From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Mon Dec 13 1999 - 17:37:19 EST
<x-rich>At 5:01 PM -0500 12/13/99, James Dewan wrote:
<excerpt><fontfamily><param>Arial</param>This is a rather ignorant
question, but I'm afraid I must ask it. My I hear what exactly the
benefit is of learning Attic Greek for improving one's grasp of koine
Greek? Is there a benefit? Should I take the time and effort to learn
it, or continue to learn koine Greek? Much thanks
Jim Dewan
Pastor, Sinclairville, NY
</fontfamily></excerpt><fontfamily><param>Arial</param>
</fontfamily>I would not insist that anyone MUST learn Attic Greek, but
I would uphold the notion that the benefit of learning it and of
reading Greek from the era earlier than and later than and even
contemporaneous with the NT but outside of the GNT is significant for
numerous reasons (we've discussed this repeatedly over the months and
years and nothing I say now is new): one's understanding of ANY body of
Greek literature will ordinary be enhanced by acquisition of
familiarity with other literature being written at the same time and
earlier in the same language; for one who wants to go ahead from NT
Greek and read patristic writers, it soon becomes evident that by the
middle of the second century A.D. the Greek being written by educated
church fathers such as Clement or later Origen is Attic rather than
Koine, owing to the "Atticist" movement that did for Attic Greek much
of what Renaissance rediscovery of classical Latin did for Latin prose,
establishment of the older language as the standard of good language.
Other benefits: a greater familiarity with the cultural background of
the Mediterranean World, inasmuch, however much weight one assigns to
the OT and Judaism in the NT background, it would be hard to
demonstrate that the Greco-Roman background is negligible for, say, the
Pauline letters or even the gospels of Luke and Mark; yet another
reason: the older Greek literature is worth reading for its own sake,
and by "older" I mean everything from Homer and Hesiod on down through
the Periclean era and the Hellenistic era.
Lest I be misunderstood, I repeat once more: I would not argue that one
whose only Greek is the Koine of the NT is not equipped at all for the
primary purpose for which he or she learned Greek, BUT I do believe
that one will read even the NT Koine better if one knows more of the
Greek written before, during and after the NT corpus itself. But this
is a question that will certainly be answered differently by different
list-members; I offer no more than my own opinion.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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