Replies

The NT was not originally written in Greek.

“Koine” is the name given to the false language that results from translating from Hebrew using the LXX as a ‘Rosetta Stone.’ Nobody ever “spoke” it, and native Greeks have complained over the centuries that it is essentially unreadable to them.

False. First, neither you nor anyone else has any hard evidence to suggest the NT was written in any other language than Greek. The presence of semitic patterns of thought, which some naive individuals take to prove a Hebrew original (which in fact does not exist), only demonstrates that the writers who penned the Greek NT were, unsurprisingly, influenced by the word patterns of their native language, whether Hebrew or Aramaic.

For example, this would be no different than having a person of Italian descent saying "He is out of his head," which means "crazy." It translates easily to English, but reveals an Italian idiom. Many Italians speak both languages fluently, so find a document written in English that used the Italian idiom would NOT prove the document was originally written in Italian. That would be a nonsense conclusion. At most it demonstrates the writer of the English was influenced by his/her knowledge of Italian. That's it.

Furthermore, your statement on the origin of Koine Greek (as opposed to the classical) is completely ahistorical. I have no idea who is feeding these things to you but the history of Koine is well known and available to any who seek to know that history. One brief example:

The terms “Hellenistic Greek” and “Koine Greek” are used interchangeably for the language spoken in this period. Christian scholars also use the terms “Biblical Greek” and “New Testament Greek” to refer to the language as it appears in the earliest copies of the New Testament of the Christian Bible.

After the conquests of Alexander the Great (roughly 336-323 BCE) the language underwent far-reaching changes. Alexander carried the Attic-Ionic form of the language, along with Greek culture more generally, far into the Near East where it became the standard language of commerce and government, existing along side many local languages. Greek was adopted as a second language by the native people of these regions and was ultimately transformed into what has come to be called the Hellenistic Koiné or common Greek. This new form of the language remained essentially a further development of the Attic-Ionic synthesis. (emphasis added by me)

The Hellenistic Koine brought significant changes in vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar, and some of these changes have persisted into Modern Greek. The time of rapid change initiated by Alexander, though, lasted from about 300 BCE to 300 CE. The histories of Polybius, the discourses of Epictetus, and the Christian New Testament all date from this period and are good representatives of the Koine.

Available here: http://www.greek-language.com/History.html

So you seek it was Alexander the Great and his conquering armies that propagated a variant of the Attic Greek. The styling differences in the NT manuscripts from generic Koine were a result of synthesizing the Koine with semitic word patterns natural to the semitic writers. But there is no doubt the base language we call Koine did exist and was widely used in common discourse and commerce. And as the paragraph above demonstrates, it had its uses in other major writings of the period besides the NT, such as "The histories of Polybius, the discourses of Epictetus."

One last point. It is not at all surprising that Koine, classical, Attic-Ionic, etc. as old forms of Greek are difficult for modern Greeks to read. It's like reading Chaucer or Tyndale. That version of English (Middle English) is a legitimate ancestor of modern English, but so many changes have occurred a modern English reader would have a very hard time reading either Chaucer or Tyndale fluently. For example, this is Luke 1:5 in Middle English:

An preost wass onn Herodess daȝȝ
Amang Judisskenn þeode,
& he wass, wiss to fulle soþ,
Ȝehatenn Zacariȝe,
& haffde an duhhtiȝ wif, þhat wass,
Off Aaroness dohhtress;
& ȝho wass, wiss to fulle soþ,
Elysabæþ ȝehatenn.

Quoted from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English_Bible_translations

Clear as mud, right? But a legitimate early form of English. Just as Koine remains a legitimate early form of Greek. So again, the claim of modern Greeks having trouble reading Koine is proof only that languages do change, which really should be expected. That's just what languages do.

Peace,

SR