[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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