Misplaced Pages

#413586

88-830: The Agpeya ( Coptic : Ϯⲁⲅⲡⲓⲁ, Arabic : أجبية ) is the Coptic Christian "Prayer Book of the Hours" or breviary , and is equivalent to the Shehimo in the Syriac Orthodox Church (another Oriental Orthodox Christian denomination), as well as the Byzantine Horologion and Roman Liturgy of the Hours used by the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church, respectively. The Agpeya prayers are popular Christian prayers recited at fixed prayer times , facing

176-612: A stress accent system , and the monophthongization of several diphthongs: The Koine-period Greek in the table is taken from a reconstruction by Benjamin Kantor of New Testament Judeo-Palestinian Koine Greek. The realizations of most phonemes reflect general changes around the Greek-speaking world, including vowel isochrony and monophthongization, but certain sound values differ from other Koine varieties such as Attic, Egyptian and Anatolian. More general Koine phonological developments include

264-450: A more open pronunciation than other Koine dialects, distinguished as open-mid /ɛ/ vs. close-mid /e/ , rather than as true-mid /e̞/ vs. close-mid /e̝/ as has been suggested for other varieties such as Egyptian. This is evidenced on the basis of Hebrew transcriptions of ε with pataḥ/qamets /a/ and not tsere/segol /e/ . Additionally, it is posited that α perhaps had a back vowel pronunciation as /ɑ/ , dragged backwards due to

352-402: A sentence, as the object of a verb, or with a preposition. Dependent pronouns are a series of prefixes and suffixes that can attach to verbs and other nouns. Coptic verbs can therefore be said to inflect for the person, number and gender of the subject and the object: a pronominal prefix marks the subject, and a pronominal suffix marks the object, e.g. "I I'have'it the ball." When (as in this case)

440-408: A supralinear stroke ⟨◌̄⟩, or the stroke may have tied letters together in one word, since Coptic texts did not otherwise indicate word divisions. Some scribal traditions use a diaeresis over the letters ⲓ and ⲩ at the beginning of a word or to mark a diphthong. Bohairic uses a superposed point or small stroke known as ϫⲓⲛⲕⲓⲙ ( jinkim , "movement"). When jinkim is placed over a vowel it

528-593: A tenuis-aspirate distinction to voiced-tenuis is only attested from the alveolars, the only place that Arabic has such a contrast. Earlier phases of Egyptian may have contrasted voiceless and voiced bilabial plosives, but the distinction seems to have been lost. Late Egyptian, Demotic and Coptic all interchangeably use their respective graphemes to indicate either sound; for example, Coptic for 'iron' appears alternately as ⲡⲉⲛⲓⲡⲉ , ⲃⲉⲛⲓⲡⲉ and ⲃⲓⲛⲓⲃⲉ . That probably reflects dialect variation. Both letters were interchanged with ⲫ and ϥ to indicate / f / , and ⲃ

616-501: A testament to the increasing cultural contact between Egyptians and Greeks even before Alexander the Great 's conquest of Egypt. Coptic itself, or Old Coptic , takes root in the first century. The transition from the older Egyptian scripts to the newly adapted Coptic alphabet was in part due to the decline of the traditional role played by the priestly class of ancient Egyptian religion , who, unlike most ordinary Egyptians, were literate in

704-460: A very important source of information on the ancient Koine is the modern Greek language with all its dialects and its own Koine form, which have preserved some of the ancient language's oral linguistic details which the written tradition has lost. For example, Pontic and Cappadocian Greek preserved the ancient pronunciation of η as ε ( νύφε, συνέλικος, τίμεσον, πεγάδι for standard Modern Greek νύφη, συνήλικος, τίμησον, πηγάδι etc.), while

