[B-Greek] Classic or Koine

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Dec 17 13:32:19 EST 2003


At 12:49 PM -0500 12/17/03, David Ramirez wrote:
>Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 11:47:42 -0600
>Forwarded for: David Ramirez <dramirez at panam.edu>
>Subject: Classic or Koine
>To: "'b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org'" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
>
>Greetings all,
>I am a beginner self-taught student in Greek. And am using the Athenaze book
>one. I enjoy it very much and feel that I am making good progress. However I
>need some information regarding the Classic vs. Koine approach to learning
>Greek. Will studying Classical Greek enable me to read the Septuagint? and
>the New Testament in Greek? Or will I need to take the Koine route for that.
>My interests are reading Biblical Greek scriptures as well as secular Greek
>classics.
>Any feed back would be greatly welcomed.

Welcome aboard to B-Greek, David. I'm glad you like the Athenaze textbook;
it's much like the book I used for years to teach classical Attic (_Reading
Greek_) but probably easier for the self-teacher to use--although _Reading
Greek_ now has an accompanying guide to self-study which I haven't looked
at.

Although not all would agree with me, I personally believe that it's a
positive advantage to you to learn the basics of classical Attic Greek
BEFORE learning the Koine of the New Testament. The Koine is really a lot
easier, generally speaking, but knowing classical Attic will better prepare
you, I think, for the range of styles in New Testament Greek writing, from
the very simple style of the Johannine books to the much more formal and
literary writing of Luke's gospel and Hebrews. I also think, for my part,
that a grounding in classical Attic gives the student of NT Greek a better
sense of what I call the "fluidity" of Greek generally but especially of
Koine--that the Koine is a changing language in which you find older and
newer usage at the same time: second aorists in ON/ES/E and forms of the
same verb in A/AS/E, for instance.

At Washington University, where I taught for 40 years, we have made it a
regular practice to require students wanting to learn to read the NT to do
one full-year of Classical Attic before taking a tutorial reading the
Koine;in the course of my teaching years I taught both the regular Attic
course and the Koine tutorial course and I thought it worked very well.

Depending on how far along you are in Athenaze, once you've gotten far
enough to appreciate the most essential features of the language, you'll
find very helpful the page prepared by Jay Treat at U. of Pa entitled,
"Differences Between Classical and Hellenistic Greek." (You do need to have
the SPIonic Greek font in your system to read the Greek in it, but the page
will tell you how to get that if you don't already have it) It's accessible
at:

	http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~jtreat/koine/classical.html

Beyond that, there are several of us here on the B-Greek list who are more
or less competent in both classical Attic and Koine, so you are surely
welcome to put specific questions about differences here.
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/



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