The Koine

by

Klaas Bentein, Chiara Monaco

• LAST MODIFIED: 22 November 2024
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0420

Introduction

The term Koine—short for koinè glôssa ‘common language’—refers to the form of Greek that spread throughout the Mediterranean at the end of the fourth century BCE, when Alexander the Great introduced a developed form of Attic—known as “international” or “great” Attic—as a medium of communication in his newly conquered territories. As Greek came to be used by a wide variety of non-native speakers, and was extended to new societal domains, the language underwent a series of drastic changes in all linguistic domains (phonological, morphological, syntactic, and lexical), a process that is sometimes referred to in terms of “simplification,” though that term does not entirely do justice to the complexity of the linguistic situation. First used in the domains of administration, business, and trade, the Koine was also adopted for literary purposes, for example in technical, philosophical, and religious prose. Other literary authors adopted a more elevated form of language, leading modern scholarship to distinguish “popular” or “conversational” Koine from “literary” Koine. Somewhat confusingly, Koine is nowadays used both as an umbrella term with reference to all of these linguistic registers, or specifically to refer to the colloquial stratum (often in a pejorative sense). For this reason, the term “post-classical Greek is preferred by some as an umbrella term, though in principle it also includes Atticistic Greek, a form of archaicizing Greek which acquired prestige mostly but not exclusively in the realm of literature (see Atticism). It must be said that usage of this term in Antiquity was not very coherent either: from the second century CE, Clement of Alexandria listed the Koine as a fifth dialect alongside the four canonical ones, while in the Byzantine period the Koine began to be regarded as the original language from which the other dialects were derived. There is no consensus as to how to periodize the Koine. A practice that goes back to the Australian scholar John A.L. Lee, is to recognize three-hundred-year periods, beginning with the Hellenistic/Ptolemaic period (III-I BCE) (through early post-classical or Hellenistic Greek), followed by the Roman period (I-III AD) (through middle post-classical Greek), and the Late Antique period (IV-VI CE) (through late post-classical Greek). “Hellenistic Greek” is most often referred to, so much so that it is sometimes equated with Koine Greek in its entirety. Geographically speaking, even though the classical dialects gradually disappeared, some regional varieties are usually recognized, such as “Egyptian,” “Syro-Palestinian,” and “Asia Minor” Koine. Non-literary sources such as inscriptions and papyri, as well as lower-register literary texts, have occupied a privileged role in linguistic studies of the Koine, and duly so. The different approaches that have been developed toward these sources—especially from the 1990s onward—are sometimes referred to in terms of “schools,” such as the Nancy school, the Sydney school, the Helsinki school, the Cambridge school, the Ghent school, etc. In recent years, efforts have been made to set up research networks that bring together the different approaches and scholars involved, such as the post-classical Greek Network and the Septuagint within the History of Greek Network.

General Overviews

The Koine is discussed in all major histories of the Greek language such as Horrocks 2010, Browning 1983 (English), Tonnet 2003, Meillet 1965 (French), and Adrados 1999 (Spanish). An important collection of studies dedicated to the Koine are the five edited volumes Brixhe and Hodot 1993–2004. There are very few book-length studies dedicated to the Koine: Radermacher 1947 is a shorter treatise; Thumb 1901 is older but still foundational.

• Adrados, Francisco R. 1999. Historia de La Lengua Griega. De Los Orígenes a Nuestros Días. Madrid: Gredos.

  Adrados’s monograph contains a substantial discussion of the Koine (pp. 147–188), with much attention to different linguistic registers. It offers useful bibliographical overviews after each section. It was translated into German (A. Francke Verlag, 2002) and English (Brill, 2005).

• Brixhe, Claude, and René Hodot. 1993–2004. La Koiné grecque antique. 5 vols. Nancy, France: Presses universitaires de Nancy.

  Brixhe and Hodot present an important collection of five edited volumes derived from round table meetings held in Nancy during the 1990s (1. Une langue introuvable?; 2. La concurrence; 3. Les contacts; 4. Les koinés littéraires; 5. Alternances codiques et changements de code).

• Browning, Robert. 1983. Medieval and modern Greek. 2d ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

  DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511554148

  Browning’s work is now superseded by Horrocks 2010, but still useful for its outline of linguistic features (pp. 19–52 for Greek in the Hellenistic world and Roman Empire). It was first published in 1969.

• Horrocks, Geoffrey C. 2010. Greek: A history of the language and its speakers. 2d ed. Chichester, UK, and Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

  DOI: 10.1002/9781444318913

  Horrocks’s work is the best-known history of the Greek language, with a long contribution on Greek in the Hellenistic and Roman world (pp. 79–188). It pays attention to both linguistic features, textual output, and the social setting. It was first published in 1997.

• Meillet, Antoine. 1965. Aperçu d’une histoire de la langue grecque. 7th éd. Paris: C. Klincksieck.

  Meillet has a long chapter on the Koine which is still worth reading (pp. 253–337). It is similar in approach to Thumb 1901. Originally published in 1913.

• Radermacher, Ludwig. 1947. Koine. Vienna: R. M. Rohrer.

  This work is a shorter treatise dedicated to some more general issues. It pays attention to literary reactions against the Koine.

• Thumb, Albert. 1901. Die griechische Sprache im Zeitalter des Hellenismus: Beitrag zur Geschichte und Beurteilung der koinē. Strasbourg, France: K. J. Trübner.

  Thumb’s is the only book-length study of the Koine that remains relevant to this day. It contains chapters on key questions like the decline of the dialects, Biblical Greek, the origins of the Koine, etc.

• Tonnet, Henri. 2003. Histoire du grec moderne: la formation d’une langue. 2d éd. Paris: Langues & mondes—Asiathèque.

  This work is somewhat comparable in approach to Horrocks, but much more concise (pp. 41–83 for the Koine). It presents itself as a history of Modern Greek. it was first published in 1993.