In our study of Greek in the Academy, students often ask about the different “kinds” of Greek–Archaic, Attic, Classical, Koine, Biblical, Modern, etc.. The following text is drawn from Orchard & Sutcliffe’s “Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture”[efn_note]E. Power, “The Languages, Texts and Versions of the Bible,” in A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, ed. Bernard Orchard and Edmund F. Sutcliffe (Toronto; New York; Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1953), 24–25.[/efn_note], which was published in 1953. I hope you find it helpful. -WCM
“The Greek of the original texts and of the Septuagint version of the Bible, recognized in the Renaissance period as a debased form of classical Greek, could not be satisfactorily explained as long as it remained an isolated phenomenon. The study of the numerous Greek papyri, discovered in Egypt during the last century, has finally revealed to us its origin and character. It is not a biblical or Jewish or Alexandrian dialect of Greek but the Koine or “common” Greek which supplanted the classical form of the language and became international in the Hellenistic period inaugurated by the African and Asiatic conquests of Alexander the Great.
The zeal of Greek rulers for the Hellenization of their eastern subjects and still more the exigencies of trade and commerce account for its world-wide diffusion. Attic[efn_note]”Attic” refers to Attica, which was the area of mainland Greece where Athens is located.[/efn_note] Greek had lost its purity even in Greece itself in the fourth cent. b.c. and was in any case, in its classical form, ill adapted to popular and international use. The Koine is the current Attic Greek modified and accommodated to a new and wider sphere of utility. It was naturally used by the sacred writers as the language understood by their contemporaries, providentially designed and admirably adapted for the preaching of the Gospel to all nations.
The Koine was not merely a “spoken language”. It was taught in the schools and was the ordinary medium of literary expression. It thus preserved a general uniformity despite the variations resulting from the nationality or lack of education of the writer and the colloquial or literary character of his composition. It differed from Attic Greek mainly in aiming at a simpler and easier but at the same time clearer and more vigorous mode of expression. The vocabulary is less rich but more varied in its origin. In phonetics there is a tendency to reduce diphthongs to simple vowels. Declensions and conjugations are simplified and occasionally assimilated by analogy. There is a preference for longer and composite rather than shorter and simple words. Co-ordination of dependent clauses is also preferred to subordination and direct speech to indirect. Prepositions are more frequently used not only in composition with verbs but also to strengthen the case endings of nouns and even pleonastically with adverbs. Pleonasm[efn_note]pleonasm (n.) – The use of more words in a sentence or clause than are necessary to express the meaning. (Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “pleonasm, n.”, July 2023. https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/7324341861)[/efn_note]. also appears in an excessive repetition of personal pronouns. The vocative is often accompanied by the article for greater emphasis. The infinitive is used loosely with or without the article in final, consecutive or explanatory clauses, but is preferably replaced on the other hand by a ὅτι clause after verbs of saying and perceiving. The article is used more frequently and before clauses as well as nouns. Adjectives are often replaced by substantives in the genitive. The popular character of the Koine is manifested by sense constructions, anacolutha[efn_note]anacolutha – Change of construction in mid‐sentence such that the initial construction is left unfinished. (Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “anacoluthon, n.”, July 2023. https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/6236514413)[/efn_note] and other grammatical irregularities.
The Greek of the Bible is distinguished from that of profane literature by the presence of semitisms, both hebraisms and aramaisms. The Septuagint interpreters of a Hebrew and sacred text reproduced in Greek some of the modes of expression and phraseology of the original Hebrew. These hebraisms vary in number according to the freedom or literalness of the different translators. They appear also in the NT owing to the influence exerted on the sacred writers by the language of the Septuagint which they consciously or unconsciously imitated. The aramaisms of the NT are explained by the fact that Aramaic was either the native language of the inspired writers or the language of sources which they used.
The discovery in the Egyptian papyri of nearly all the words previously considered peculiar to Biblical Greek established the Koine origin of the NT vocabulary. The semitisms discovered in Egyptian Greek have been similarly interpreted as Koine idioms by many scholars. It should be noted, however, that semitisms in the Bible may appear as coptisms in the papyri. Coptic has many non-Greek idioms in common with Hebrew and Aramaic. Coptic writers would naturally reproduce their native modes of thought in their new medium of expression.”
