Fwd: Re: [B-Greek] re: Koine and Homeric

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Apr 14 08:33:59 EDT 2004


Forwarded for Micheal Palmer:

>Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2004 23:22:01 -0400
>Subject: Re: [B-Greek] re: Koine and Homeric
>From: "Micheal W. Palmer" <mwpalmer at greek-language.com>
>To: "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu>
>
>Please thank Randall Buth for me. His clarifications are, of course, on
>target. I wrote my contribution on this topic hastily, and his
>carefully worded "corrections" are well thought out. It was a pleasure
>to read them.
>
>Feel free to post this, or an appropriate paraphrase of it, to B-Greek
>if you think that would be appropriate.
>
>On Tuesday, April 13, 2004, at 06:21  AM, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>
>> I appreciate the perspectives brought to this subject by Randall Buth
>> and
>> Micheal Palmer--particularly that Micheal, who is not a list-member,
>> accepted the invitation to contribute to this discussion. Randall's
>> observations, for which I have immense respect, are always welcome. I
>> too
>> would surely recommend Geoffrey Horrock's book on the history of the
>> Greek
>> language; I have found it very useful for my own work.
>>
>> I don't dispute any of what Randall has noted here; what I would
>> reiterate,
>> however, is one of the key points I was making in my own earlier
>> comments
>> on Koine Greek as a language in flux: inasmuch as
>> language--particularly in
>> an international setting of cross-cultural influence--is always in
>> flux, I
>> believe there is more variation in usage, even within a particular NT
>> writer, than the student who learns from standard primers and
>> intermediate
>> grammars grasps. I would therefore re-state Rod Decker's admonition to
>> be
>> careful about overdoing diachronic aspects of NT Greek usage and
>> complement
>> it with a comparable admonition to be careful about overdoing the
>> synchronic aspects of NT Greek usage. Or to apply the old French adage
>> to
>> an even older phase of Greek language: "plus ça change, plus c'est la
>> même
>> chose!" There's no question that the language of Plato and the
>> language of
>> Mark's gospel are the same--and any literate 21st-century
>> English-speaker
>> can read Shakespeare with relative ease, n'est-ce pas?
>>
>> At 6:41 AM +0200 4/13/04, R Yochanan Bitan Buth wrote:
>>> XAIREIN
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Just a balancing note on stability and change with Koine.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> in a particularly intense state of flux
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Koine went through changes but I would characterize it as relatively
>>> stable
>>> during the Roman period. Koine period writings reflect many registers,
>>> levels of writing expertise. However, the big change occurred before
>>> the
>>> Roman period. It was the 4th to the 2nd centuries BCE that the major
>>> spread
>>> of the "common dialect" Greek took place. You can see some of the
>>> simplified
>>> forms (read that as regularizations of previously highly irregular
>>> verbs)
>>> show up in writers like Josephus or the NT Luke and Paul (e.g. EDWKAN
>>> 'they
>>> gave') yet they read very much like Attic Greek and I cannot think
>>> that
>>> Plato would have had any trouble reading them (except for Jewish
>>> cultural
>>> background). I suspect that the same first century authors could
>>> listen to a
>>> dialogue of Plato read outloud (and certainly could have read) and
>>> would
>>> have followed right along. Some of this, of course, can be attributed
>>> to
>>> these authors being literate, which entails studying the older
>>> dialect with
>>> its broad vocabulary.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> People tended to write the way they spoke. When speech changed, so
>>>> did
>>> written documents.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Yes and no.
>>>
>>> In terms of writing, Greek maintained a historical orthography. This
>>> can be
>>> demonstrated today where many modern words that have been pronounced
>>> differently for 2000 years still preserve the shape of the word found
>>> in
>>> Homer. EIRHNH never became IRINI, HDH is not IDI, though almost
>>> anything can
>>> be found in the history of manuscripts and spelling lapses over the
>>> millennia. (TWI OIEIWI [100CE] 'to the son' [=TW UIW] still gets
>>> chuckles or
>>> surprise from friends)
>>>
>>> Of course, some of the intolerable clashes eventually led to homonym
>>> reduction: UMEIS and HMEIS were being pronounced the same during the
>>> last
>>> half of the first millennium CE [imis] by more and more people and
>>> this led
>>> to two consequences. (a) Manuscripts of old documents would be
>>> confused
>>> sometimes (note how many examples of textual instability there are of
>>> UMEIS/UMWN/UMIN/UMAS versus HMEIS/HMWN/HMIN/HMAS in the NT
>>> manuscripts). (b)
>>> Spoken Greek developed new plural forms, ESEIS and EMEIS, as
>>> extensions of
>>> the more stable singulars.
