Title: 1 John 1:1-4; History and Development of the Greek Language: Homeric, Classical, and Koine Periods
Author: Joe
Last saved by: PJD
Company: GDC

99-01-12.JSH-079 / 

©℗ 1999  Joe Griffin	Joshua

1 John 1:1-4; History & Development of the Greek Language: Homeric, Classical, & Koine Periods

4)	Heracleitus /Her-ah-CLYT-us/, a fifth–century b.c. Greek philosopher, is the first to use the word LÒgoj /Logos /.  He assigned it to the source of his ability to think.  He asserted that the real person is what he thinks and that the ability to think was unique to the human race.  This, however, was not theological but metaphysical in that the universe was considered by him to be the LÒgoj /Logos /.
5)	John therefore, does not use the Greek word for God, which is Qšoj /Theos /, but rather Heracleitus’s word LÒgoj /Logos / to identify Jesus Christ.
6)	Later the Sophists broke away from Heracleitus and formed a business designed to instruct young men in public speaking and how to argue principles in public debate.  The thinking of a Sophist was considered to be the fastest route to the top in the political life of Athens.
7)	These Sophists defined LÒgoj /Logos / as the power within man to achieve rational conclusions.
8)	Socrates and Plato looked on the LÒgoj /Logos / as simply the ability of the human mind to think and as a result they concluded there was no God.
9)	Socrates and Plato in effect said, “I think LÒgoj  /Logos / therefore, I am God.”  Descartes was not quite so presumptuous and therefore not quite so bold.
10)	Russell Kirk, of course, gets it right in his memoirs, The Sword of Imagination, where he writes, “I am, therefore, I think.”
11)	Aristotle summarized LÒgoj /Logos /as thought and how that thought was expressed in one’s life through moral acts.
12)	The Stoics came along and didn’t like any of these definitions so they invented their own which asserted that LÒgoj /Logos / was a system of order established in eternity past which found its source in God.

13)	The Apostle John was not inspired to write his Gospel, his Epistles, or the Revelation until the last decade of the first century, a time when Gnosticism was reviving all these ideas regarding the identity of the LÒgoj /Logos /.
14)	In John 1:1, John asserts that the LÒgoj /Logos / is God “who became flesh and dwelt among us.”
15)	Here in 1 John he gives the Gnostics first-hand empirical and rationalistic evidence that he knew the LÒgoj /Logos / personally.
1 John 1:1 -	[CTL] What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have observed, and our hands have touched concerning the Word of Life—
v 2 -	and the Life was revealed.  We have seen, in fact we have testified and proclaimed to you that eternal life, that very One Who was face-to-face with the Father, and He was revealed to us—
v 3 -	what we have seen and heard we also proclaim to you and that you may have fellowship with us.  Furthermore, our fellowship is also with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.
1)	Chapter One of 1 John addresses the importance of rebound in order to maintain fellowship with God and the filling of the Holy Spirit.
2)	These assets are the essentials for spiritual growth by means of the Grace Apparatus for Perception.
3)	The Living Logos has been manifest to John.  Now it is his duty to emphasize the written Logos as the source of acquiring knowledge about the eternal Logos.
4)	Replication of the eternal Logos is the means by which the Church Age believer executes the Christian way of life and the four spiritual mechanics.
5)	Success in the spiritual life of the Church Age is manifest by sharing the happiness of God.

1 John 1:4 -	[CTL] In fact we write these things [ the New Testament canon ] so that your state of happiness might be completed. 
1)	The eternal Logos has been identified as the Word who preceded the creation of the universe, who was associated with God, and actually was God.
2)	This Word has been revealed to the ear, eye, and touch and this Living Word revealed the eternal Word.
3)	John and the other human writers of Scripture replicated this Word in writing, making its content available to every subsequent generation for study, meditation, memorization, and execution.
4)	And when these men wrote they used language and the language they used in the New Testament was Koine Greek.
5)	The development of the Koine period of the Greek language needs some historical perspective:
Dana, H. E. and Julius R. Mantey.  A Manuel Grammar of the Greek New Testament.  Toronto: The Macmillan Company, 1955; pp. 1-12:
Greek is the most highly developed and at the same time the most clearly defined of all languages.  The history of the Greek language extends back to about 1500 b.c.  Previous to Homer, however, the history of the language is wrapped in great obscurity.  The development of the language may be divided into five periods:

