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Koine Greek

Koine Greek (UK: /ˈkɔɪni/ KOY-nee;[3] US: /ˈkɔɪn/ KOY-nay, /kɔɪˈn/ koy-NAY;[4][5] Koine Greek: ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, romanizedhē koinè diálektos, lit.'the common dialect'),[a] also known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek, Septuagint Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-regional form of Greek spoken and written during the Hellenistic period, the Roman Empire and the early Byzantine Empire. It evolved from the spread of Greek following the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC, and served as the lingua franca of much of the Mediterranean region and the Middle East during the following centuries. It was based mainly on Attic and related Ionic speech forms, with various admixtures brought about through dialect levelling with other varieties.[6]

Not to be confused with Koiné language.

Koine Greek

(h)e̝ kyˈne̝ diˈalektos ~
i cyˈni ðiˈalektos

Hellenistic Kingdoms and Roman Empire.
By the Early Middle Ages, used in the Southern Balkans, Aegean Islands and Ionian Islands Asia Minor, parts of Southern Italy and Sicily, Byzantine Crimea, the Levant, Egypt and Nubia

300 BC – 600 AD (Byzantine official use until 1453); developed into Medieval Greek, survives as the liturgical language of the Greek Orthodox and the Greek Catholic churches[1]

(a proposal to use ecg was rejected in 2023[2])

Koine Greek included styles ranging from conservative literary forms to the spoken vernaculars of the time.[7] As the dominant language of the Byzantine Empire, it developed further into Medieval Greek, which then turned into Modern Greek.[8]


Literary Koine was the medium of much post-classical Greek literary and scholarly writing, such as the works of Plutarch and Polybius.[6] Koine is also the language of the Septuagint (the 3rd century BC Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible), the Christian New Testament, and of most early Christian theological writing by the Church Fathers. In this context, Koine Greek is also known as "Biblical", "New Testament", "ecclesiastical", or "patristic" Greek.[9] The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote his private thoughts in Koine Greek in a work that is now known as Meditations.[10] Koine Greek continues to be used as the liturgical language of services in the Greek Orthodox Church and in some Greek Catholic churches.[11]

Name[edit]

The English-language name Koine is derived from the Koine Greek term ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος (hē koinḕ diálektos), meaning "the common dialect".[5] The Greek word κοινή (koinḗ) itself means "common". The word is pronounced /kɔɪˈn/, /ˈkɔɪn/, or /kˈn/ in US English and /ˈkɔɪn/ in UK English. The pronunciation of the word koine itself gradually changed from [koinéː] (close to the Classical Attic pronunciation [koi̯.nɛ̌ː]) to [cyˈni] (close to the Modern Greek [ciˈni]). In Modern Greek, the language is referred to as Ελληνιστική Κοινή, "Hellenistic Koiné", in the sense of "Hellenistic supraregional language").[12]


Ancient scholars used the term koine in several different senses. Scholars such as Apollonius Dyscolus (second century AD) and Aelius Herodianus (second century AD) maintained the term koine to refer to the Proto-Greek language, while others used it to refer to any vernacular form of Greek speech which differed somewhat from the literary language.[13]


When Koine Greek became a language of literature by the first century BC, some people distinguished two forms: written as the literary post-classical form (which should not be confused with Atticism), and vernacular as the day-to-day vernacular.[13] Others chose to refer to Koine as "the dialect of Alexandria" or "Alexandrian dialect" (ἡ Ἀλεξανδρέων διάλεκτος), or even the universal dialect of its time.[14] Modern classicists have often used the former sense.

The , a 3rd century BC Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and texts not included in the Hebrew Bible;

Septuagint

The Greek New Testament, composed originally in Greek.

The ancient distinction between long and short vowels was gradually lost, and from the second century BC all vowels were isochronic (having equal length).

[13]

From the second century BC, the was replaced with a stress accent.[13]

Ancient Greek pitch accent

: loss of rough breathing, /h/. Rough breathing had already been lost in the Ionic Greek varieties of Anatolia and the Aeolic Greek of Lesbos.[13]

Psilosis

The diphthongs ᾱͅ, , /aːi eːi oːi/ were respectively simplified to the long vowels , η, ω /aː oː/.