>>>
>>> Especially with written Greek, one might argue that it is one of the
>>> most
>>> conservative/stable languages in the world. Up to the 16th-20th
>>> centuries
>>> there were still people writing in a dialect that could be considered
>>> a
>>> mutually intelligible extension of the old Koine or even Attic before
>>> it.
>>> One cannot say that for French or Spanish (though "yes" for academic
>>> Latin).
>>> (Written Hebrew and Arabic have shown more resiliency than Greek.)
>>>
>>> Stability even got out of hand with Greek. Note the resurgence of
>>> 'attic'
>>> Greek in authors like Plutarch, Philostratus, and many of the church
>>> fathers
>>> with the onset of what is termed the Second Sophistic (the atticizing
>>> movement from just after the end of the NT era).
>>>
>>> The problem with documenting Greek historical change is that the
>>> spoken
>>> language diverged more and more from the written language. This can be
>>> demonstrated over the last two thousand years but is a difficult job
>>> that
>>> requires careful analysis of the literary remains. The book by
>>> Geoffrey
>>> Horrocks (Classics, Cambridge), Greek, A History of the Language and
>>> its
>>> Speakers (Longmans 1997), is very well done. He keeps tab of both the
>>> written and spoken varieties and tries to evaluate the changes from
>>> what is
>>> known about general linguistics so that his conclusions are well
>>> taken.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Randall Buth
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Randall Buth, PhD
>>>
>>> Director, Biblical Language Center
>>>
>>> www.biblicalulpan.org <http://www.biblicalulpan.org/>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> From: Micheal W.Palmer <mwpalmer at greek-language.com>
>>>
>>> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Koine and Homeric
>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> Here are a few observations relevant to Bert's question to Carl about
>>>
>>> Koine Greek being a "langauge in flux."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> As you note, all language are to some extent "in flux." They all
>>> change
>>>
>>> over time. I believe a solid case can be made for viewing Koine Greek
>>>
>>> as a language in a particularly intense state of flux, though.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The Hellenistic-Roman period was one of tremendous cultural change,
>>> and
>>>
>>> language change is accelerated when cultural change is intense.
>>>
>>> Beginning with the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 300s BCE,
>>>
>>> many local cultures (and local language groups) were absorbed into the
>>>
>>> widening area of Greek influence. When the Romans came to dominate
>>> some
>>>
>>> of these same regions, a second wave of cultural changed followed
>>>
>>> (though Latin never had the impact that Greek did in the East).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> There are, of course, similar examples of cultural change in the
>>> modern
>>>
>>> world, but the language change they cause is sometimes mediated or
>>>
>>> masked by the presence of a constraint that Koine Greek did not face:
>>>
>>> the prominent role of print media. The invention of the printing press
>>>
>>> allowed a standardization of writing conventions that was not present
>>>
>>> before that point, so change in WRITTEN language slowed down to some
>>>
>>> extent as literacy and availability of books became more widespread.
>>> Of
>>>
>>> course, writing conventions cannot prevent language change, but they
>>>
>>> can artificially retard the change of the written form of the
>>> language.
>>>
>>> The amazing difference between the way English is spoken and written
>>> is
>>>
>>> a direct result of this phenomenon. Why do we still spell the past
>>>
>>> tense of "teach" as "taught," for example, even though no one has
>>>
>>> pronounced it with a gutteral fricative (the "gh") for over 250 years?
>>>
>>> Koine Greek did not face this artificial retardation of change in the
>>>
>>> writing system. People tended to write the way they spoke. When speech
>>>
>>> changed, so did written documents.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The impact of print media on language change will almost certainly be
>>>
>>> reduced in the years to come by the presence of electronic
>>>
>>> communication, where writing conventions are much looser.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sunday, April 11, 2004, at 08:54  AM, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> 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?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ---
>>> B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
>>> B-Greek mailing list
>>> B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
>>> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek
>>
>> --
>>
>> 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/
>>
></x-flowed>
>
-- 

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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