Re: Why not start with modern Greek?
Posted: June 24th, 2013, 6:00 am
I realise that its bordering on the flippant, but I think that we start with New Testament Greek, (rather than any other related language) because we want to read the NT, or because it is required course to get through a theological degree.
Thinking along the lines of Pharr's (1925) (starting at an earlier point of the language is best preface), let me ask another related question "Why not start with LXX Greek?" seeing as the OT is usually, seen in layperson's terms, assumed to be the religious and culturally antecedent text for the NT. Now, I'm sure that a large number of forum participants could give a convincing linguistic discussions about this second question seeing as it is translation Greek, Ptolemaic rather than Imperial Koine, etc. But following Deismann and others' (re)discovery of the relatedness of our texts to the Koine mileu - and the teaching of many of the church fathers that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all religious expectations, we have another way of viewing the position of the LXX in our heritage. We are adopted / grafted into the covenant promises, so we don't need to search out all religions to find their relatedness to Christ, but if we came from them, then we would find Him there.
From the posted replies to the discussion, and most obviously because it is under discussion in a forum that assumes we can read the NT (with whatever degree of facility or fluency that we have worked hard to acquire), I think that the question could be posited as, "Why not add Modern Greek to your New Testament Greek studies at some point to increase fluency?". To understand that question and to be able to make a more educated guess at the answer, let's look at what the "Modern Greek" that you would learn is?
The easily accessible answer to the question is that Modern Greek is the successor to the Koine in all areas except Tsakonian in what used to be Sparta, Pontian - the southern Black Sea cost of Turkey and the Ukraine (especially around Maripul. But the more complex answer is really quite complex.
Until the late 19th Century, early 20th Century, there was no Standard Modern Greek (the language of a modern nation state - the Hellenic Republic), such as forum particpants here are discussing the merits of studying. The simple reason for that is that "Greeks" (properly called "Romans" were a constituent group of the Ottoman Empire) and their official language was basically "Church Greek". The primary criterion for being "Roman" ("Greek") was to hold to what we call the Greek Orthodox Church. Our present thinking of national identity as being based on language and culture wasn't really a consideration when considering whether one belonged to the Church. Converts to another religion ceased to be Greek ("Romans") and were considered Turks, even if they didn't speak Turkish, only Greek. As a result of this system of identification, currently, there are a number of (Pontic - not derived from the Koine) Greek speaking villages in Trebizond (in Turkey) who identify as Turks.
In the period before the national language, the group (Turkish "millet") was held together and differentiated from other groups on the basis of Religion. Every village spoke their own variety of Greek with dialect areas that interested parties could look into. There were even Turkish speaking villages who held to the Greek Orthodox Faith, and didn't speak Greek at home. {In this regard we could compare, the Syrian Orthodox communities who continue to immigrate from Turkey have a majority of speakers who speak Turkish rather than Western Syriac (Aramaic), while immigrants from (mainly northern) Iraq have lost their language to Arabic}. Before the 1920's the dialects were spread geographically pretty much as they had been for centuries. There are also the so called "Albanians" from various places (including some Agean islands where they were settled) who learnt Greek and whose speech is marked by very coarse pronunciation of the letter chi.
The construction of a "national" language basically followed the principle that major dialects current at the time were considered and the form closest to the Church Greek was accepted. "Turkish" words were targeted for removal and other words borrowed from an earlier period of Greek were substituted. Some "international" words (it seems to me mostly French - the then international language) were borrowed. During the population shifts in the twenties after the Great Idea (Catastrophe) of Venizelos and others, Turkish speaking Christians were settled (mostly in Western Thrace) and now participate in the standard educational system of the modern Greek state, with mixed success. Greek communities outside Greece and (post 1974 southern) Cyprus have not necessarily undergone the same process of education that has led to a loss of dialect variety. A striking example of this is the Greek speaking (and Greek Orthodox) community of the Ukraine, moved by Catherine the Great from the Crimean Peninsula in 1879-80 to the Mariupol area, some of whom were later resettled in the steppes or sent to Siberia (if they were lucky enough not to be executed) during the era of Stalin's hostile policies to minorities. The dialect of those Ukrainian "Greeks" (ethnic identification rather than nationality based identification) is called "Rumeika". It is similar in form to Pontic (not - a Koine derivative) and northern dialects (and so different from the SMG), it also contains the words that were historically used by Greek speakers and taught to their children of Turkish origin that are now seen as "Turkish", additionally because of the long period of settlement in the Ukraine they also use a lot of Ukrainian and Russian words.
