Subject: Re: Diff. Classical & NT Greek?
Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 19:26:13 -0600
From: Jack Barr
To: xxxxxx@xxxxxx

Hi xxxxx,

Your Question:
What is the difference between New Testament Greek and Classical Greek?

Answer:
I am aware that there is a difference between the two, but I am not able to explain it to you, as I am not a student of the Greek. I am aware that languages change. What they call a living language changes quite rapidly over even a hundred years, while what is called a Dead Language still changes but very slowly.

When learning another language, any language, you have someone who knows both your language and the language that you are trying to learn. This person stands there and says, "this word means this, and is used in this way." Over generations of teachers, there is a twisting of meanings as one teacher passes it on to another teacher who passes it on to another teacher and so on. The example is usually of witnessing a line of people. A sentence, know to the watchers but not to the people in the line, is whispered to the first, who whispers it to the next, and so on till it reaches the last person in the line who then speaks it, and everyone sees how twisted that sentence has become as it was passed on.

This same effect happens as one teacher teaches the next teacher, only there is no way to really hear the original speaker, therefore the twisted becomes the norm and the new standard. And such is the difference between the Old and the New.

With the Love of Jesus

Rev. Jack Barr

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