[13]

The diphthongs αι, ει, and οι became . αι, which had already been pronounced as /ɛː/ by the Boeotians since the 4th century BC and written η (e.g. πῆς, χῆρε, μέμφομη), became in Koine, too, first a long vowel /ɛː/ and then, with the loss of distinctive vowel length and openness distinction /e/, merging with ε. The diphthong ει had already merged with ι in the 5th century BC in Argos, and by the 4th century BC in Corinth (e.g. ΛΕΓΙΣ), and it acquired this pronunciation also in Koine. The diphthong οι fronted to /y/, merging with υ. The diphthong υι came to be pronounced [yj], but eventually lost its final element and also merged with υ.[25] The diphthong ου had been already raised to /u/ in the 6th century BC, and remains so in Modern Greek.[13]

monophthongs

The diphthongs αυ and ευ came to be pronounced [av ev] (via [aβ eβ]), but are partly to [af ef] before the voiceless consonants θ, κ, ξ, π, σ, τ, φ, χ, and ψ.[13]

assimilated

Simple vowels mostly preserved their ancient pronunciations. η /e/ (classically pronounced /ɛː/) was raised and merged with ι. In the 10th century AD, υ/οι /y/ unrounded to merge with ι. These changes are known as .[13]

iotacism

The consonants also preserved their ancient pronunciations to a great extent, except β, γ, δ, φ, θ, χ and ζ. Β, Γ, Δ, which were originally pronounced /b ɡ d/, became the fricatives /v/ (via [β]), /ɣ/, /ð/, which they still are today, except when preceded by a nasal consonant (μ, ν); in that case, they retain their ancient pronunciations (e.g. γαμβρός > γαμπρός [ɣamˈbros], ἄνδρας > άντρας [ˈandras], ἄγγελος > άγγελος [ˈaŋɟelos]). The latter three (Φ, Θ, Χ), which were initially pronounced as (/pʰ kʰ/ respectively), developed into the fricatives /f/ (via [ɸ]), /θ/, and /x/. Finally ζ, which is still metrically categorised as a double consonant with ξ and ψ because it may have initially been pronounced as σδ [zd] or δσ [dz], later acquired its modern-day value of /z/.[13]

aspirates

Abel, F.-M. Grammaire du grec biblique.

Allen, W. Sidney, Vox Graeca: a guide to the pronunciation of classical Greek – 3rd ed., Cambridge University Press, 1987.  0-521-33555-8

ISBN

Andriotis, Nikolaos P. History of the Greek Language

Buth, Randall,

Ἡ κοινὴ προφορά: Koine Greek of Early Roman Period

Bruce, Frederick F. The Books and the Parchments: Some Chapters on the Transmission of the Bible. 3rd ed. Westwood, NJ: Revell, 1963. Chapters 2 and 5.

Conybeare, F.C. and Stock, St. George. Grammar of Septuagint Greek: With Selected Readings, Vocabularies, and Updated Indexes.

Horrocks, Geoffrey C. (2010). Greek: A history of the language and its speakers (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell.

Weir, Herbert (1956), Greek Grammar, Harvard University Press,  978-0-674-36250-5

ISBN

Kantor, Benjamin (2023), he Pronunciation of New Testament Greek Judeo-Palestinian Greek Phonology and Orthography from Alexander to Islam, Eerdmans,  9780802878311.

ISBN

Smyth, Herbert Weir (1956), Greek Grammar, Harvard University Press,  978-0-674-36250-5.

ISBN

Bakker, Egbert J., ed. 2010. A companion to the Ancient Greek language. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Blass, Friedrich, and Albert Debrunner. 1961. Greek grammar of the New Testament and other early Christian literature. Translated and revised by R. W. Funk. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Christidis, Anastasios-Phoivos, ed. 2007. A history of Ancient Greek: From the beginnings to Late Antiquity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Colvin, Stephen C. 2007. A historical Greek reader: Mycenaean to the koiné. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Easterling, P. E., and . 2001. Greek Scripts: An Illustrated Introduction. London: Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies.

Carol Handley

Evans, T. V., and Dirk Obbink, eds. 2009. The language of the papyri. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

Gignac, Francis T. 1976–1981. A grammar of the Greek papyri of the Roman and Byzantine periods. 2 vols. Milan: Cisalpino-La Goliardica.

Palmer, Leonard R. 1980. The Greek language. London: Faber & Faber.

Stevens, Gerald L. 2009. New Testament Greek Intermediate: From Morphology to Translation. Cambridge, UK: Lutterworth Press.

––––. 2009. New Testament Greek Primer. Cambridge, UK: Lutterworth Press.

by Winfred P. Lehmann and Jonathan Slocum, free online lessons at the Linguistics Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin

New Testament Greek Online

– A unicode keyboard originally developed by Char Matejovsky for use by Westar Institute scholars

Free Koine Greek Keyboard

– An online community for Biblical Greek

The Biblical Greek Forum

– Dictionaries, manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, and tools for applying linguistics to the study of Hellenistic Greek

Greek-Language.com

A daily di-glot or tri-glot (Vulgate) reading

Diglot