 'other' category is a non-Greek leisurely

pursuit. It's like whether the irregular verbs in a language are called 
"strong" verbs or "weak" verbs. What matters is automatic processing 
without being conscious of which category -- until asked, and then using 
whatever metalanguage one chooses. 

ERRWSQE

Randall Buth
Jerusalem



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