The Greek speakers that you might encounter in the lands of migration, are typically the economic refugees that have fled to the west in successive waves following military and agricultural disasters, or economic mismanagement. Many are from the less educated end of the social spectrum, so it is very possible that they bring with them dialectical variations that (with the exception of some groups with strong cultural organisations) you will no longer find in the Greece proper except among the elderly in remote villages.
To state my point more obviously, Modern Greek is a comprehensive language covering all the speech needs of a diverse community. On the other hand, NT Greek represents a small portion of the speech-world of time it was written in, and deals only with a sub-set of the issues that its readers had to deal with. So the question could be re-stated, "Why not start with a selection of secular texts to see the language and then move towards this one corpus of interest?". I wonder if what is really being looked for is a wider reading (= exposure for most of us) in the "Koine", so that it can be a language, rather than a key for a corpus of texts.
The talk about "Living Koine" raises question marks for me. I am worried whether the name "Koine" has been hijacked and used for "New Testament Greek". Is the material based broadly on (Imperial) Koine texts and inscriptions including the New Testament and early fathers, or just on the New Testament?
About me personally: After studying, 2 or 2.5 years of NTG at Bible college level, I then had the idea that is being mooted here (and the other idea of looking back too), so I took a BA with 4 year major in both Greek and Modern Greek. Most of my conversational practice in Modern Greek was from talking to an "Albanian" (Αρβανίτες) and an old Cretan. My first oral Greek teacher was a (big-L) Lesbian, and subsequent teachers were mainly from Athens or Thessaloniki. A few years later, I had the privilage to study for 4 or 5 years at a Greek speaking theological college and I have a Theological Diploma studied in Australia and recognised in Greece. I've never spoken in New Testament Greek, but I suppose I could if was necessary (though I am told that my Modern Greek has NT elements from time to time), but that is really a cross linguistic interference issue.
I've never really reflected on whether learning the Modern Greek affected my reading of the NT, I suppose it did and I suppose most of the effect would have been good. You might like to realise that many of those chanting Greek don't understand it in the way that we who have studied it do, but love it anyway. The SMG δεν negative particle is not so foreign as it first seems, cf. Lk.4:2 οὐκ ἔφαγεν οὐδὲν.
Thinking along the lines of Pharr's (1925) (starting at an earlier point of the language is best preface), let me ask another related question "Why not start with LXX Greek?" seeing as the OT is usually, seen in layperson's terms, assumed to be the religious and culturally antecedent text for the NT. Now, I'm sure that a large number of forum participants could give a convincing linguistic discussions about this second question seeing as it is translation Greek, Ptolemaic rather than Imperial Koine, etc. But following Deismann and others' (re)discovery of the relatedness of our texts to the Koine mileu - and the teaching of many of the church fathers that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all religious expectations, we have another way of viewing the position of the LXX in our heritage. We are adopted / grafted into the covenant promises, so we don't need to search out all religions to find their relatedness to Christ, but if we came from them, then we would find Him there.
From the posted replies to the discussion, and most obviously because it is under discussion in a forum that assumes we can read the NT (with whatever degree of facility or fluency that we have worked hard to acquire), I think that the question could be posited as, "Why not add Modern Greek to your New Testament Greek studies at some point to increase fluency?". To understand that question and to be able to make a more educated guess at the answer, let's look at what the "Modern Greek" that you would learn is?
The easily accessible answer to the question is that Modern Greek is the successor to the Koine in all areas except Tsakonian in what used to be Sparta, Pontian - the southern Black Sea cost of Turkey and the Ukraine (especially around Maripul. But the more complex answer is really quite complex.
Until the late 19th Century, early 20th Century, there was no Standard Modern Greek (the language of a modern nation state - the Hellenic Republic), such as forum particpants here are discussing the merits of studying. The simple reason for that is that "Greeks" (properly called "Romans" were a constituent group of the Ottoman Empire) and their official language was basically "Church Greek". The primary criterion for being "Roman" ("Greek") was to hold to what we call the Greek Orthodox Church. Our present thinking of national identity as being based on language and culture wasn't really a consideration when considering whether one belonged to the Church. Converts to another religion ceased to be Greek ("Romans") and were considered Turks, even if they didn't speak Turkish, only Greek. As a result of this system of identification, currently, there are a number of (Pontic - not derived from the Koine) Greek speaking villages in Trebizond (in Turkey) who identify as Turks.
