[B-Greek] Caragounis book

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Nov 25 06:42:11 EST 2004


At 6:38 PM -0800 11/24/04, Dr. Don Wilkins wrote:
>Now this is getting interesting. I would love to get my hands on
>Caragounis' book as much as anyone, but I am intrigued both by Dirk's
>caveat and by Carl's response, especially his statement,
>
>On the other hand, one of the things that I find
>attractive about Caragounis' approach is his focus on the diachronic
>perspective on the language and particularly the view that a knowledge of
>post-Koine Greek contributes to the understanding of Koine Greek as much
>as
>does a knowledge of Homeric or Attic or dialectal Ionic and Aeolic and
>Doric Greek of the earlier era.
>
>I have only dabbled with modern Greek, but I think it's fair to say that
>the historical development of Greek from Attic to modern is a gradual
>reduction in precision and complexity (if anyone disagrees, please say
>so).

I don't disagree with this--quite--but if you mean to suggest that Greek in
its later phases is incapable of being precise or complex, I think that's
false, as it is also false to assert that the English of today is less able
to be precise or complex because of the changes in usage over the centuries
since Shakespeare and Milton. I think that the language of a later era may
use different modes of expression to formulate the same conception, but I
don't think it's right to say that later Greek is a degenerated form of
ancient Greek--and I don't really think that's what you mean to say either.

Let me suggest hINA as an example. This preposition has a very
>clear definition and use in Attic for purpose; this use carries over
>into NT Greek, of course, but hINA seems to be used more loosely in some
>passages, almost as result or as a "marker" for an object clause. At the
>same time, though, one could probably make a die-hard case for hINA as a
>purpose marker everywhere in the NT (I would consider that a bit of a
>stretch). Now my understanding is that NA has come over into modern
>Greek from hINA, and NA seems to be diluted down to the equivalent of
>the English "to". *If* that is true (and I encourage any corrections for
>errors I may be making), then would it not be fair to say that someone
>coming from a classical perspective would be better equipped to
>understand hINA in the NT than someone coming from modern Greek? Indeed,
>I don't think someone who knows only NA from modern Greek will correctly
>understand hINA in the NT, and an attempt to interpret hINA in light of
>NA would only lead to error. Or am I just full of beans? In that case,
>like Gilda Radner, I'll just say, "Never mind."

I would agree that hINA + subjunctive in NT Koine already functions, as
does the modern Greek NA + subjunctive, as an infinitive in many of the
ways that an infinitive is used in several languages; anyone who argues
that there's ALWAYS purpose implicit in a hINA clause in NT Greek simply
hasn't examined enough instances of it carefully.

A major source of my observation has been my study of the morphology and
semantics of voice constructions in Greek; some NT Greek textbooks present
the voice system as if it were the same as that of Classical Attic, which
is not really true; other NT Greek textbooks and grammars assert that the
middle voice is becoming obsolete in the NT era, and that's not true at
all--it's just that the function of the morphology hasn't been adequately
understood--and the middle voice is very much alive in Modern Greek, which
says EIMAI for ancient EIMI, whereas ancient Greek had a middle future and
NT Greek was beginning to use a middle imperfect for the verb.

My point is that the assertion "the historical development of Greek from
Attic to modern is a gradual reduction in precision and complexity" is not
so much false as it is misleading and, I think, disregardful of changes in
the kind of complexity and in ways in which the language can be precise. I
am no expert in Modern Greek either, but I've learned enough to want to
know more and more precisely about the way the language has developed over
the course of three millennia of a language not only spoken but possessed
of a recorded literature.

>BTW, this is NOT a criticism of the diachronic method, which has great
>value in and of itself, and my apologies if I have indicated to the
>contrary.

No, I realize that; the only thing that disturbs me about what you've said
is the suggestion that NT Greek is more intelligible in the light of
earlier stages of the language than in the light of later stages. What I
have said "ad nauseam" (almost literally!) on this list is that NT Koine is
a language in flux, and that means that how it means is not simply a matter
of what it is changing FROM but a matter also of what it is changing TO.
-- 

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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