Re: Machen & "the language of the street."

Jonathan Robie (jwrobie@mindspring.com)
Sun, 26 Oct 1997 19:53:04 -0500

At 02:42 PM 10/26/97 -0800, Don Wilkins wrote:

>Jim's attitude may well be the prevailing one, and there are plenty of
>unusual constructions in NT Greek, but I would maintain that koine--at least
>NT koine--is grammatically correct the great majority of the time, and even
>that where it appears to be incorrect it is probable that the oddity is to
>be explained as translation Greek (Hebrew idiom, etc.) or historical
>development of the language, etc. It is of course quite different from
>Attic, but this is due to differences in audience and purpose, rather than
>inferior grammar. Koine grammars should be descriptive, but sometimes are
>critical of the original text, and the criticism may or may not be justified.

The biggest exception to this is the Revelation, which seems to have some
obvious grammatical mistakes, e.g. mistakes in agreement.

Jonathan

Jonathan Robie
jwrobie@mindspring.com
http://www.mindspring.com/~jwrobie