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Introduction: the Greek language
1. Introduction: the Greek language
2. Introduction: the Greek language
The Greek language has a long history going back about 3,000 years. During this time, there have been many variants of the Greek language (e.g. originally Attic, Doric, Ionic, etc.), but over the years there have been periodic attempts to take Greek back to its roots, so that many words from 2,500 years ago are still in common use, or at least recognized as part of the modern language.
3. Greek alphabet
Herodotus tell us, in part, that the Greek alphabet was developed as in improvement of the Phonetician alphabet. As a Semitic alphabet, it had consonants but no vowels. The Greeks added vowels which made it more flexible and easier to learn and use.
4. Ancient Greek texts
Ancient Greek texts were written an all uppercase letters and did not have spaces. If one read the text the meaning would be conveyed by the sounds made. So, as sounds changed the writing changed with it. This accounts for many textual differences in ancient Greek manuscripts.
Hebrew was more obtuse as there were no explicit vowels, only consonants.
5. The Greek alphabet
The early Greek manuscripts had only what we today call uppercase letters, with no spaces or punctuation. The order eventually became left to right, down the page. The early writing acted much as a compact audio recording. When one read the phonetic alphabet letters in a continuous manner, one heard what was being said. Local dialects would be taken into account by the spelling of words - before there were dictionaries, precise rules, teachers who enforced the rules, etc.
Astronomy often uses the Greek alphabet as part of star names or sequences.
αβγδεζηθικλμνξοπρστυφχψω
ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗΘΙΚΛΜΝΞΟΠΡΣΤΥΦΧΨΩ
6. Animal sounds
No one knows exactly how ancient languages such as Greek was spoken, but the onomatopoeia as sounds from animals can provide some clues. Note: there are other ways not covered here.
There are written accounts of sounds that animals make, as well as other onomatopoeia - words that sound like
what they represent.
7. Pronunciation
No one knows exactly how ancient Greek was spoken, but there are clues.
There are written accounts of sounds that animals make, as well as onomatopoeia (words that sound like what they represent).
Loan words to other languages help. For example, today the Greek «β» is pronounced in Greek as an English "v". If in ancient times, a word went from Greek into Latin with a Latin "b" sound, then it must have sounded like the Latin "b". If it were the Latin "v", then it would have been written in Latin with a "v".
Monuments have been found with inscriptions that show transitions in spellings of words.
Note that the traditional way that Bible Greek is traditionally taught and pronounced was developed by a Dutchman, Erasmus, in the Middle Ages, and has little or no resemblance to how Greek was actually pronounced (either in ancient or modern times).
8. Greek examples
There are several periods of interest for the Greek language as it relates to astronomy.
Classical Greek such as Herodotus, Xenophon, etc.
Septuagint - Old Testament scriptures translated from Hebrew to Greek about 270 B.C. in Egypt.
New Testament scriptures from about 100 A.D., using Koine Greek, the common Greek used by the common person.
Middle Age Greek (not really of interest here)
Modern Greek (for reference purposes using today's language)
For the present purposes, we are interested in the origin of words (mostly the Classical period) and the development and change of words, for which mainly the Septuagint and New Testament Greek are mainly used. These scripture translations have been well studied and documented, though at times translation issues and/or discrepancies can make them interesting from a theological point of view. We are not interested in any theological issues, just how the Greek was used, what the words meant, and how it relates to astronomy.
9. Narrowing the focus
There are many aspects of Greek and astronomy that are interesting.
How the constellations were named, including the zodiac?
What did the Greek astronomers know? When did they know it? How did the do it? And so on.
In many cases, the works of the original Greek astronomer (scientist, mathematician, etc.) have been lost and are only known (or have been pieced together) from accounts of writers after them (Greek, Latin, Arabic, etc.).
10. Astronomy
Astronomy has many applications outside of just watching stars, some of which are the following.
time measurement
space measurement
geometry of time and space
To narrow the focus, some of the ancient origins and linguistic development of selected terms and concepts from the field of astronomy are presented. In this context, some of the above topics will be discussed in a limited fashion.
Many of the astronomy terms to be discussed are linguistically related and will be presented in an order that fits together linguistically rather than an purely astronomical development.
11. Language translations
Languages are interesting, especially languages such as Greek that have a very long history of continuity.
The
NT (New Testament) of the Bible was written about 2,000 years ago in Greek, the lingua franca at the time. Since then, the Bible has, at various times, been translated into many languages.
Here as a chart of some translation of the Greek
NT into other languages. The modern languages are those which I have spent some time studying.
12. PIE and translations
13. The Greek language
The Greek language has a written history going back almost 3,000 years. Many words in use 2,000 years ago are still words today, written the same way, and with the same meaning. In many cases, the only difference is in the endings of the word.
Greek schools still teach some ancient/classical Greek and many Greeks can at least read some of the
NT in the original Greek.
14. The Greek language - then and now
Here is an
incomplete custom-generated chart from 2015. Almost half of the words in a modern Greek translation of the Bible are the same as in the original.
Width of bar corresponds to book length. Genesis at left. Revelation at right.
Words are considered the same if a Bible Greek word is in a modern Greek dictionary.
Proper nouns are often the same but not accounted for here.
15. Method
The method used was the following, done automatically with a custom Python program/script.
Use the Greek for the LXX (Septuagint) Old Testament (from crosswire.org)
Use the Greek for the NT (Textus Receptus, from crosswire.org).
Convert every word to lower case and remove accents.
Get frequency counts for each word by book of the Bible and by overall usage.
For each word, use the Open Source Hunspell spell checker and a modern Greek dictionary.
If a word is spelled correctly (or in the suggested list of words) then it is a match. Otherwise it is not a match.
Note that many proper nouns (place names, names of people, etc.) are not handled by this method.
16. Spelling and meaning
One aspect of the Greek language that is interesting is a word in the
NT in the original Greek that has the same spelling and meaning today as it did then. The modern Greek translation, instead of using the original word, changes the word to match a modern Bible translation that has been influenced by scholars in the past 2,000 years.
Here we will look at and investigate some of these words. In some cases, one can see from the translation history when and where a word was changed to change the meaning of that text to something other than what appeared in the original text. This may or may not be important but it is interesting.
In some cases, the human mind can create and imagine meanings that are not in the original.
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Details are left as a future topic.
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17. End of page