[B-Greek] Fw: NT Greek Scholars in Greece?

Don Doherty dgdoherty at optusnet.com.au
Wed Sep 30 21:38:58 EDT 2009


An interesting historical note:

In his "A Grammar of NewTestament Greek" first published in 1906, Moulton 
observes in his chapter 'History of the "Common" Greek' (pp. 29-30),

"Finally we have Modern Greek to bring in. The discovery that the vernacular 
of today goes back historically to the KOINE was made in 1834 by Heilmaier, 
in a book on the origin on the "Romaic".  This discovery once established, 
it became clear that we could work back from Modern Greek to reconstruct the 
otherwise imperfectly known oral Greek of the Hellenistic age.  It is 
however only in the last generation that the importance of this method has 
been adequately recognised". (p.29)

"The gulf between the ancient and the modern is bridged by the material 
collected and arranged by Jannaris in his Historical Greek Grammar.  The 
study of a Gospel in the vernacular version of Pallis [Liverpool, 1902] will 
at first produce the impression that the gulf is very wide indeed;  but the 
strong points of contact will become very evident in time.  Hatzidakis 
indeed even goes so far as to assert that "the language generally spoken 
to-day in the towns differs less from the common language of Polybius than 
this last differs from the language of Homer."" (p.30)

Don Doherty
Currimundi, Australia


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Vasileios Tsialas" <tsialas78 at hotmail.com>
To: "B-Greek Lists" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 01, 2009 4:17 AM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] NT Greek Scholars in Greece?

> Dear Eddie Mishoe,

> I wouldn't accept, and many scholars would
> not also, that Hellenistic Greek is "a completely different language" from
> Modern Greek, since Hellenistic Greek is the basis of our Modern Greek,
> the
> grammar and the vocabulary being similar to a great extent.
> In addition, now all
> Greek high school students have as a lesson both Classical and Hellenistic
> Greek for more than three years.
>
> Vasileios Tsialas
> Athens, Greece
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