R. Perkins wrote:I recently heard a man claiming to be well versed in exegesis pronouncing the article ὁ as ...
Pronunciation has nothing to do with exegesis. There's a variety of pronunciations for New Testament Greek. Sounds like you probably learned Erasmian pronunciation, which carefully distinguishes ω/o. Erasmian pronunciation was never an authentic pronunciation, but lots of good exegetes use Erasmian pronunciation, which was made up by Erasmus in the middle ages.
It's true that ι/ει, υ/οι, and ω/o were probably distinguished in earlier Greek. This distinction
was probably lost by the New Testament period.
The most significant changes during the Koine Greek period concerned vowels: these were the loss of vowel length distinction, the substitution of the Ancient Greek system of pitch accent with a stress accent system, and the monophthongization of diphthongs (except αυ and ευ). These changes seem widely attested from the 2nd century BC in Egyptian Greek, and in the early 2nd century AD in learned Attic inscriptions; it is therefore likely that they were already common in the 2nd century BC and generalized no later than the 2nd century AD.
Many people here on B-Greek use a Restored Greek pronunciation, in which ω/o are pronounced the same way.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
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