[B-Greek] PEI, FEI, XEI, KSI, PSI (was pee or pie)

Jim West jwest at highland.net
Sat Jul 8 13:54:51 EDT 2006



Randall Buth wrote:
> The question on the names of Greek letters was raised and the answers  
> have been provided, if people were paying attention.
> 


Sometimes, sometimes not.
;-)

In any event, and in all seriousness, pronunciation really has nothing 
at all to do with translation or exegesis, does it?  Whether, when we 
read the NT in our heads, and translate on paper or computer, we 
pronounce "i" sounds long or short, is life or death serious, seems as 
equal a "no brainer" as whether the folk who spoke Koine pronounced it 
one way or the other.

And really, can we be ever so confident about how first century 
Palestinian Christians or Diaspora Jews (the first writers and readers 
of the NT after all) pronounced "i" short or long?  What if they 
pronounced it like the Semitic "yod"?  Or like the native speakers of 
Tarsus?  We have no recordings so it really is all pure speculation.

Anyway, have you ever heard any speaker of modern English pronounce 
vowels exactly the same everywhere in the world?  "i" in England is a 
bit different than in Scotland and that a bit different than in Wales 
and Ireland.  Southern americans say "i" considerably differently than 
northerners or westerners.  Your imagined homogenous pronunciation the 
Koine world over seems equally unlikely.  It doesn't really stretch the 
imagination to think that Koine was pronounced differently in Gaul than 
it was in Sicily.

Best

Jim

-- 
Jim West, ThD

http://web.infoave.net/~jwest  -- Biblical Studies Resources
http://petrosbaptistchurch.blogspot.com  -- Weblog

Je mehr Gnade, desto weniger Sünde -- Huldrych Zwingli



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