792-534: A vowel's grapheme but mostly unwritten. A few early manuscripts have a letter ⳋ or ⳃ ç where Sahidic and Bohairic have ϣ š . and Akhmimic has ⳉ x . This sound seems to have been lost early on. Coptic is agglutinative with subject–verb–object word order but can be verb–subject–object with the correct preposition in front of the subject. Number, gender, tense, and mood are indicated by prefixes that come from Late Egyptian. The earlier phases of Egyptian did this through suffixation. Some vestiges of

880-696: Is Attic. In other words, Koine Greek can be regarded as Attic with the admixture of elements especially from Ionic, but also from other dialects. The degree of importance of the non-Attic linguistic elements on Koine can vary depending on the region of the Hellenistic world. In that respect, the varieties of Koine spoken in the Ionian colonies of Anatolia (e.g. Pontus , cf. Pontic Greek ) would have more intense Ionic characteristics than others and those of Laconia and Cyprus would preserve some Doric and Arcadocypriot characteristics, respectively. The literary Koine of

968-509: Is a term used for present tense verbs that are used in some narrative sections of the New Testament to describe events that are in the past with respect to the speaker. This is seen more in works attributed to Mark and John than Luke . It is used 151 times in the Gospel of Mark in passages where a reader might expect a past tense verb. Scholars have presented various explanations for this; in

SECTION 10

#1732844914414

1056-490: Is also better known than that of the Classical phase of the language because of a greater number of sources indicating Egyptian sounds, including cuneiform letters containing transcriptions of Egyptian words and phrases, and Egyptian renderings of Northwest Semitic names. Coptic sounds, in addition, are known from a variety of Coptic-Arabic papyri in which Arabic letters were used to transcribe Coptic and vice versa. They date to

1144-511: Is difficult to explain ⟨ ⲏ ⟩ . However, it generally became / æ / in stressed monosyllables, / ɪ / in unstressed monosyllables, and in polysyllables, / æ / when followed by / i / , and / ɪ / when not. There were no doubled orthographic vowels in Mesokemic. Some representative correspondences with Sahidic are: It is not clear if these correspondences reflect distinct pronunciations in Mesokemic, or if they are an imitation of

1232-413: Is expressed with a series of possessive articles which are prefixed to the noun. These articles agree with the person , number , and gender of the possessor and the number and gender of the possessed noun. The forms of the possessive article vary according to dialect. Coptic pronouns are of two kinds, dependent and independent. Independent pronouns are used when the pronoun is acting as the subject of

1320-707: Is likely because the majority of Coptic religious texts are direct translations of Greek works. What invariably attracts the attention of the reader of a Coptic text, especially if it is written in the Sa'idic dialect, is the very liberal use which is made of Greek loan words, of which so few, indeed, are to be found in the Ancient Egyptian language. There Greek loan words occur everywhere in Coptic literature, be it Biblical, liturgical, theological, or non-literary, i.e. legal documents and personal letters. Though nouns and verbs predominate,

1408-425: Is not sufficient to demonstrate that these are distinct vowels, and if they are, the difference has a very low functional load . For dialects that use orthographic ⟨ ⲉⲓ ⟩ for a single vowel, there appears to be no phonetic difference from ⟨ ⲓ ⟩ . Double orthographic vowels are presumed here to be long, as that makes the morphology more straightforward. (Another common interpretation

1496-827: Is possible that in addition there was a glottal stop , ʔ , that was not consistently written. Coptic does not seem to have had a glottal stop at the beginning of orthographically vowel-initial words. It is possible that vowels written double were an attempt to indicate glottal stop, rather than a long vowel, in the middle of a word. However, there is little evidence for this (e.g., Arabic words with short vowels and glottal stop are not written with double vowels in Coptic, and Coptic words with double orthographic vowels are transcribed with long vowels rather than hamza in Arabic.) In Late Coptic (ca. 14th century), Bohairic sounds that did not occur in Egyptian Arabic were lost. A possible shift from

