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History of Koine Greek History of Koine Greek M. Z. Kopidakis Contents Introduction ................................................. 1 Alexander the Great the the Transmission of the Greek Language ................... 5 Old and New Testament .......................................... 6 Introduction tantly, to learn how to wield the Attic dialect with fluency. The cosmopolitan city of Athens became Man is, according to Aristotle, a political animal the “prytaneum of wisdom”, the «Ε ». –meaning that, within the city, in a society orga- nized by consensus, he can exploit his innate abil- Neither the sad outcome of the Peloponnesian War ities to the fullest and acquire new ones as well. nor ongoing civil convulsions -not even the rise of In the city, language, the communication instru- the Macedonian dynasty- impeded the development ment par excellence, is enriched, refined and nor- of the Attic dialect into the Panhellenic linguistic malized. In the Archaic period, the formation of medium. On the contrary, Philip II, a magnan- the city-state, along with the institution of panhel- imous and discerning ruler, established the Attic lenic athletic and religious centers, the contracting language as the official language for education and of alliances and other political unions (amphicty- administration in his state. Alexander and the off- onies), and the development of commercial activi- spring of other aristocratic Macedonian families all ties contributed to the smoothing out of differences received an Attic education. The celebrated panhel- between dialects. In the pioneering region of Ionia, lenic campaign to the East promoted Hellenic cul- a type of hypertopical koine language appears next ture all the way to Baktria. The multi-ethnic states to the equally hypertopical literary dialects of the of Alexander’s successors furnished the proof of epics and of choral poetry. Until the beginning of Isocrates’ statement that anyone receiving a Greek the Persian Wars, this Ionic Koine, which almost education was a Greek. The Koine dialect, which completely monopolized artistic prose, was the lan- at the time of the successors became an interna- guage of distinction. tional instrument of communication, was an idiom based on the Attic dialect. This idiom was con- After the end of the Persian Wars, Athens assumed sciously promoted by the Macedonian administra- the political and cultural hegemony of Greece. Fear tion and the army, as well as by merchants, fortune- of the Persians rallied the Greeks and this rallying hunters and scholars in Asia Minor, the Near Easy favored the Attic dialect. The Athenian League and Egypt. (478/7 B.C.), with the Temple of Apollo on De- los as its base, enforced its will that Athens be While the term koine is ancient, grammarians have regarded as the center of reference for the major- tended to disagree on the origin of the koine di- ity of mainland cities and islands. With this new alect. Some argued that it originated in the com- gravitas, Athens also attracted theoroi, litigants, mingling of the four basic dialects ( metics, actors, misfits, sophists and prostitutes. In ); others believed that it was the “mother” order to fit into the rather exclusive and demand- of the four dialects; yet others considered it to be ing Athenian society, newcomers were forced to es- a fifth dialect, or a transformation of Attic. The pouse the Athenian way of life and, more impor- latter view, which was also supported by G. Hadji- Grace Notes, a ministry of Austin Bible Church http://gracenotes.info/ History of Koine Greek 2 dakis and other reputable scholars in recent years, phers, historians, scientists, mythographers, and turns out to be the right one. Nevertheless, today fabulists. Nevertheless, the deviations are worth the term Koine is used to indicate the various levels noting: the language of Polybios (201-120 B.C.) is used throughout the Hellenic world in the oral and, highly artificial (neologisms, poetic words, avoid- in part, the written language from the Hellenis- ance of hiatus), whereas the language of Epictetos tic to the Early Byzantine period. This is a syn- (55-135 A.D.), who was a freedman, is very similar cretistic and “encyclopedic” language, which has to the popular koine. a central core and several radiating spurs. Need- In other words, the cultural prestige of Athens, lit- less to say, Athenians and Peloponnesians, Ioni- erary production (especially prose) and the brow- ans and Macedonians, the Hellenized Jews and the beating suasion exerted by state authority (Athe- rulers from Eastern Libya did not all speak the nian alliances and, later, Macedonian hegemony, same language. In contrast to the spoken language, reinforced Attic in the contest of dialects. Nev- which presented a pronounced lack of uniformity, ertheless, the koine that emerged was the result of the written language tended toward homogeneity. multiple concessions and compromises. Thus, some Nevertheless, here, too, differences were important. uniquely Attic characteristics, such