Link: Linguistics and Gospel Origins
Dave Black had some interesting notes on this subject today, which I posted to The Jesus Paradigm. There is a constant debate on what is “correct” usage. We have this with regard to modern usage. I’ll have authors cite some manual against their editor, usually on optional items.
So why do we expect all usage to be equal in Koine Greek?
Here’s Dave’s money quote, I think:
Lately it’s become clear to me that the question concerning correctness and incorrectness in language is not so much a linguistic one but a sociolinguistic one. In other words, it is people who determine what is correct and incorrect in language, not textbooks. In a sense, then, if everybody says “It’s me,” then this construction is correct.
True, but how does this work with dead Koine?
You’re stuck with the literature, which results, I think, in two things:
1) You can be even less certain when something is a mistake, and
2) You have to have a certain humility with regard to the results.
If you consider Dave’s full post, with an example of the use of the middle voice in Mark, but of the active voice in Matthew and Luke. Which way does this argue in terms of copying? Are Matthew and Luke both correcting Mark in a similar way? Is there a stylistic difference?
Similarly with Revelation. Is the Greek in various places wrong, or is there a dialectal difference, or some of both? This can’t be answered for all cases at once. In addition, we have to distinguish semitisms from “bad” or “dialectal” Greek.