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Re: Help with Greek was Re: Babel Text in Obrenje

From:Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Monday, March 11, 2002, 20:26
At 1:25 pm -0500 11/3/02, John Cowan wrote:
>Peter Clark scripsit: > >> 'Course, this means I need to brush up on my Greek. > >Koine (common) Greek arose as a fusion of dialects (mostly Attic >and Ionic, with contributions from other dialects) around Alexander's time, >and was substantially complete by about the year +300. It is the immediate >ancestor of today's spoken and written Greek. However, because of the >prestige of Classical Attic, the Koine was rarely represented in writing.
A lot of papyri from Egypt are Koine. But the language never had an official, standardized form. It was influenced at the colloquial level by native languages around; many Koine speakers were bilingual. There were also different registers; the more educated were influnced by classical Attic Greek.
>The Bible is an exception because it was meant to be accessible to >everyone, not just the educated. > >Note that in Classical times different dialects were used for different >literary purposes. > >> Here are some questions I have: >> 1. What "flavor" of Greek is the LXX? I assume that, since it is a >> translation, it would be translated into Classical Greek, being more >> literary, as opposed to Koine Greek. > >Not at all. Don't be deceived by the flavor of the KJV: back in 1611, >it was a fairly modern translation, with even some resemblance to >Basic English (only about 8000 distinct words, IIRC).
Certainly not Classical. There was always a tendancy (lasting till quite recent times) to translate scripture as literally as possible. LXX Greek has a _strongly_ Semitic flavor. It was also important in that it influenced early Christian writers.
>> 2. Is Byzantine Greek (let's say the Greek that was spoken in >>Constantinople >> from the third to the tenth century) Koine Greek? > >Spoken yes, written no.
Depends who was speaking it. Written Byzantine Greek has very Atticizing features and I'm sure the educated speakers affected an Atticist style. Diglossia goes back a long way in Greek. Ray. ========================================= A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language. [J.G. Hamann 1760] =========================================

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Matthew Bladen <matthew.bladen@...>