[B-Greek] The value of reading the NT in Modern Greek
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Wed Aug 6 15:48:42 EDT 2008
Actually, I think there's much good in this suggestion. With a little
hunting I think I've found the wanted edition: it looks like an ABS
publication, described thus:
"TGV/ANC Greek Parallel New Testament - Hardcover -- Special edition.
The New Testament in Today's Greek. The ancient text of New Testament
together with translation in Today's Greek in parallel pages.
Translated into modern Greek by P. Vasileiadis, I. Galanis, G.
Galitis, I. Karavidopoulos, professors of the Interpretation of the
New Testament at the Theological Universities of Athens and
Thessaloníki in Greece. "
It's worth searching around; although ABS has it, I found it for 2/3
of the ABS price at Orthodox Marketplace (http://tinyurl.com/6g799n).
Perhaps one could do still better searching farther.
Some more specific comments infra:
On Aug 5, 2008, at 12:12 PM, Mark Lightman wrote:
> ... I have been enjoying the heck out of working my way through
> the Modern Greek, using the Ancient Greek, which I know fairly
> well, as a “cheat.” I have no real desire at this point to learn
> Modern Greek; my interest is always in improving my ability to read
> the Greek New Testament. As I say, above all, it has been fun.
> For someone who is in love with koine, it is interesting to see what
> has become of the language. AUTOU has become TOU (not to be
> confused with the article.) EIS becomes S.
often in combination with the article, as in STHN/STIN or STON
> Participles are usually replaced with POU meaning “who” (and it’s
> not declined) plus the indicative, so hO BLEPWN becomes hO POU
> BLEPEI.
Actually I think POU is an all-purpose relative pronoun for any
gender, sort of like Heb. ASHEr.
> (“The one who sees,” like in English.) The future is formed with
> QA (which is from QELW INA) plus the subjunctive, so literally
> instead of saying “I will eat,” you say “I want that I should
> eat” (does anyone else find this weird, that Modern Greek here
> sounds like Yiddish?) OIDA and GIGNWSKOW give way to XERW, which is
> from EXEURON. “Son” remains hUIOS when talking about Jesus, but
> GIOS for ordinary sons. Anyway, these things are interesting (at
> least to me) but I think reading the Modern Greek NT also helps
> your koine Greek in a number of ways.
>
> NUMBER ONE: You find morphemes that are familiar to you from
> koine, but in unfamiliar situations. For example in 2 Cor 10:4 you
> find the modern Greek word GKREMIZW, which is akin to Ancient
> Greek KRHMNOS, cliff. AS “let” as a helping verb is from AFES.
And we already find AFES + infinitive or + hINA + subjunctive as an
equivalent for the imperative in the Koine GNtT.
> In Jude 5 you have QUMIZW for hUPOMIMNNiSKW, which may help you to
> remember that the morpheme QUM can include mental activities as
> well as emotion or wrath, which might help you remember that the NT
> word ENQUMEOMAI means “I consider or think.” Seeing these
> morphemes in strange places helps burn the Greek roots deeper into
> the brain. The value of this in studying Homeric and Classical
> Greek is often promoted on this list, but I had not realized that
> Modern Greek does the same thing.
What I've pushed is cognizance of the fact that NT Koine Greek is a
language in flux, and that understanding both earlier and later phases
of Greek can illuminate one's understanding of the NT Koine. That's
exactly the point that Caragounis (The Development of Greek and the
New Testament) endeavors to demonstrate and drive home.
> NUMBER TWO: The modern Greek will often give you a recognizable
> synonym or paraphrase which allows you to understand the koine in a
> new way without using any English. AMHN AMHN LEGW hUMIN in John is
> rendered SAS BEBAIWNW, a verb which (in a slightly different form) we
> know from the koine NT. hODOS is generally replaced with DROMO and
> DROMOS in turn in Acts 13:25 becomes ERGO. Buth has talked about
> the need for a koine lexicon written in koine, so as to bypass the
> English, but this is pretty much what you have in the Modern Greek
> NT, and even more so in older Modern Greek translations.
For this very reason I think it would be useful to have a "triglot"
including the more-or-less Demotic "Today's Greek Version" and the
somewhat-more Katharevousa Vamvas version of 1850 along with a
critical (or even TR or MT) edition of the GNT.
> These are so close to the koine as to offer almost an alternate text
> which is pretty understandable to any one whose koine is good and
> who takes the time to look up a few Modern Greek words and learn
> the changes to the language. Are you not sure how to render hO
> hUIOS TOU QEOU
> TOU ZWNTOS in Mt 16:16 into English? (and Carl Conrad says you
> should not; see one of his recent Ad Nauseum posts about thinking
> in Greek versus translating.) Well, you don’t have to. Check out
> the Modern Greek which has Ho hUIOS TOU ALEQINOU QEOU, which, if
> you think about, is probably what Jesus meant,
Well, maybe ... it should be remembered that every translation (or
paraphrase) involves interpretation -- and this may involve some
slanting of what the original actually indicated. That may well be the
case here.
> and here you can avoid translation. You’re not exactly thinking in
> Greek, but you are at least not using any English (in my diglot,
> even the maps are in Greek.)
