[B-Greek] Caragounis book

Dr. Don Wilkins drdwilkins at sbcglobal.net
Sat Nov 27 02:28:15 EST 2004


On Thursday, November 25, 2004, at 03:42 AM, Carl W. Conrad wrote:

> 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.
>
No, I would not want to use the term "degenerated". In fact, I struggled 
with finding the right word, and had to settle on the  "reduction" 
phrase that you cite above. Naturally, one could, and can, express 
precise and complex thoughts in later Greek, just as we can in modern 
English. But when grammatical complexity is lost, grammatical 
periphrasis creeps in and ambiguities arise. We don't notice it much 
because it takes generations for such changes, thus we don't miss what 
we never had. For example, if we had a dative case form in English to 
express the indirect object, we would not have to use "to" or word order 
for that purpose. Likewise, if we had a true infinitive form, we would 
not need to use "to" and then define "to hunt" as the infinitive of 
"hunt". Changing a verb form by adding a preposition strikes me as odd, 
but it's what we do and it has long been accepted, so we feel no pain 
(unless we try to explain the logic of it to an insightful student). Due 
to these impoverished grammatical constructions, periphrasis is required 
and "to" becomes more ambiguous as it has to take on more meanings or 
applications. But I don't think I'm saying anything that A.T. Robertson 
did not point out long ago in his historical grammar or other works.  So 
it is certainly fair to say that we can express the same concept using 
"different modes of expression," but that doesn't mean the different 
modes are equal in their grammatical precision or complexity.

> 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.

I tend to agree with you, but at the same time I suspect that a case can 
actually be made for an implicit sense of purpose in every NT hINA 
occurrence, through overlap of purpose with the idea best suited to the 
context (e.g. the result also being the purpose of the governing verb?). 
However, that is probably an unnecessary discussion.
>
> 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.

I know you have done a lot of work on the voices, and I applaud you for 
what you have shared with the list over the years. I find the voices 
fascinating as well, especially the middle. IMO the NT voice system is 
the same as Attic, but I use "same" somewhat loosely, making allowances 
for morphology and possible exceptions.
>
> 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.

I'm glad you don't call the comment categorically false. As to 
misleading, perhaps I can attribute that to the difficulty in finding 
the right words to express the phenomenon. Hopefully I have clarified 
the comment by the examples above. Another way to clarify might be to 
extrapolate to extremes. We've all seen statements that the optative 
mood was dropping out in NT times (though I'm not sure that's really 
true). Let's imagine a stage of Greek that would be more like English 
grammatically, i.e. one missing case forms in all words except for a few 
prepositions, having only the indicative as a true (morphological) mood, 
only a true active voice, and so on. Then strip it down even more, 
eliminating periphrastic helpers like "may" and "might," making it more 
like Hebrew (R.B., are you reading this?). I hope you can see where I'm 
going. Is this "degeneration," and can complex thoughts still be 
expressed? The latter question can probably be answered in the 
affirmative. As to the former, would a person familiar only with the 
stripped-down language have a better chance of understanding the 
language at a transitional point when it still retained a good deal of 
grammatical precision and complexity, than a person familiar with it at 
its "golden" period? I don't see how. At the same time, however, a 
person familiar with all stages of the language could deliver a 
marvelous lecture on the subject. One more argument, an anecdotal one: I 
learned NT Greek first, then classical. I had no trouble with forms and 
concepts that were the same, but I had to learn other things unique to 
classical from scratch. It would have been much easier going from 
classical to NT, more a matter of subtraction than addition. On the 
other hand, I have found modern Greek very difficult, because to me the 
grammatical connections with earlier Greek are not clear, and the 
vocabulary has changed so much. So I have a great deal of respect and 
admiration for those who have mastered modern Greek as a second language.
>
>> 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.
> --
>
In general terms I can agree with you that it is valuable to know the 
language both at the earlier stages and the later stages as background 
for NT study. hINA itself is an example of this, because you can sense a 
trend toward change in the NT, and see it crystalized in modern Greek. 
So I would like to be comfortable with Greek at every stage of its 
development; but if given only the choice of classical (Attic) or modern 
Greek as a background for NT study, I would have to choose the former. 
Now I would be indebted to you if you could give me a specific example 
or two indicating that a knowledge of modern Greek is as useful for the 
NT as Attic (I might then better understand your viewpoint), but in any 
case I respect your opinion and don't want to bother you with such an 
exercise (I'm sure you have better and more pressing things to do).

Hoping you had a great thanksgiving, and wishing you a merry Christmas,
Don Wilkins




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