Today I uploaded “Lesson 19: Semantic Roles and Voice, The Aorist Passive” to my Hellenisitic Greek grammar. I will add vocabulary exercises later. I also added a significant amount to the Topical Index.
Scope of a Hellenistic Greek Grammar III: Papyri
Since the papyri have been mentioned twice already in this discussion of the scope of a Hellenistic Greek Grammar, I thought I would offer a little of my own take on the issue.
The papyri are extremely valuable for documenting language change. They are not as helpful for documenting a particular point in the middle of that change. Their very variability offers great evidence for the shifts that were occurring in pronunciation during the Hellenistic period, for example, but they don’t help in understanding Luke’s discourse preferences.
Their importance, from a linguistic point of view, has been that they have given us a clearer picture of conversational or informal Greek in and around Egypt and have clarified to some extent what we might call business Greek or the language of commerce. These are legitimate concerns for a grammar of Hellenistic Greek, but are not necessarily crucial for understanding the biblical documents.
It is very hard to sort out all of the variation in the papyri, but they are nonetheless fascinating.
See also, “Scope of a Hellenistic Greek Grammar IV.”
Scope of a Hellenistic Greek Grammar II: Jewish and Early Christian Literature
The discussion on the documentary scope of a Hellenistic Greek Grammar has slowed a little, so I want to pull out one comment by Rick Brannan for further discussion. After citing O’Donnell’s proposed corpus, Rick proposes a few further works that I also think deserve serious attention.
He suggests two works from the Apostolic Fathers, and both fit the literary level and style of much of what is in the New Testament. He also suggests including Philo [of Alexandria], in addition to Josephus. Both of these authors were Jewish and each was bilingual (though not to the same degree), and because of this share certain features with several of the New Testament writers. Here’s what Rick Brannan had to say:
In Matthew Brook O’Donnell’s “Corpus Linguistics and the Greek of the New Testament”, he outlines a corpus of Hellenistic works to use for corpus linguistic purposes; there may be some insight. See pp. 164-165 of his book. It comes down to the NT, a few LXX books (Judges, 1 Macc, 2 Esdras) Hermas, Ignatius’ letters, Josephus’ Life, Philo’s On Moses. Then it gets interesting: Strabo’s Geography, Epictetus’ Dissertations, Polybius’ History, Plutarch’s Cato Minor, Arrian’s Anabasis, Diodorus Siculus’ Library of History, Cassius Dio’s Roman History, Apollodorus’ Library, and a generic “Selection of Documentary Papyri” and a generic “Selection of Inscriptions” (no further info on those last two). I think there should be more LXX, Apostolic Fathers (namely 1 Clement and Hermas, at least), Josephus and Philo, and that perhaps some of the early Greek OT Pseudepigrapha and NT Apocrypha too.
Are there other works from the Early Christian and Jewish communities that you think should be included in the documentary base for a serious grammar of Hellenistic Greek?
See also, “Scope of a Hellenistic Greek Grammar III: Papyrii.”
Navigation in My Introductory Grammar
I have completed my revisions of the navigation system in my introductory grammar of Hellenistic Greek. The 18 lessons currently available all have a navigation bar at the top and bottom as well as a link to the topical index at the bottom.
It will be quite some time before I am able to complete the grammar, but the lessons that are currently available are 100% free. No adds. No fees. Use them as you please. If you quote them, though, please include the URL in your citation.
Micheal Palmer’s Hellenistic Greek
Scope of a Hellenistic Greek Grammar
We could speak about the scope of a grammar of an ancient language in several ways. We could talk about what issues belong in a beginning grammar, what in an intermediate, and what in an advanced or reference grammar. Perhaps I will write about that at a later time. The issue of scope that I have in mind now is the documentary scope. What documents should serve as the basis for the grammar. What documents should the grammar enable its users to read?
This is an important question for Hellenistic Greek in particular because the answer has seemed obvious for so long, but there is reason to question the traditional answer. The majority of grammars of Hellenistic Greek deal either exclusively with the New Testament or are limited to the early Christian Literature. While the traditional reference grammars give passing attention to the wider Hellenistic literature, beginning and intermediate grammars in the past fifty years have seldom ever referred to anything outside the New Testament.
The early Christian literature is, of course, extremely important, and is what the majority of students of Hellenistic Greek most want to read. But do we not risk misunderstanding by failing to examine a wider range of literature? Here are a few ways in which a wider range of literature could make understanding of the biblical texts more accurate:
I am attempting to move in the direction of including a broader range of Hellenistic literature in my own beginning grammar. While it is still heavily dominated by the early Christian literature, I am reading as much as possible outside that tradition to make sure that what I have to say in the grammar is actually true to a wider range of texts.
Here are some of the texts I have been reading:
- Epictetus, Discourses (ΑΡΡΙΑΝΟΥ ΤΩΝ ΕΠΙΚΤΗΤΟΥ ΔΙΑΤΡΙΒΩΝ)
Diodorus Siculus, Library of History (ΒΙΒΛΙΟΘΗΚΗΣ ΙΣΤΟΡΙΚΗΣ)
Chariton of Aphrodisias, The Story of Callirhoe (ΤΑ ΠΕΡΙ ΚΑΛΛΙΡΟΗΝ ΔΙΗΓΗΜΑΤΑ)
These texts represent a fairly wide range of styles and literary levels, though not as wide as it might appear at first glance. The Discourses of Epictetus, for example, were actually written by Arrian. Epictetus did not write down his own teachings. The relationship between him and the document that bears his name is similar in some respects (not identical) to the relationship between Jesus and his words as presented in the Gospels. Jesus did not write them. In fact, he may have spoken in Aramaic, and the Gospel writers had to translate what was remembered of his words. Arrian wrote from notes, violating the intention of his teacher who thought true philosophy should be oral, not written.
I would love to hear from you about what you see as the ideal documentary scope of a Hellenistic Greek Grammar.
See also, “Scope of a Hellenistic Greek Grammar II: Jewish and Early Christian Literature.”
Lesson 18: Future Tense Verbs
Today I added a brief exercise to lesson 18 to provide practice in recognizing future tense forms of μι-conjugation verbs.
Lesson 8: Verbs
I have uploaded a new version of lesson 8, “Verbs.” It includes two corrections and a new table showing all the Greek present tense forms presented in the lesson.
Delay of Online Grammar
I regret that I have not been able to add to the online grammar for some time now. Responsibilities at work have made it impossible to make the kind of progress I would like. Unfortunately, it will probably be late spring before I am able to make significant progress on it. I regret the delay.
Currently there are 18 lessons up and running. The complete grammar has over 30. I hope to complete converting the remaining lessons from paper to HTML this summer.
Lesson 9 (First Aorist)
I have redesigned lesson nine (First Aorist) to provide a more complete, yet clearer discussion of the first aorist forms. If you have already read that lesson, I suggest you read the new version to review and to gain a clearer understanding of some of the forms you are seeing in the later lessons.
Topical Index
I am currently designing a topic index for the online grammar. The aim is to make the grammar more useful for review.
While the primary target of the grammar is students in their first year of study, the index will increase the usefulness of the grammar for people who learned Greek some time ago, but need to review in order to improve their reading skill.
The format is rather preliminary for the moment, but I have made the index live so that you can give me feedback as the work progresses. Obviously, the list of topics in the index will increase rapidly as the grammar grows. If you have suggestions for what you would like to see in the index, just let me know. I’ll do my best to accommodate.
You can view what little I’ve done so far on the index here: Topical Index