A New Semester and New Work: First Week

This week’s blog post opens a new semester and a new series of posts to share. I am continuing my work with the dictionary project, but I am functioning in a new role. This semester I will be concentrating on correcting the Greek etymologies in Johnson’s fourth edition from 1773. I consider it a singular honor to be asked to continue in the project and to specialize in Greek.

One may now ask how I came to study Greek and why it is important to me. The short answer is that I came to study Greek while in preacher training school and it is supremely important to me because it is the original language of the New Testament. The specific Greek is Koine rather than Classical. Because of my careful research into Koine Greek and translating various passages of the New Testament, I am convinced that one cannot thoroughly and deeply understand the New Testament without at least a basic knowledge of its original Greek text. Please understand that I am not saying that one cannot understand the New Testament at all without Greek, but am I speaking of deep understanding. The short answer of why such is the case is that many Greek words cannot be translated by a single English word. The structure of the two languages is different. Greek is a more precise language than English and the precision requires a careful and nuanced translation into English to maintain the fullness of the meaning. Its is the fullness of meaning that I refer to as being practically impossible to grasp from the English alone. 

This now leads to the necessity of a brief explanation of the word Koine (pronounced koinā). It comes from the Greek root κοινός (koinos) meaning: common or general. Thus, Koine Greek is common Greek – the Greek in common use throughout the Mediterranean region in the first century. It was once thought that Biblical Greek was a special divine form of Greek. Archaeological discoveries in the Middle East have since shown that the Greek of the New Testament is the Greek used by ordinary people of the time. 

Another reason why Greek is important to me is that as a native English speaker many words of the language I speak derive from Greek. The Oxford English Dictionary website, through their “Advanced Search” tab returns 7935 entries as deriving from Greek. A few familiar words in the list are: acme, aesthetic, agnostic, barometer, basilica, calligraphy, characteristic, and many more. Greek and English are inseparably linked – knowing one helps you know the other. Want to expand your English vocabulary? Learn some Greek. 

To reduce redundancy, I have refrained from simply reintroducing myself in this post. If you are new to the blog, please peruse the earlier posts. They introduce the author of these posts and the dictionary project at UCF. My new work has not progressed yet beyond the preliminaries so hopefully next week I will have a more work specific post to offer. 

If you are new to the blog, thank you for spending a little of your time with me. If you are returning to blog, thank you for finding the material interesting enough to come again. 

Until next week.

John