1584-617: Is primarily composed of psalm readings from the Old Testament and gospel readings from the New Testament, with some added hymns of praise, troparia (known as "قطع" in the contemporary Arabic Agpeya and as " preces " or "litanies" in English), and other prayers. Prostrations to God are a cornerstone in praying the Agpeya, with the breviary requiring "prostrating three times in the name of the Trinity ; at

1672-501: Is pronounced independently, and when it is placed over a consonant a short ⲉ precedes it. The oldest Coptic writings date to the pre-Christian era (Old Coptic), though Coptic literature consists mostly of texts written by prominent saints of the Coptic Church such as Anthony the Great, Pachomius the Great and Shenoute. Shenoute helped fully standardise the Coptic language through his many sermons, treatises and homilies, which formed

1760-439: Is safe to assume that the everyday speech of the native population retained, to a greater extent, its indigenous Egyptian character, which is sometimes reflected in Coptic nonecclesiastical documents such as letters and contracts. Coptic provides the clearest indication of Later Egyptian phonology from its writing system, which fully indicates vowel sounds and occasionally stress patterns. The phonological system of Later Egyptian

1848-856: Is sometimes used for the Greek written by the Greek Church Fathers , the Early Christian theologians in late antiquity. Christian writers in the earliest time tended to use a simple register of Koiné, relatively close to the spoken language of their time, following the model of the Bible. After the 4th century, when Christianity became the state church of the Roman Empire , more learned registers of Koiné also came to be used. Koine period Greek differs from Classical Greek in many ways: grammar , word formation , vocabulary and phonology (sound system). During

SECTION 20

#1732844914414

1936-651: Is spoken only in Egypt and historically has had little influence outside of the territory, except for monasteries located in Nubia . Coptic's most noticeable linguistic influence has been on the various dialects of Egyptian Arabic , which is characterised by a Coptic substratum in lexical , morphological , syntactical , and phonological features. In addition to influencing the grammar, vocabulary and syntax of Egyptian Arabic, Coptic has lent to both Arabic and Modern Hebrew such words as: A few words of Coptic origin are found in

2024-506: Is that Coptic articles are prefixes. Masculine nouns are marked with the article /pə, peː/ and feminine nouns with the article /tə, teː/ in the Sahidic dialect and /pi, əp/ and /ti, ət/ in the Bohairic dialect. The definite and indefinite articles also indicate number ; however, only definite articles mark gender. Coptic has a number of broken plurals , a vestige of Older Egyptian, but in

2112-405: Is that these represented glottal stop.) There is no length distinction in final stressed position, but only those vowels that occur long appear there: ⟨ (ⲉ)ⲓ, ⲉ, ⲁ, ⲟ~ⲱ, ⲟⲩ ⟩ . In Sahidic, the letter ⲉ was used for short / e / before back fricatives, and also for unstressed schwa / ə / . It's possible there was also a distinction between short / ɛ / and / a / , but if so

2200-462: Is usually the result of consonant voicing in proximity to / n / . Though there is no clear evidence that Coptic had a glottal stop , different orthographic means have been posited for indicating one by those who believe that it did: with ⲁ word-initially, with ⲓ word-finally in monosyllabic words in northern dialects and ⲉ in monosyllabic words in Akhmimic and Assiutic, by reduplication of

2288-624: The Greek language ; some of the words were later lent to various European languages — such as barge , from Coptic baare ( ⲃⲁⲁⲣⲉ , "small boat"). However, most words of Egyptian origin that entered into Greek and subsequently into other European languages came directly from Ancient Egyptian, often Demotic . An example is the Greek oasis ( ὄασις ), which comes directly from Egyptian wḥꜣt or Demotic wḥj . However, Coptic reborrowed some words of Ancient Egyptian origin into its lexicon, via Greek. For example, both Sahidic and Bohairic use

2376-633: The Hebrew Bible ), the Christian New Testament , and of most early Christian theological writing by the Church Fathers . In this context, Koine Greek is also known as "Biblical", "New Testament", "ecclesiastical", or "patristic" Greek. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote his private thoughts in Koine Greek in a work that is now known as Meditations . Koine Greek continues to be used as

