[B-Greek] A touch of koine: "Christmas treat"?
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Jun 27 06:40:12 EDT 2008
The Economist has a story on the above subject ("Bats about the Attic"
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11622394
or
http://tinyurl.com/3t882a),
including, inter alia, the following paragraph:
"Christianity, rather than the glories of Athens and the horrors of
Sparta, may be proving the biggest draw. Though some fundamentalists
appear to believe that the Bible was written in English, for the more
thoughtful (or pious) Christian, serious study of the New Testament or
the early Christian church is impossible without first knowing alpha
from omega. In America, Greek and Hebrew are standard parts of a
Master of Divinity degree—necessary to become a minister in most
respectable Protestant denominations. That does not match the now fast-
reviving use of Latin in the Roman Catholic liturgy. But it helps.
While the koine Greek current in the eastern Mediterranean in the 1st
century AD is different from the Attic, Ionian or Homeric dialects
used in the greatest works of classical literature, it is also
considerably easier. (For the austere classicists of St Paul’s Girls’
School in London, a touch of koine is regarded as a “Christmas
treat”.) "
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Ret)
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