[B-Greek] Koine and Homeric

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Apr 11 08:54:00 EDT 2004


At 6:51 AM -0400 4/11/04, <bertdehaan at gosympatico.ca> wrote:
> Carl,you wrote;
>
> .... I've argued
>> often enough on earlier occasions on this list  that students who concern
>> themselves only with a synchronic study of Koine Greek are likely not to
>> appreciate the extent to which Koine Greek is a language in flux, a
>> language some of whose users/writers who are conscious of the heritage of
>> the tradition will employ constructions and usages that have already become
>> rare if they haven't vanished from the spoken language, while other
>> users/writers are commonly employing constructions and usages that will
>> become standard in the centuries thereafter.....
>
>Several times you have written about Koine being a language in flux. I
>thought that you meant languages in general.
>(The Dutch language has undergone some changes in the 25 years since I
>left The Netherlands)
>But I am getting the impression that you specifically meant Koine Greek.
>Are the changes in koine more drastic than in other Greek, or in languages
>in general?

Bert, I am not a professional linguist; I don't know whether any of our
list members really fall into that category but there are several
list-members who have studied linguistic theory carefully and applied what
they have learned to understanding Biblical Greek, among them Rod Decker
and Iver Larsen--and I certainly do not mean to slight others I haven't
named (I deeply regret the premature loss to cancer last year of Phil
Graber, another of our quondam list-members who has offered serious
commentary upon issues that have arisen). I could wish that another quondam
list-member, Micheal Palmer, who maintains the excellent website entitled
"Greek Language & Linguistics Gateway" at
http://greek-language.com/index.html, could advise us also on some of these
issues.

Having said that, I must confess I get the impression there's a theoretical
assumption built into linguistic study of Koine Greek that one MUST study
the language synchronically and that a diachronic approach can only distort
our vision of what we perceive the language of our period to be. Perhaps
that's comparable to "scientific" psychology's need to assume that the
human will is not free because otherwise human behavior would be
inexplicable in rational terms of causal nexus. Rod Decker has recently
(relatively recently) called our attention to his paper cautioning against
perils of diachronic study of Biblical Greek ("How Do We Use the Biblical
Languages? Some Reflections on Synchronic and Diachronic Methodology in
Semantics, Grammar, and Exegesis with an Excursus on EKKLHSIA"
http://faculty.bbc.edu/rdecker/documents/Semantics.pdf) --a relatively
cautious and balanced statement of that assumption.

Yes, I am deadly serious about the proposition that Koine Greek is a
language in flux. Perhaps any language that is spoken and written in a
context of intense international communication and cultural
inter-penetration is likewise going to be a language in flux. You speak of
your experience of changes in Dutch. I was astounded as an exchange student
in Munich in 1956 at penetration of U.S. English words and phrases into
German, a language that would seem to resist invasion of non-Germanic
roots; I've been surprised in correspondence in French much more recently
at the same sort of invasion of that language by forms I would not have
thought would be sanctioned by the conservative Académie. And there's no
denying that British and American English have been profoundly influenced
by international communication and cultural inter-penetration. Some of the
grammar that I was taught in schools in the 1940's and 50's is no longer
current (e.g. conventional distinctions between should/would and
shall/will, use of the subjunctive in such phrases as "if he were present
...," considerable disruption of rules for cases in prepositional phrases
with more than one pronominal object--"for you and I" is common enough
where I still instinctively say "for you and me," etc.)

Certainly students of NT Greek must become aware of Semitisms--grammatical
and lexicographical usage that cannot be explained in terms of traditional
usage in earlier Greek; but there are other things happening too: one is
the conflation of purpose and result constructions (whether with hWSTE or
EIS TO and infinitive or with hINA or hOPWS and subjunctive); one that I
have noted repeatedly is the use of hINA-subjunctive clauses as simple
substantive clauses or even as a periphrasis for the infinitive--I think
it's easier to understand this last usage if one knows that the later Greek
infinitive is build precisely upon this hINA-subjunctive construction. And
apart from the Semitisms there are Latinisms like the Jesus-saying (Lk 9:58
hO DE hUIOS TOU ANQRWPOU OUK ECEI POU THN KEFALHN KLINHi = filius autem
hominis non habet ubi caput reclinet).

I have no catalogue of such items, but I'm not sure that would be as
efficacious for the student of Biblical Greek as reading beyond the
Biblical Greek corpus--and anyone who wants to get into Patristic Greek is
going to need a broader diachronic approach to the language than that which
is generally taught in courses in Biblical Koine.

Occasionally we talk about grammatical and idiomatic irregularities in
Revelation: whether that text was composed by a writer for whom Greek was
not his native language or by a writer who deliberately imitates one who is
not a native Greek-speaker--and I don't want to start that thread up
again--, it's more likely to be enigmatic to one who has studied Greek only
synchronically. One of the most highly-reputed English translations of
Revelation is that of Richmond Lattimore, who is better known for his
translations of Homer and Aeschylus.

End of harangue.
-- 

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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