(1)	The Formative Period.  This period extends from the prehistoric origin of the race to Homer (c. 900 b.c.).  The primitive tribes from which the Greek nation arose were members of the great Aryan family which had its original home somewhere in west-central Asia.  In prehistoric times a group of tribes from this original stock migrated into the little peninsula of southern Europe now known as Greece.  The topographical character of this country is exceedingly irregular.  Numerous mountain ranges and the inland penetration of arms of the sea cut the country up into may divisions.  As a result of this irregular topography the original tribes were practically barred from intercourse with one another and hence were slow in developing unity of life and language.  There grew a number of different dialects, the chief of which were the Attic, Boeotian, Northwestern, Thessalian, and Arcadian.  
[NOTE:  (1) Attic Greek was the Ionic dialect spoken in Attica whose capital city was Athens.  (2) Boeotian /Bee-O-shan/ Greek was an Aeolic /Ee‑AH-lik/ dialect spoken in Boeotia /Bee-O-she-ah/ whose capital was Thebes.  (3) Northwestern Greek was spoken in the states of Elis /EE-las/ and Achaea /Ah-KEY-ah/.  (4) Thessalian /Thay-sa-LEE-an/ was another Aeolic /Ee-AH-lik/ dialect spoken in Thessaly.  (5) Arcadian was the dialect spoken in Arcadia.
All these probably developed from three original dialects: the Doric, spoken in Messenia /Ma-SEE-nee-ah; Aeolic, spoken in Boeotia and Thessaly; and Ionic, spoken in Ionia and Attica.  The most vigorous and attractive of these was the Ionic which therefore exerted the greatest influence upon subsequent linguistic developments among the Greeks.
(2)	The Classical Period.  This period embraces the centuries from Homer to the Alexandrian conquests (c. 330 b.c.).  In this period the Attic dialect, based chiefly on the old Ionic, secured supremacy.  The ancient Greek literature which has come down to us is predominantly Attic.
(3)	The Koine Period.  This period extends from 330 b.c. to a.d. 330.  It is the period the Greek language was freely used and understood throughout the civilized world, being spoken as freely on the streets of Rome, Alexandria, and Jerusalem as in Athens.  There were four main causes bringing about the development of the Koine Greek.

a.	Extensive Colonization.  The Greeks were a very aggressive people and early learned seafaring from the Phoenicians.  As a result Greek colonies were planted on nearly all the shores of the Mediterranean.  One of the strongest of these colonies was on the eastern coast of Italy, not far from the center of the Latin world.
b.	Close Political and Commercial Affiliation of the Separate Greek Tribes.  The common peril of eastern conquerors brought the several tribes of Greece into closer touch and the campaign of Cyrus brought together Greeks of all tribes and dialects into one great army and did much to develop a common tongue.
c.	Religious Interrelations.  Though each Greek tribe had its own tribal gods there was a sense of religious unity among the race.  This was particularly true after the establishment of the great national festivities at such religious centers as Olympia, Delos, and Delphi.  Inscriptions upon the statues and memorials of various kinds erected at these enters were in all the leading dialects, and led to the acquaintance of one tribe with the language of another.  As the people mingled together at these periodical celebrations, there arose a natural tendency toward a common speech.  This factor was certainly very potent in the creation of the Koine.
d.	The Alexandrian Conquests.  The climax of this merging process was reached in the Alexandrian conquests (334 to 320 b.c.).  The mingling of representatives from all the Greek tribes in Alexander’s army matured the development of a common Greek, and the wide introduction of Greek culture under his direction distributed the common tongue throughout the Macedonian empire.  When Rome conquered this Hellenized territory, she in turn was Hellenized, and thereby the civilized world adopted the Koine Greek.  Hence Paul could write his doctrinal masterpiece to the political center of the Latin world in the Greek language.