Well, that was a nice piece that Mark wrote and it would have been easy to follow for anyone who heard it read outloud in the first century. Of course, very few Greek literates managed to mangel Greek orthography quite so densely as Mark (see below), but that is part of humor. The Greeks had a long tradition of trying to spell correctly and there were many treatises compiled over the centuries (mostly lost to us today) where spelling was discussed and passed on from generation to generation. (PS: There was no reason to add δelta to ζωῆς, *δζωης wouldn't be pronounced clearly as spelled, so it must be counted a Markian mistake.)
What is really amazing about Greek spelling, though, is the fact that the accent marks were basically ADDED after the 9th century CE! They were added by people who did not speak them, but who decided to record a tradition from over a millenium, recorded and passed on through the Second Sophistic 'on the side'. If that feat wasn't amazing enough, they then required scribes to write that way for over a millenium so that now all ancient texts are recorded in such a system. We can be grateful to them for letting us see what 4th century BCE Athenian accentuation was, or was supposed to be.
The result can be followed quite easily in the Swanson Greek New Testament series. Throughout separate books of the NT, Swanson presents a line from Vaticanus, exactly as spelled, ΕΙ ΓΕΙΝΩΣΚΕΤΕ ΤΙ ΤΟΥΤ ΕΣΤΙΝ, but with punctuation and diacritics added, εἰ γεινώσκετε τί τοῦτ' ἔστιν, and then any deviant meanings from about 60-70 chosen manuscripts are collected and presented by line underneath. Vaticanus, and each line, are spelled according to the chosen exemplar for that line, with any other of the 50 texts that agree with the line being cited to the side. (Westcott Hort, UBS, and Tischendorf are also cited somewhere). Agreements on a line are by meaning, not always by spelling. Where a text agrees with a reading but uses a different spelling the variant spelling may cited below in a band of 'spelling footnotes', in the second band of footnotes after 'lacunae' (which lists the chosen manuscripts that are not extant for the line in question). Swanson makes for a fascinating reading of the history of the GNT text, but its a heavy slog for Erasmians, they can't/shouldn't read these texts outloud (cf. line 1: μεισῖν 'to be hating' is not and never was [mesin]!)
e.g.
John 7:7
(Underline is in Swanson to point out a change. Swanson is also allowed spacing that lines all the words up vertically, exactly. Where I typed multiple spaces to do that, the program deleted to one space. But you can imagine how it would look if straightened up vertically, too. For manuscript designations, abreviations, and choices, see Swanson's introduction in any volume--RB)
οὐ δύναται ὁ κόσμος μεισῖν ὑμᾶς, ἐμὲ δὲ μεισεῖ, ὅτι ἐγὼ μαρτυρῶ περὶ αὐτοῦ Β*
οὐ δύναται ὁ κόσμος
μεισεῖν ὑμᾶς, ἐμὲ δὲ μεισεῖ, ὅτι ἐγὼ μαρτυρῶ περὶ αὐτοῦ B
c, p75
οὐ δύναται ὁ κόσμος
μισεῖν ὑμᾶς, ἐμὲ δὲ μεισεῖ, ὅτι ἐγὼ μαρτυρῶ περὶ αὐτοῦ p66
ὁ κόσμος οὐ δύναται μισεῖν ὑμᾶς, ἐμὲ δὲ
μισεῖ, ὅτι ___ μαρτυρῶ ________ א*
οὐ δύναται ὁ κόσμος
μισεῖν ὑμᾶς, ἐμὲ δὲ
μισεῖ, ὅτι ___ μαρτυρῶ ________ א
c
οὐ δύναται ὁ κόσμος
μισῖν ὑμᾶς, ἐμὲ δὲ
μισεῖ, ὅτι ἐγὼ μαρτυρῶ περὶ αὐτοῦ N
οὐ δύναται ὁ κόσμος
μισῖν ὑμᾶς, ἐμὲ δὲ μεισεῖ, ὅτι ἐγὼ μαρτυρῶ περὶ αὐτοῦ W
οὐ δύναται ὁ κόσμος
μησεῖν ὑμᾶς, ἐμὲ δὲ
μησεῖ, ὅτι ἐγὼ μαρτυρῶ περὶ αὐτοῦ θ
οὐ δύναται ὁ κόσμος
μισεῖν ὑμᾶς, ἐμὲ δὲ
μισεῖ, ὅτι ἐγὼ
περὶ αὐτοῦ μαρτυρῶ 33
οὐ δύναται ὁ κόσμος
μησεῖν ὑμᾶς, ἐμὲ δὲ
μισεῖ, ὅτι ἐγὼ μαρτυρῶ περὶ αὐτοῦ 28
οὐ δύναται ὁ κόσμος
μισεῖν ὑμᾶς, ἐμὲ δὲ
μισεῖ, ὅτι ἐγὼ μαρτυρῶ περὶ
ἐμαὐτοῦ 1071
οὐ δύναται ὁ κόσμος
μισεῖν ὑμᾶς, ἐμὲ δὲ
μισεῖ, ὅτι ἐγὼ μαρτυρῶ περὶ αὐτοῦ D
M K L M U Γ Δ Λ Π Ψ
f1 f13 124 2 157 565 579 700 1424
u w t
and in the spelling band:
δυνατε M N, μισει νυ Γ*, μισιν Δ, μησειν 579
(Note above how relatively stable 'eta' was. Even though HTA became
in sound after the second century CE, only three manuscripts inserted it anywhere above. Greek schooling was fairly effective. The spelling convention that was most difficult was EI/I, because that was probably the first sound to shift in the 4th c BCE and apparently it was not uniform in the schools--RB)
And the point of all of this is to say that the scribal revolution that systematically added the accents was in the minuscule revolution of 9c CE and following, long, long, long after they dropped out of the spoken language. Amazing.
Finally, I must add that I appreciate Mark's humor. I trust that it was as smooth and easy to read for others as it was for me. However, some on the list may read Mark's comments literally so it must be explicitly stated that Dr. Buth does NOT in any way want to see a monotonic GNT and he would advocate writing such texts in the full, accepted spelling.
Having said that, I see no problem with writing emails in 'plain' orthography:
και προς φιλους ουτως γραφων χαιρω
So welcome to the Greek world. I would recommend that anyone wanting to read the historical texts learn to understand Greek by how it sounded in the first century. (For discussion, see: http://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/k ... unciation/) Then all of the above is transparently easy to follow and you will start to feel/hear what the scribes were doing or what Paul's audiences were hearing when a letter was read. Imagine, treating Greek like the Greeks treated Greek. πως γαρ ου!