My suggestion is to refrain from throwing condescending remarks when you first enter into them by admitting you're not able to discern what is clearly designated as copy and paste from original thoughts written by a member. In relation to your target of contention, me. To later try to advise I shouldn't "pontificate" about things I know nothing about makes your attempt at berating me a joke on you. It also makes you presumptuous in your zeal to attack thinking I did not garner the article(s) I share on this forum from my own personal library of saves. And after careful consideration of the research and sources contained therein.
Your failed tactics also demonstrate per your scope of implied critical thought that you're shall we say not one that actually knows what they claim to know about Greek language.
For members consideration. The second excerpted text below this one fully revokes Angela's claim about Koine Greek as she intended to berate the information in the link I shared that compared Ekklesia and church language origins.
What Was Koine Greek?
Dr. Orville Boyd Jenkins
Question:
Was Koine Greek just a dialect of Classical Greek, or was Classical Greek already dead?
I have heard that the Koine Greek was the perfect language for the New Testament, because at the time of the N. T. writings, Koine was "static" and precise in its vocabulary and structures, with no exact synonyms, but did have some close synonyms that had distinct nuances in meaning, and could therefore be distinguished; it was considered "static" (I don't remember if that is the exact term) because, not long after that, it died as a spoken language, so its meanings were "sure" (?) (the form that was spoken after that was considered "pre-modern Greek" (not the term they used, I'm sure).
Answer:
"Koine" (Greek for "common") is a term that came to designate that broad, common form of mostly non-literary Greek used by Greeks in common speech among themselves and with other ethnicities, and used by various ethnicities in their communication with other ethnicities. I find it commonly used as a technical term for a period in history roughly designating the 1st century BCE and CE (BC and AD). But it covers the early centuries of Christian development.
"Classical" Greek is a designation given to the writings of a particular period in the history of early Greek literature, including writing by Plato and other philosophers. "Classical" Greek also consisted of a variety of forms, that we could call dialects, with differences noted between the writings from different cities and regions.
Classical Greek did not die out – it just continued to change as every other language. Various Greek dialects from the ancient times continued to be used in various areas of the ancient world, from Hispania to China, from Central Asia to the Arabian peninsula.
Yes, in one sense, Koine can be considered a dialect of Classical Greek. But not in the normal sense of "dialect." Koine was not contemporary with the language of the "Classical" period, so was more like a
descendant of the same clan as classical Greek, a
distant younger cousin.
Keep in mind also that "Classical Greek" wasn't "classical" at the time it was spoken. It was just "Greek," or actually they called it
Elenika. We refer to it now as classical only in light of the literature we have from that period and our knowledge of the language and its culture milieu. Greek was just Greek, with its variations from region to region, class to class and age to age.
The formal written forms we now call "classical" Greek were still the reference standard for written Greek in the first century AD, so written styles existed
on a continuum between that older standard – set several hundred years before – and the current actual Greek language heard and used at that time in history. Virtually the full continuum of style appears in the New Testament texts.
[...]
Koine to Modern Greek
In general summary, Koine became the BASE for all modern Greek, superseding the classical forms, which already by the first century were being considered separate languages, and by the 3rd century were considered foreign languages.
Koine consolidated in the Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire), centered in Constantinople, in the early Middle Ages. Even modern Cypriots tell me the Biblical Greek is like a foreign language to them, which terribly surprised me, since I can read both, and they seem
very similar to me!
(Greek has actually changed less since the first century than virtually any other European language. English speakers can hardly understand something written 400 years ago, like Shakespeare and the King James version of the Bible. Two thousand years ago, there was no such thing as an English language.)
The Common Greek language was a set of varieties, and, of course, continued to change. I did some study on this by visiting museums to read Byzantine manuscripts, like church edicts, ordination announcements, etc., but could not do a good scholarly job with the time I had.
You can see the gradual changes in grammatical and phonetic form over the centuries, just like in Spanish, French and English. The patterns of sound change, as well as grammar, are very similar to Latin.
In Greek, we see the common pattern of language change – things simplified. The current patterns of grammar and pronunciation in modern Greek have
all developed systematically from the Koine forms, just as our modern languages have from their older forms.
The peripheral forms (dialects) died out, and major regional usages were absorbed into the general Greek language just as English dialectic forms have been accreted into the "standard" forms of English, giving us many forms of the same word with similar or different meanings. There are several dialects today, with some differences. Cypriot Greek is today the most like the first-century forms of Greek.
Robertson and other linguists of Greek give the
same type of analysis of Greek as others did for all known modern languages with a literate history. Words overlapped in meaning and usage. Those who make the romantic claims of perfection for Greek appear to be unaware of the language itself and must make their claims up out of whole cloth, cut with crooked lines by dull scissors.
It is totally unbelievable to think that
any human language is ever so precise as to defy human usage! A very characteristic of human speech is creativity and variety. Conformity also is a common feature of language, but innovation and conformity, or regularization, are both
always going on at the same time, on different features of each language.
Shifts in Pronunciation
Thus pronunciation was shifting and uncertain in Koine Greek, indicated by the variety of spellings in borrowings in Aramaic, Latin, Egyptian, etc. Most notable is one of Jesus’ sayings on the cross,
Eli, lama sabachthani, spelled by another gospel writer as
Eloi.
Eli and
Eloi represent the same word, pronounced as in modern Greek “Eh-lee.” Which was the "correct" way to spell it? How do the Platonist Romantic spiritualizers answer that? Robertson has an amazingly detailed discussion of pronunciations, syntax and meanings which bring out the dynamic, living character of Koine Greek.
[Full Article LINKED HERE ]
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