[B-Greek] Greek NT Audio and spelling and EI

Randall Buth randallbuth at gmail.com
Thu Sep 25 04:54:29 EDT 2008


shalom Don,

This preliminary answer is coming thru the list because my last to copies to
you 'bounced' back. Maybe they're going thru, but you may need to check a
filter or at least confirm that your listed email is working.

There are some assumptions or common perceptions that would be good to clear
up. And a brief discussion of these will probably be helpful for the list.
I'll tag my responses with **

On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 3:47 AM, Dr. Don Wilkins
<drdwilkins at sbcglobal.net>wrote:

> Shalom to you as well, Randall. We are old friends and I respect both your
> opinion and your expertise. Perhaps you could point out arguments for our
> knowledge of first-century phonemes to me off-list.


**Yes, this is easily done, though I should start by asking if you've read
the pages on the website www.biblicalulpan.org? I will send my latest
version to you separately.


> My own experience is that for dead languages (I hate to use that term, but
> in this case it seems unavoidable), you have to have some kind of Rosetta
> Stone of pronunciation.


**Actually, you don't need a Rosetta Stone transliteration. Phonologies are
closed systems and work within themselves in a language, so that the outcome
of a system change (in this case the resulting system of modern Greek) must
be generated from the earlier system(s) as part of a phonological
development.  This is why I said that phonologists are in broad agreement on
basic phonemes. Classists and NT Greek teachers are usually not trained in
phonology, which is the study of how and why sound systems of human
languages behave as they do.


> Latinisms and Aramaisms or Hebraisms can help, but seem inadequate for
> precision.


**Yes, they can help, and by themselves could be inadequate.

**For example, you have names like Latin Pilate spelled PEILATOS in several
old Greek manuscripts. And from the other direction you have names like
David and Eliya//Eliyahu spelled DAYEID and HLEIA in many old manuscripts.
So impressive, in fact, is the evidence that Westcott and Hort spelled these

names PEILATOS, DAYEID, HLEIA in their GNT. (Note well: UBS and Nestle have
changed the spelling without better manuscript authority. My note two weeks
ago on SAMAREIA//SAMARIA is amusing in this regard.)
Two immediate hypotheses could be proposed from these for testing:
(1) A major KOINH dialect had its IWTA vowel shift in sound to [EI] or
(2) a major KOINH dialect shifted its [EI] sound to I, thus allowing the
above
spellings for an [I] sound. Without belaboring the point here, phonologists
are
unanimous that the second hypothesis is what happened in fact. That is, EI
was
being pronounced as I, and the date for this change is usually put in the 4c
BCE
in colloquial Athenian, producing a 3c BCE spread throughout the KOINH.


> Feel free to correct and enlighten me, though. I welcome anything tangible
> and reliable. You only need to refer to the 2c BCE-2c CE era of your
> previous post and the 7-vowel system.


**Good, the 2BCC-2CE is one of the stable, "in focus" periods. The
3cBCE-2cBCE is the turbulent period of the 'great Greek vowel shift'.


> Perhaps you would elaborate on your example of GEIGNWSKEIN, if that is
> relevant. I'm not sure what manuscripts you have in mind and what your chain
> of deduction is. Sometimes I'm just slow to get the point.
>

**I was referring to Vaticanus, mid-4th c manuscript, highly regarded within
text critical studies as being a very conservative and carefully done
manuscript for the Alexandrian tradition, which has been further enhanced by
the discovery of p75 which ties the chain of that tradition back to 200 CE.

**Examples (just a few representative, to see both patterns and
inconsistancies):
John 1:48 GEINWSKEIS      B, p75
                   GINWSKEIS        alef, p66
John 2:24 GEINWSKEIN          p75
                   GINWSKEIN        B, alef, p66
John 2:35 EGEINWSKEN        p75
                   EGINWSKEN      B, alef, p66
John 3:10 GEINWSKEIS     B, p75, p66
                   GINWSKEIS        alef
John 7:27 GEINWSKEI        B, p75
                   GINWSKEI           alef, p66
John 7:49 GEINWSKWN     B, p75
                   GINWSKWN       alef, p66
**[[It might help to know that several words that are etymoloigcally
EI are spelled I in alef. Alef is a manuscript that prefers I for the [I]
sound.
Like EMINAN for EMEINAN John 1.39, EKINOS for EKEINOS John 1:8,
ALHQIAN for ALHQEIA John 1:17, PIRASMOS Luke 22:28, 40, 46.
These are randomly chosen and there are thousands like this in
alef.]]
**Again, the same two hypotheses could be proposed as above, and
as stated, the only hypothesis that fits this and all the hundreds of
thousands of pieces of data (including pre-Christian papyri, inscriptions,
even 120-134 CE Dead Sea Greek papyri) is that EI and I were
pronounced the same from before the first century BCE. Note EMINAN
above in alef. This is one reason why a person can objectively say that
any Erasmian system, in use or "corrected", is wrong as a
representation of KOINH Greek phonology. Erasmians separate EI
from I in their pronunciation and that is wrong. It is doubly wrong
if they join it to H.


