And incidentally, an immensely important thing to do in this vein? Would be to fully doccument the last native speakers of Aramaic, in audio recordings. If they still exist, as they did a few years ago (in some African monasteries?).

By the way, using the present sense of a language, to try to get at the past sense, of course, runs into many dangers well known to etymologists and semantics scholars. (“Folk etymology”; false “backformation”? Presentism? Anachronistic readings? A-historicism? False cognates/cognatives? Words I barely remember and probably mix up).

But still, keeping in mind all the things that can go wrong? Speaking even the modern version of a language, could well open up – with due cautions and reservations – some aspects of old texts not noticed before.

In fact, though this is not my field, I was personally one of the first people to suggest that the various Pre-Columbian languages found in ancient glyphs, might not be extinct as nearly all scholars said. Suggesting that we should go into South America and talk to the locals … until we found a still-spoken tongue that might correspond to the old glyphs. This approach was taken over by others … and apparently worked. And has helped immensel to open up Pre-Columbian translations.

So, Marv suggests, we are surrounded by – and are constantly using/ invoking – the names of many gods. Without knowing it.

Maybe in a way therefore, we are still partially polytheists, deep down? Wthout knowing it?

It’s a sure thing that most people don’t know the derivations of words. So the actual influence of pagan deities in some of our day, month and place names, etc. is not really what is in view. In fact, most people aren’t aware that September means the seventh month. In Europe you inscriptions using 7ber “septem-ber” for September, even though it has been the ninth month for centuries.

I bet people knew the etymologies when they were educated in the classical subjects. The French revolutionaries were so aware of them, and wanting to expunge every trace of religion, Christian or pagan, that they changed the calendar (though later it was changed back) using seasonal, agricultural, etc. names.

It is odd to be using names of divinities unawares, as it were. Spanish and French use Roman gods instead of Germanic ones of course. However, Monday is named after the moon for us and them. In French and Spanish, however, Sunday is “the Lord’s day,” though in French at least that etymology is not too transparent. I suspect the reason that the Greeks name their days of the week the way they do is that the etymology of the Roman calendar WAS transparent.

Dr. G. wrote:

Of course, this is about as unhistorical as one can get. Using modern Greek to teach us something about the old; on the assumption that the old lingers on in the new.

Not too offbase an idea, actually, if you read Dr. Chrys Caragounis’s 700-page book on this very idea (The Development of Greek and the New Testament: Morphology, Syntax, Phonology, and Textual Transmission, Baker Academic 2004, 2006). Dr. Caragounis has his critics, though.

Granted, information from the exact age of Jesus say, would be best. But in turn, all that came in turn, from earlier history. I don’t see one age as entirely autonymous; it is just the latest shoot on a very ancient tree. So that … to be sure while 1) info from the exact age is best; still 2) that era itself can be partially explained by … its own history. In this case, earlier Greek. (And other languages).

Otherwise, your argument ends up … “dissing” History itself. Would you argue that the meaning of the Bible today, is what we should know? We assume that to know the Bible today, we must look back. To at least the time of the Bible itself.

So why not work back, still further, again? To the period before the Bible itself? Especially … since the number of exactly – or even roughly – contemporaneous texts is somewhat limited? Relatively speaking?

Especially since the people of the time were to some extent, reading many old texts themselves?

So that perhaps there was not even, a “purely” NT Greek at all? Indeed, the differences between the Greek of the writings of Peter, vs. that of – Luke? ANd Paul – has often been noted. Perhaps it wasn’t even a difference between educated and uneducated … but even newer vs. older? Or provincial vs. Roman Greek?

Arguably then, there isn’t even a strictly NT Greek.

WHile then too of course, we aren’t sure Jesus for example spoke Greek; probabaly Aramic some say. So that the study of early Persian (Farsi?) and Arabic, would also be relevant.

Granted, there is a nexus of the most relevant texts; those in the same time frame (and place) as the Septuagint. (If you take that text as authoritative; vs. Masoretic texts?).

But still, limited as material is from that era – and keeping in mind that people then are still to some extent a product of their earlier history? Then I prefer to go a little broader, looking a historical contexts.

Especially because I don’t know much Greek, to be sure, I like looking at the mythology all around at this time. It’s what I’ve got, instead of Greek, to be sure.

And actually, I’m such a un-historicistic heretic on this, I actually feel that learning modern Greek, might give us some perspectives on ancient.

My (former) Greek girlfriend for example, used to keep referring to “Delfeee” (phonetic). Apparently that’s the pronunciation of the Greek town next to “Delfi.” Long i. But from this, I currently have the hypothesis that after all, maybe that was the original pronunciation? Not a long “i” at the end of Delphi at all? But “thel-fee”?

Of course, this is about as unhistorical as one can get. Using modern Greek to teach us something about the old; on the assumption that the old lingers on in the new.

Still, I’m entertaining this as at least an hypothesis: does that modern pronunciation, actually match up better, with history?

Any ideas?

Dr. Wallace:

Χαιρειν,

I have been making poor attempts (mostly starts and stops – mainly stops!) during the past years to learn Attic/Classical Greek to expand and round out my understanding of NT Greek, and may still do so at some point.

(FWIW, Donald J. Mastronarde’s Attic Greek textbook has a very useful explanation of accents that none of my Koinê textbooks mentioned – an explanation having to do with “Contonation and Mora” (p. 17 of his text) that I would recommend a teacher incorporate in any class in NT Greek, assuming it holds for the Koinê.)

