[B-Greek] re: "Historic Biblical Pronunciation" vs. Modern? Roman-period Koine

R Yochanan Bitan Buth ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Sun May 2 19:10:23 EDT 2004


I am pleased to see the interest in modern Greek pronunciation. I like to
think it may reflect a positive stiring within a Greek student community
towards internalization. Please bear with me as I try to answer responses
somewhat out of sync with postings and the digests.

John Schwandt egrapsen
>As far as I know I don't think there is much difference between 
>Randall Buth's system and what Geoffrey Horrocks has to say, but for the 
>record I did use Horrocks as my basis for the "historic biblical" 
>pronunciation.

Horrocks actually summarizes the situation at various periods. One of his
summaries covers 150 BCE and another one around 4th century CE, the
beginning of the Bzyantine period.(Horrocks, 109.) He doesn't actually give
a NT Koine summary. In order to get at the first century one must look and
see if any of the 4th century CE innovations have occurred by the first or
second century CE. I think it is clear that OI and Y-psilon were equal to
each other and were still distinct from /i/. See nice examples from Dead Sea
Greek at 
http://www.biblicalulpan.org/Sound_files/PRONSYS1_US.pdf

Horrocks agrees in a note to his 150 BCE system: "OI > /y/ ... by the middle
of the first century BC."(Horrocks, 109.)

H-ta is problematic. Gignac was of the opinion that Eta became 'i' during
the second century CE. Horrocks seems to express two opinions. On the one
hand he said that Hta/Iota did not have the widespread interchanges that
other phonemic mergers had before the Byzantine era: "never quite becomes
general in the Roman period ... it would probably be premature to assume the
full merger of /e/ and /i/ before the early Byzantine period." I think he is
correct in that hesitancy. On the other hand, he transcribed John 1 as a NT
Koine example and used [i] for Hta.(Horrocks, 94, where he also correctly
preserves [y] for OI and U  and the aspirated hard consonants teta, ki and
pi [XI].) 

>
>Carl, I don't see the error you mentioned for the diphthong OU.  Can you
>give me a little more information.  I am always eager to fix any mistakes.
>Did you mean the diphthong OI?  I think this might be one place were
>Horrocks and Buth might differ.
>
>Thanks,
>John Schwandt

Actually OI=U [=y-psilon] is where Horrocks and I agree. 
As mentioned above, my only disagreement with Horrocks would be to
transcribe John with /e/ for HTA. /en arke en o loghos ke o loghos en pros
ton teon . . ./ (Ascii does not allow me to fully represent a phonetic
transcription.) Even though I would prefer to preserve HTA for the 1st
century, there were already a minority of substandard pockets of speakers
where HTA=[i]. However, in general, I would expect a public reading of John
to have still pronounced HTA as distinct from [i], at least during most of
the Roman period of the Koine. 

The system is easy to see and access (at least for those who find linguistic
phonological systems 'easy') through the Loeb volume on Select Papyri
(nonliterary letters). Reading ten to twenty letters is pretty eye-opening.
The letters will read directly when read in Roman-period Koine, even TWI
OIEIWI 'to the son'. This phonology can be triangulated with data from the
catacombs in Rome and the Dead Sea Greek in the east and gets support from
Athenian inscriptions as well. 

As an aside, I find the term "historic biblical" pronunciation attractive as
'biblical' but too ambiguous. The scribes during the translation of the
torah (3rd century BCE) apparently still controlled the high register
phonology for names and transliteration. Likewise, the word 'historic' or
'historical' might also categorize the historical process of the copying of
the Greek biblical texts or their reading within historical Greek churches.
(That appears to be the case from the description of the phonology on the
webpage.) The full modern system was only in place by the end of the first
millenium CE. From the 4th century to the 10th century CE it was basically
the modern system plus one vowel /y/ (written OI and U). Consequently, a
more accurate term would be NT Koine or Roman-period Koine, which, for the
record would cover 63 BCE to 325 CE in the land of Israel (Provincia Judaea
and Provincia Palestina post-130CE).

Finally, Yes, there is little difference between "Randall Buth's system and
what Geoffrey Horrocks has to say." You can add Gignac. All are close to the
modern system, but they/we still differ significantly in two vowel sounds,
'adding' HTA and OI/Upsilon to the modern system in order to get
NT/roman-period Koine.

ERRWSQE

Randall Buth

Randall Buth, PhD
Director, Biblical Language Center
www.biblicalulpan.org
and Director, Biblical Studies in Israel
Hebrew University, Rothberg International School
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il






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