Regarding French as an example, no modern language is really relevant to the
> discussion, IMO.


**Excepting as regards what we know about human languages. Then every
language is relevant. French allows us to watch a contemporary language
community deal with a
historical spelling system that does not map unambiguously in both
directions. When
all the ballots are counted we will find that KOINH Greek, too, was a
historical spelling
system, not unambiguous in both directions, and less severe than the French.
The
argument is qal vaHomer. If the French community tolerates and demands a
phonology system out of sync with its writing system, then how much more
reasonable
is a KOINH demand where the distance between the phonology and the writing
system
is less than the French?


> There is no big change that one has to make from Erasmian pronunciation in
> order to speak first-century Greek in the marketplace, because there is no
> such marketplace (would that there were).


**But there are changes if they don't want to twist the language that
was being used and written down in that marketplace that did exist.
You don't have to visit a country to learn its language and to learn how to
speak
in their marketplace, if you could.


> If one wants to speak modern Greek, he will have to learn modern Greek,

which involves far more than differences in pronunciation. But I grant that
> someone with that in mind might be wise to use modern pronunciation to study
> ancient Greek. In terms of communicating ancient Greek with students or
> colleagues, it seems to me to be a question of the lingua franca chosen by
> the vast majority. Erasmian is a major contender and always has been, due to
> its utility.


**Actually, lingua franca is a mirage that many beginning students assume.
Erasmian is not a lingua franca in the academic community. If someone
reads a paragraph of first century Greek in US-Erasmian or restored Attic to

an academic audience at a place like ETS or SBL, the audience cannot
understand and cannot follow. That is our field's "dirty little secret" as
one
classicist once remarked. The audience must be presented a written text and
usually given more time than a conversational speed of reading. What happens

in these situations is that a listener will recognize the passage being
quoted
and then work off of memory for that passage plus any salient point in
focus.

If at some point the Koine you advocate should prevail, more power to it,
> and I doubt that a transition to this pronunciation will be difficult or
> time-consuming for most students.


**Why has it been difficult for me? I am not talking about the ability to
mouth a
text outloud. That is easy and I can switch systems having used 4 separate
ones in my past. But to feel the internal network of the system. That takes
years
and fluency.



> I would think that learning Erasmian pronunciation of Greek from scratch
> would be equally or more demanding, and we require that of first-year Greek
> students by the second week of classes or so. As to fluency in the language,
> forgive me for saying that I don't see how the pronunciation per se matters,
> if it is not the language of the modern marketplace.


**Theoretically, you are right. We can create an artificial system and learn
it fluently.
But WHY would we want to, if we knew that at the end of the road we would be

cross-wired and at odds from the language, texts, and speakers
that we are reading?


> I think it comes back to whether we *ought* to switch to what you are
> advocating, not whether we need to, and that in part depends on whether we
> know for certain how first-century Greek was spoken (regarding which I hope
> to hear more from you).
>

**This is promising as a point of agreement. I hear you saying that if you
knew for
certain that the best Erasmian system was wrong [i.e., all of the Erasmian
systems
were wrong], that it put phonemes in the wrong places on the phonlogical
map, then
that would be a strong reaason for abandoning Erasmian. Maybe decisive.
Agreed.

**I recommend starting with EI. Just like fireman trace a fire to its
origin. EI ranks
as a possible flashpoint for the great KOINH vowel shift. It is likely the
earliest of the vowels to shift, which explains why it became the least
stable in
the manuscript traditions.
With just EI correct you will be able to read Westcott and Hort correctly,
UBS SAMAREIA, and be more on the page with old uncials like B, p75, p45, D,
A,
p46, and probably half of all the scribos in the NT manuscript tradition.

(Please confirm your email offlist.)

ERRWSO
Randall



-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth at gmail.com
Biblical Language Center
Learn Easily - Progress Further - Remember for Life



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