[B-Greek] Caragounis' book
Barry Hofstetter
nebarry at verizon.net
Sat Nov 27 08:31:35 EST 2004
----- Original Message -----
From: "R Yochanan Bitan Buth" <ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il>
To: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Saturday, November 27, 2004 7:49 AM
Subject: [B-Greek] Caragounis' book
> Wilkins HRWTHSEN
>>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).>
>
> As a specific example, my last email listed Mk 10:51, whose naturalness is
> closer to modern Greek than ancient. (This does not mean that it might not
> echo something like KI ER'EH 'that I would see', as well.) Examples like
> these are others have already been pointed out by Jannaris and Robertson and
> are a continual comment in a book like Horrocks 1997.
> I have noticed and met some modern Greek speakers who seemed to have an
> easier time retaining a fuller vocabulary and reading ancient literature 'on
> the fly' than those who only controlled the ancient. Having said that, those
> people also confess that they had to learn and study and read ancient Greek
> in massive doses in order to reach that level. So there appears to be a
> potential fluency issue that could be matched/neutralized if we learned our
> ancient Greek fluently. Unfortunately, most do not learn the Attic or Koine
> to '(reading) fluency'.
> BTW, I tend to see Attic and Koine as one big language. I rather doubt that
> Josephus or Luke treated Plato as a different language, while I think that
> they would very much call modern greek ETERAN GLWSSAN. And you are right
> that subtracting (=masking) pieces of a language, like going from standard
> English to Tok Pisin, is easy. But building new pieces of a language in
> going the other direction is much slower and difficult.
When I was an undergraduate, way back in the 20th century, we would occasionally
get a native Hellene in our Greek classes, particularly if it were something
relatively easy, like Xenophon or the NT. These folks were looking for easy
elective credits (not where most American students would find them!). It
quickly became clear that they were no more or less proficient than any American
student, and that in fact their knowledge of modern Greek was occasionally a
hindrance rather than a help, particularly when it came to vocabulary items
similar in form to modern Greek, but with quite different semantic range. For a
Hellene to learn ancient Greek is like a native speaker of English learning to
read Beowulf... I agree with your comments on the relationship between Koine
and Attic. The differences would be roughly equivalent to the differences
between current and Elizabethan English. When we read documents from that
period, we recognize it as English, but really strange at times...
N.E. Barry Hofstetter
B.A., Ancient Studies, Univ. of Maryland, 1981
M.A. Classics, Ohio State Univ. 1986
M.Div., Pastoral Emphasis, Westminster Theo. Sem., 1989
Th.M., NT Studies, WTS, 1991
Ph.D. F.E.
http://mysite.verizon.net/vze1yfx7/
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