In the period before the national language, the group (Turkish "millet") was held together and differentiated from other groups on the basis of Religion. Every village spoke their own variety of Greek with dialect areas that interested parties could look into. There were even Turkish speaking villages who held to the Greek Orthodox Faith, and didn't speak Greek at home. {In this regard we could compare, the Syrian Orthodox communities who continue to immigrate from Turkey have a majority of speakers who speak Turkish rather than Western Syriac (Aramaic), while immigrants from (mainly northern) Iraq have lost their language to Arabic}. Before the 1920's the dialects were spread geographically pretty much as they had been for centuries. There are also the so called "Albanians" from various places (including some Agean islands where they were settled) who learnt Greek and whose speech is marked by very coarse pronunciation of the letter chi.
The construction of a "national" language basically followed the principle that major dialects current at the time were considered and the form closest to the Church Greek was accepted. "Turkish" words were targeted for removal and other words borrowed from an earlier period of Greek were substituted. Some "international" words (it seems to me mostly French - the then international language) were borrowed. During the population shifts in the twenties after the Great Idea (Catastrophe) of Venizelos and others, Turkish speaking Christians were settled (mostly in Western Thrace) and now participate in the standard educational system of the modern Greek state, with mixed success. Greek communities outside Greece and (post 1974 southern) Cyprus have not necessarily undergone the same process of education that has led to a loss of dialect variety. A striking example of this is the Greek speaking (and Greek Orthodox) community of the Ukraine, moved by Catherine the Great from the Crimean Peninsula in 1879-80 to the Mariupol area, some of whom were later resettled in the steppes or sent to Siberia (if they were lucky enough not to be executed) during the era of Stalin's hostile policies to minorities. The dialect of those Ukrainian "Greeks" (ethnic identification rather than nationality based identification) is called "Rumeika". It is similar in form to Pontic (not - a Koine derivative) and northern dialects (and so different from the SMG), it also contains the words that were historically used by Greek speakers and taught to their children of Turkish origin that are now seen as "Turkish", additionally because of the long period of settlement in the Ukraine they also use a lot of Ukrainian and Russian words.
The Greek speakers that you might encounter in the lands of migration, are typically the economic refugees that have fled to the west in successive waves following military and agricultural disasters, or economic mismanagement. Many are from the less educated end of the social spectrum, so it is very possible that they bring with them dialectical variations that (with the exception of some groups with strong cultural organisations) you will no longer find in the Greece proper except among the elderly in remote villages.
To state my point more obviously, Modern Greek is a comprehensive language covering all the speech needs of a diverse community. On the other hand, NT Greek represents a small portion of the speech-world of time it was written in, and deals only with a sub-set of the issues that its readers had to deal with. So the question could be re-stated, "Why not start with a selection of secular texts to see the language and then move towards this one corpus of interest?". I wonder if what is really being looked for is a wider reading (= exposure for most of us) in the "Koine", so that it can be a language, rather than a key for a corpus of texts.
The talk about "Living Koine" raises question marks for me. I am worried whether the name "Koine" has been hijacked and used for "New Testament Greek". Is the material based broadly on (Imperial) Koine texts and inscriptions including the New Testament and early fathers, or just on the New Testament?
About me personally: After studying, 2 or 2.5 years of NTG at Bible college level, I then had the idea that is being mooted here (and the other idea of looking back too), so I took a BA with 4 year major in both Greek and Modern Greek. Most of my conversational practice in Modern Greek was from talking to an "Albanian" (Αρβανίτες) and an old Cretan. My first oral Greek teacher was a (big-L) Lesbian, and subsequent teachers were mainly from Athens or Thessaloniki. A few years later, I had the privilage to study for 4 or 5 years at a Greek speaking theological college and I have a Theological Diploma studied in Australia and recognised in Greece. I've never spoken in New Testament Greek, but I suppose I could if was necessary (though I am told that my Modern Greek has NT elements from time to time), but that is really a cross linguistic interference issue.
I've never really reflected on whether learning the Modern Greek affected my reading of the NT, I suppose it did and I suppose most of the effect would have been good. You might like to realise that many of those chanting Greek don't understand it in the way that we who have studied it do, but love it anyway. The SMG δεν negative particle is not so foreign as it first seems, cf. Lk.4:2 οὐκ ἔφαγεν οὐδὲν.