2464-756: The Hellenistic period , the Roman Empire and the early Byzantine Empire . It evolved from the spread of Greek following the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC, and served as the lingua franca of much of the Mediterranean region and the Middle East during the following centuries. It was based mainly on Attic and related Ionic speech forms, with various admixtures brought about through dialect levelling with other varieties. Koine Greek included styles ranging from conservative literary forms to

2552-577: The Middle Ages . Coptic belongs to the Later Egyptian phase, which started to be written in the New Kingdom of Egypt . Later Egyptian represented colloquial speech of the later periods. It had analytic features like definite and indefinite articles and periphrastic verb conjugation. Coptic, therefore, is a reference to both the most recent stage of Egyptian after Demotic and the new writing system that

2640-536: The Tsakonian language preserved the long α instead of η ( ἁμέρα, ἀστραπά, λίμνα, χοά etc.) and the other local characteristics of Doric Greek . Dialects from the southern part of the Greek-speaking regions ( Dodecanese , Cyprus , etc.), preserve the pronunciation of the double similar consonants ( ἄλ-λος, Ἑλ-λάδα, θάλασ-σα ), while others pronounce in many words υ as ου or preserve ancient double forms ( κρόμμυον – κρεμ-μυον, ράξ – ρώξ etc.). Linguistic phenomena like

2728-705: The papyri , for being two kinds of texts which have authentic content and can be studied directly. Other significant sources are the Septuagint , the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible , and the Greek New Testament . The teaching of these texts was aimed at the most common people, and for that reason, they use the most popular language of the era. Other sources can be based on random findings such as inscriptions on vases written by popular painters, mistakes made by Atticists due to their imperfect knowledge of Attic Greek or even some surviving Greco-Latin glossaries of

Agpeya - Misplaced Pages Continue

2816-456: The spread of Islam in the seventh century. At the turn of the eighth century, Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan decreed that Arabic replace Koine Greek as the sole administrative language . Literary Coptic gradually declined, and within a few hundred years, Egyptian bishop Severus ibn al-Muqaffa found it necessary to write his History of the Patriarchs in Arabic. However, ecclesiastically

2904-480: The 13th century, though it seems to have survived as a spoken language until the 17th century and in some localities even longer. From the medieval period, there is one known example of tarsh -printed Coptic. The fragmentary amulet A.Ch. 12.145, now in the Austrian National Library , contains a frame of Coptic text around an Arabic main text. In the early 20th century, some Copts tried to revive

2992-400: The Agpeya, Coptic Christians wash their hands and face in order to be clean before and present their best to God; shoes are removed in order to acknowledge that one is offering prayer before a holy God. In this Christian tradition, and in many others as well, it is customary for women to wear a Christian headcovering when praying, a practice explicated in 1 Corinthians 11:5–6 . While praying

3080-488: The Agpeya, many believers hold a cross in their hand during the parts where the believer is standing (during which he/she extends his/her arms in the orans position). The hours are chronologically laid out, each containing a theme corresponding to events in the life of Jesus Christ: Every one of the Hours follows the same basic outline: Coptic language The major Coptic dialects are Sahidic, Bohairic, Akhmimic, Fayyumic, Lycopolitan, and Oxyrhynchite. Sahidic Coptic

3168-616: The Common Greek dialect had been unclear since ancient times. During the Hellenistic period , most scholars thought of Koine as the result of the mixture of the four main Ancient Greek dialects, " ἡ ἐκ τῶν τεττάρων συνεστῶσα " (the composition of the Four). This view was supported in the early twentieth century by Paul Kretschmer in his book Die Entstehung der Koine (1901), while Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff and Antoine Meillet , based on