But I had lunch a couple weeks ago in Abu Gosh (near Jerusalem) with Dr. Randall Buth, and mentioned this to him, and he seemed pretty confident as you do (if I’m reading you correctly) that one can profitably improve one’s understanding of Koinê with time spent reading the Koinê authors outside the NT like Josephus; i.e., one doesn’t need to learn the earlier language (though some at B-Greek like Dr. Carl Conrad and Edgar Krentz would, I think, argue that knowing only the Greek of the NT and the Koinê is not ideal or sufficient).

Dr. G., I was tracking with you until you said ‘therefore, our Greek dictionaries and etymologies… would be still useful.’ You spoke of looking at a word synchronically–that is, at a slice of time in which the word was used–as (I presumed) superior to looking at it diachronically. You divided up the periods of Greek to Classical, Koine, and Patristic, though these are not quite realistic breaks. The periods of Greek are Pre-Attic (Homer to c 5th century BC), Attic (to 330 BC), Koine (330 BC to AD 330), Byzantine (AD 330 to 1453), and Modern. The early patristic writers, and the LXX, fall into the same period as the NT.

You asked, “don’t we want to find out what the words meant 2,000 years ago?” Absolutely! That’s the very reason why looking at other periods of time than the Koine will simply not be as beneficial as looking at Koine Greek. Even basic vocabulary, such as agape, kosmos, changed from Attic to Koine, or perhaps from secular to sacred authors. I think you may have confused etymology with age, in the sense that you assumed that I was speaking about language usage NOW. No, I was speaking about how language is used by the speakers and writers of the language at the time that is being investigated. And this is precisely why I said you were imbibing in etymologizing: Norse and Greek deities have little relevance to how we use words today that had different meanings a millennium or two ago. When it comes to the NT, we don’t spend all our time looking at Homer or Photius. These guys are nearly a 1000 years removed from the NT (one before, one after); we spend out time looking at the NT itself, the LXX, the papyri written between 330 BC and AD 330, Josephus, Philo, the Apostolic Fathers, and a host of other sources. In short, there is plenty of material to keep us going in terms of the meaning of words in the NT. Why would we be tempted to go to a period five hundred years removed from the NT to determine the meaning of NT words as they were understood in the first century?

You’re describing I think, something like “semantic drift”? I don’t quite remember the exact term, but this phrase will begin to get at it.

To be sure, the meaning of old words has changed. But if we think the Bible is sacred, and was written 2,000 years ago? Then don’t we want to try to find what the words meant, 2,000 years ago? While most dictionaries do that. Most scholars of Greek separate it into (as I recall) 1) “Classic” Greek (after HOmer; Plato?); and the 2) daily Greek that was current in Jesus’ day, “Koine.” As well as the Greek of the Septuagint. And 3) “Patristic” Greek, from the days of the “fathers” after the death of Jesus.

From all this, scholars think they can kind of tell, what the words meant in the time of Jesus. And therefore, our Greek dictionaries and etymologies … would be still useful.

Unless you want to argue that … the original meaning does not matter much? And it is what we have made of it sense, that is best?

Which some might argue.

Very interesting etymological discussions folks. Not sure what the value is for the purposes of this blog post. But since you’re onto that topic, here’s some more points to ponder.

In Greek, the days of the week (translated) are:
‘belonging to the Lord’ (Sunday)
‘second day’ (Monday)
‘third day’ (Tuesday)
‘fourth day’ (Wednesday)
‘fifth day’ (Thursday)
‘day of preparation’ (Friday)
‘Sabbath’ (Saturday).

If the pagan gods of Greece had such an influence on us, in such a way that lingers with us today, why is it that the Greeks have zero trace of that in the naming of their days?

One commenter noted that Nike refers to a Greek goddess. True, but that’s not the word’s primary meaning. It means ‘victory’ and is what the marathon runner uttered after racing 26 miles from Marathon to Athens. No one thought he was speaking a Greek goddess!

With regard to Norse gods in our background, I find this very interesting. I didn’t know a lot of the background on the days of the week, nor even on some months, as you all discussed. But isn’t it a quantum leap to say that we’re still influenced by the worship of these gods? After all, if most English speakers (I presume) don’t know the historical roots of these names, how is it that they are being influenced by them?

Etymology is the science of tracing a word back to its roots and/or back to its constituent parts. But since 1916, when Ferdinand Saussure’s famous book on linguistics appeared (Cours de linguistique générale), linguistic scholars have realized that we have put way too much stock in etymology. Illustrations abound. Did you know that ‘nice’ used to mean ‘stupid”? or that ‘answer’ was a combination of two words, ‘and swear’ used in legally binding oaths? Our word ‘dynamite’ comes from the Greek ‘dunamis’ which does not connote explosive power.

Look up some terms in the Oxford English Dictionary sometime–the only exhaustive (at least, when it first came out) dictionary of the English language, complete with pinpointing when in history words were used a certain way.

I tell my students that when they hear a preacher say, “In the Greek, this word literally means…” the Greek word almost always does not literally mean that. What the preacher is doing is applying etymology to the meaning of the word–taking a meaning that may have existed in Homer’s day and assuming that its force did not change 800 years later. It’s not legitimate. It may be colorful, but it doesn’t advance our understanding of the biblical text one iota. I don’t mean to be uncharitable, but I think that a lot of the discussion on this blog post may be of the same ilk: colorful but unhelpful.