[B-Greek] The Language of the NT
John Sanders
john.franklin.sanders at gmail.com
Fri Jan 18 04:06:53 EST 2008
Although I am not a scholar of Greek language history, I do have a few
comments. I have just read (casually) Buck's Greek Dialects (and that by
any rational standard does not make me an expert). It appears that
pre-koine Greek, phonologically speaking, is too diverse for anyone to speak
about the Greek language except in general terms. I therefore assume that
unless specified otherwise, they are speaking of Attic Greek. It also
appears that although there is no Attic Koine before Alexander, most of the
elements that make up Attic Koine exist dispersed among the various Greek
dialects.
To add some bounds to the question, I will posit two boundary conditions;
these are not absolute, but can be modified or changed to meet whatever data
is produced. I will posit that "classical Greek" is spoken in Athens when
Peisistratus is in power. I will posit that the other boundary is that
"koine Greek" is spoken in Athens when Aristotle and Demosthenes are
chatting up a storm.
I will assume the following conditions for language dispersion: 1) language
groups that are isolated or semi-isolated change at a slower rate than
language groups that are in direct and constant linguistic exchange with one
another, 2) That when different language groups are integrated and talking
to one another, they will tend to change toward some leveling "new
language", 3) although language is spoken by individuals, language change
can be considered to take place in quantum jumps, with the quantum being
defined by generation groupings of speakers, 4) language change does not
occur instantaneously, but over time with an increasing share of the
population taking up the change, and 5) I will divide the language group
into two subgroups, one consisting of the majority of speakers, naming them
the "vulgar" population and their form of speech the "vulgate" and the other
subgroup the "elite" speakers and their form of speech the "educated"
speech.
The issue is then that Attic Greek is changing from the "Classical"
pronunciation of Peisistratus to the "Koine" of Aristotle, which is perhaps
8 to 10 generations. I recently read that Plato criticized his compatriots
with sloppy speaking habits in that they were changing from prosody
intonation to stress intonation. The article I read did not give a citation
to any of Plato's works, so I do not know how accurate the statement is. But
for argument's sake, let us assume it is accurate. Also let us assume that
Plato is at least middle age and that he is criticizing younger speakers. The
I would assume that he is criticizing younger speakers who speak "educated"
speech, and that they have reached a sizeable number to be noticed, say
between 20% and 30% of that generation's number of speakers. If that is the
case, then one may assume that the preceding generation began to use stress
intonation in small numbers, and they picked this habit up from the
"Vulgate" speakers (both from adoption and through upward mobility of their
own speakers). And I would also suspect that the vulgar population already
was dominated by "stress" speakers, so that this influence came into their
midst perhaps three generations previous.
Whether the specific case above occurred is not germane in of itself. It is
the model of events that I wish to present. From an historical viewpoint, I
believe that metics were introduced into Athens in larger numbers either
during Peisistratus's time or shortly afterwards, and that with the Persian
Wars, their importation accelerated, even after the Persian Wars. The
Metics spoke some dialect other than Attic. So we have a large population
that interacted with the Athenians on a daily basis. Also, with the growing
prosperity, many of the vulgar population began to enter into the "elite"
group (perhaps fermenting some of the "stasis" of the times). Hence, the
"educated" speech was assaulted from two fronts, adoption of "Vulgar" forms
by the "elite" and by "Vulgate" speakers becoming part of the "elite".
Although a study mining what data is available may help understand the
history of the Greek language during this period, I would venture a
tentative expectation of what happened to be that the "vulgar" population
began to speak what is now thought of as "Koine" sometime around Pericles's
time, and that the educated population began to speak "Koine", or at least
approaching "Koine" by the time of Plato. This is assuming about 8 to 10
generations between Peisistratus and Aristotle.
This is just a guess, but I believe it is relatively rational.
--
John Sanders
Suzhou, China
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