>
> NUMBER THREE. The Modern Greek is one take on cruxes, a take
> which, all things being equal, one might think would have more
> weight than say an English translation. Some examples from recent
> cruxes discussed on this list: The modern Greek (or I should say,
> one version of the Modern Greek) does not retain the distinction
> between FILEW and AGAPEW in John 21:15ff (AGAPEW is used
> throughout) but does preserve the one between BOSKW and POMAINW.
I'd say this involves one critical resolution of the problem of these
alternating verbs in John 21; I personally think they're synonymous,
but it's obvious that there were list-members who think that the
different verbs are quite significant.
> PROS TON THEON is John 1:1 is simply “with (ME) God.” (I think ME
> is from META but not sure; does anyone know?)
Yes, and generally speaking, all prepositions take the accusative.
> The Modern Greek does not repeat QEOS in Jn 11:22, but does add
> AUTOS, suggesting the QEOS does imply SOME added emphasis.
Here too I'd be inclined to say that some interpretation is involved.
> You can see what becomes of rHMA (more or less replaced by LOGOS)
> and of LOGOS (often retained or rendered with a fuller phrase; in
> Luke 1:2 LOGOS becomes MHNUMA CARMOSUNOU, “joyful message”.)
But isn't that "good news" -- deriving ultimately from EUAGGELION?
i.e., LOGOS in Luke 1:2 is interpreted to mean "gospel."
> Now, of course, this could get out of hand. Every exegetical point
> could be addressed by saying “But the Modern Greek says…!” This
> would get annoying from someone who actually KNOWS Modern Greek;
> from someone like me, who has spent about seven hours looking at
> one Modern Greek text, this would be intolerable. But I find it
> at least interesting to look up tough passages and see the Modern
> Greek take(s.)
>
> NUMBER FOUR. Learning to read the Modern Greek NT is probably good
> preparation for learning to speak Modern Greek. This is still on
> my long term to-do list, somewhere between memorizing the
> pluperfect and cleaning the top of my refrigerator, so at least
> I’m making progress towards ONE of my goals.
Yes, I think I too would put learning to SPEAK Modern Greek somewhere
on the level of cleaning the top of my refrigerator. On the other
hand, I've found the relatively few hours I've spent on the "Teach
Yourself Modern Greek" (http://tinyurl.com/5hhys2) very much worth my
while for getting a sense of how Modern Greek works.
> NUMBER FIVE: Trying to read the Modern Greek NT by using the koine
> NT as your crutch raises some interesting pedagogical issues. If
> your goal is to improve your NT Greek, can you really call it
> cheating if you use the koine Greek NT to help you figure out the
> Modern Greek NT so you can better read the koine Greek NT? If this
> is cheating, it’s a pretty benign sort of cheating, like
> fantasizing about your wife while making love to her. Conrad has
> maintained
> that if all you know is the Greek NT, you don’t really know NT
> Greek. If like me, you can read the Modern Greek New Testament
> with a dictionary or the Koine NT as your crib, can you say that in
> any sense you “know” Modern Greek? Lest someone on the list
> Alexander Pope me, let me do it myself. I know that learning a
> little Modern Greek is a dangerous thing, and I’ve been learning a
> microscopic amount of Modern Greek. But if your goal is to really
> know one Greek text super-well, and if you can, on the basis first
> of radical familiarity with the English and then the koine Greek,
> understand the Modern Greek NT, should you read it? I think you
> should, for the same reason you should climb a mountain. The
> Modern Greek NT happens to be THERE, in a convenient format
> opposite the koine NT. I remember at one point someone on the list
> expressed the wish for having an Attic NT. If someone wanted to
> produce a koine/Attic NT diglot, or a Homeric/Koine NT diglot, or a
> Linear B/Koine diglot, I would use it and find it helpful. It
> takes very little time to become “fluent” not in Modern Greek, but
> in the Modern Greek New Testament, and so you get great bang for
> your time buck.
I suspect that there is a NT in Classical Attic somewhere out there,
and it would be good to look at. Something that I made available for
my own first-year Greek students within my "Supplement to Reading
Greek" (http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/docs/RGSupplement.pdf)
is a "Selections Illustrating Greek Linguistic History", including
some documents ranging from 7th-century BCE to early 20th-century
(Cavafy). If there were interest, I might make that available as a
separate PDF on my web-site.
>
> NUMBER SIX: And most importantly, reading the Modern Greek New
> Testament with the ancient Greek New Testament as your crutch keeps
> you engaged in the Greek NT. Other pedagogies, reading Homer,
> trying to speak koine, working your way through Smyth, are all do
> doubt helpful, but whenever I wander too far away from the Greek NT
> I feel compelled to go back.
>
> This is probably the point at which some might ask, what is your
> question, Lightman? I don’t really have a question, I guess I’m
> just recommending that once you get very familiar with the Greek
> NT, reading the Modern Greek NT might be a good use of your time.
> I guess I’d like to know if others have tried this and what they
> think. Above all, I had never realized that even a demotic
> translation, not to mention what is sometimes called the Modern
> High Greek, is so very close to the koine NT. I think the Modern
> Greek New Testaments have been underutilized resources for B-
> Greekers, at least for this one.
I'm glad that Mark has called this to our attention. I've order the
diglot for myself, and as I said earlier, I could wish this came with
a third version, the Vamvas (which I do have online through the Sword
project).
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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