as the use of – The historian Polybios writes in a refined and rich instead of – and the second Attic declension Koine, whereas the author of a spell would use a () were rejected, since the other dialects were spicy argot. able to offer a unified type. The tendency of Attic Our immediate sources for the koine are the texts oral speech towards simplification found some unex- that were preserved in inscriptions, papyri and pected allies. Native speakers of other languages, shreds (fragments of vases). A wealth of material those speaking other dialects as well as ordinary is also provided by the lexica/dictionaries of the people could not easily use the numerous eccentric- Atticists; the Greco-Latin glossaries -namely the ities, the flamboyant particles, the complicated syn- elementary methods of learning Greek meant for tax and the finest semantic of the unforgiving Attic the native speakers of Latin- as well as literature. dialect. With time, major changes took place on all Among the most important samples of the koine are levels, leading to the creation of a plastic, rich and, the translation of the Old Testament by the Septu- at the same time, simple linguistic instrument or agint, the New Testament, the Apocrypha and the idiom. Writings. Indirect sources are also found in the di- While the Attic dialect comprised the core of the alects and idioms of the modern Greek language, koine, other dialects, mostly the Ionian, also played that go back to the Byzantine koine. An exception a role in its creation. St. G. Kapsomenos (1907- is found in the Tsakonic dialect, which originated 1978) and Agapetos Tsopanakis proved that the in the new Doric dialect of Laconia. contribution of the Doric language was more im- Right from the start, the Koine laid siege to that portant than previously thought. The Doric lan- bulwark of linguistic conservatism: literature. Of guage significantly enriched both military and le- course, all the poetic genres that survived (epic, el- gal terminology: , (originally the leader egy, iambic, epigram) retained their old artificial of mercenaries), , , . The widely used idiom, with some compromises. New genres were terms (NE instead of the Attic ), , , composed in new, also artificial, dialects. For in- were also Doric. Even the marginal NW en- stance, Theocritos’ Bucolics were a hypertopical dowed the Koine, especially the modern Greek one, Doric dialect based on the dialect of Syracuse. A with the extension of the ending – from the nom- refined version of the Koine was used by the minor inative of the third declension to the accusative: composers of the Anacreontia, the early Christian - (and, by analogy, , ). Hymns as well as work songs and erotic verses. Nev- The language of administration and the military ertheless, the first samples of poetry using stress was strengthened by the Macedonians: (>NE accents, which later dominated, first appeared in , ), , , , while Mace- the early post-Christian centuries. The traditional donian was also the origin of the word and of prosodic poetry would soon be demoted into a mu- the ending – (Μ). seum piece. Thus, at the time of the Koine, major changes were The conquests of the koine in the realm of prose introduced in the phonological system, in the mor- are even more significant. Aristotle, who was much phology, syntax and vocabulary of the Greek lan- admired by Cicero, used an early form of literary guage. Nevertheless, the most significant changes, koine. Koine was also the language used by philoso- those that primarily led to the shaping of the mod- Grace Notes, a ministry of Austin Bible Church http://gracenotes.info/ History of Koine Greek 3 ern Greek language, took place in the realm of ings. phonology. The stress of the ancient Greek lan- guage was musical, as is indicated by the terms There are perennial, short-lived and ephemeral , , , and others. The transition words – the latter being the most noisome. The from the musical to the dynamic stress (more specif- Koine was forced to reject a great number of words ically, the transition of the word stress from musi- that either resisted the tendency to simplification cal to dynamic) seems to have had, as its principal or lost their etymological clarity, were highly id- effect, the suppression of prosody. Thus, the turn iomatic or represented ephemeral values and ob- of the diphthongs into single notes is accelerated jects. Nevertheless, those losses were offset by the ( → i, → e) and consonants become isochronal. influx of thousands of neologisms that were neces- Thus, for instance, , , , and ended up be- sitated by radical changes in society; the rise of ing pronounced as (the transformation of the pro- the lower classes; political developments; the emer- nunciation of the diphthong to was completed gence of the multiethnic states of the successors only in the 10th century A.D.). One of the results and the Roman occupation; cultural innovations; of iotacism was the creation of many homonyms. and, finally, the advent of Christianity.
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