3256-529: The Coptic alphabet, flourished in the second and third centuries. However, it was not until Shenoute that Coptic became a fully standardised literary language based on the Sahidic dialect. Shenouda's native Egyptian tongue and knowledge of Greek and rhetoric gave him the necessary tools to elevate Coptic, in content and style, to a literary height nearly equal to the position of the Egyptian language in ancient Egypt. The Muslim conquest of Egypt by Arabs came with

3344-487: The Coptic language, but they were unsuccessful. In the second half of the 20th century, Pope Cyril VI of Alexandria started a national Church-sponsored movement to revive Coptic. Several works of grammar were published, including a more comprehensive dictionary than had been formerly available. The scholarly findings of the field of Egyptology and the inauguration of the Institute of Coptic Studies further contributed to

3432-487: The Egyptian deserts. In time, the growth of these communities generated the need to write Christian Greek instructions in the Egyptian language. The early Fathers of the Coptic Church , such as Anthony the Great , Pachomius the Great , Macarius of Egypt and Athanasius of Alexandria , who otherwise usually wrote in Greek, addressed some of their works to the Egyptian monks in Egyptian. The Egyptian language, now written in

3520-463: The Fayyumic dialect, a feature of earlier Egyptian) and [ k ] and [ ɡ ] , with the voiceless stop consonants being more common in Coptic words and the voiced ones in Greek borrowings. Apart from the liquid consonants , this pattern may indicate a sound change in Later Egyptian, leading to a neutralisation of voiced alveolar and velar plosives. When the voiced plosives are realised, it

3608-476: The Greek loan words may come from any other part of speech except pronouns' Words or concepts for which no adequate Egyptian translation existed were taken directly from Greek to avoid altering the meaning of the religious message. In addition, other Egyptian words that would have adequately translated the Greek equivalents were not used as they were perceived as having overt pagan associations. Old Coptic texts use many such words, phrases and epithets ; for example,

Agpeya - Misplaced Pages Continue

3696-507: The Hellenistic age resembles Attic in such a degree that it is often mentioned as Common Attic . The first scholars who studied Koine, both in Alexandrian and Early Modern times, were classicists whose prototype had been the literary Attic Greek of the Classical period and frowned upon any other variety of Ancient Greek . Koine Greek was therefore considered a decayed form of Greek which was not worthy of attention. The reconsideration on

3784-491: The New Testament , W.F. Howard argues that the heavy use of the historical present in Herodotus and Thucydides , compared with the relatively infrequent usage by Polybius and Xenophon was evidence that heavy use of this verb tense is a feature of vernacular Koine, but other scholars have argued that the historical present can be a literary form to "denote semantic shifts to more prominent material." The term patristic Greek

3872-497: The Roman period, e.g.: Καλήμερον, ἦλθες; Bono die, venisti? Good day, you came? Ἐὰν θέλεις, ἐλθὲ μεθ' ἡμῶν. Si vis, veni mecum . If you want, come with us. Ποῦ; Ubi? Where? Πρὸς φίλον ἡμέτερον Λύκιον. Ad amicum nostrum Lucium. To our friend Lucius. Τί γὰρ ἔχει; Quid enim habet? Indeed, what does he have? What is it with him? Ἀρρωστεῖ. Aegrotat. He's sick. Finally,

3960-604: The above imply that those characteristics survived within Koine, which in turn had countless variations in the Greek-speaking world. Biblical Koine refers to the varieties of Koine Greek used in Bible translations into Greek and related texts. Its main sources are: There has been some debate to what degree Biblical Greek represents the mainstream of contemporary spoken Koine and to what extent it contains specifically Semitic substratum features. These could have been induced either through

4048-473: The basis of early Coptic literature. The core lexicon of Coptic is Egyptian , most closely related to the preceding Demotic phase of the language. Up to 40% of the vocabulary of literary Coptic is drawn from Greek , but borrowings are not always fully adapted to the Coptic phonological system and may have semantic differences as well. There are instances of Coptic texts having passages that are almost entirely composed from Greek lexical roots. However, that

4136-401: The day-to-day vernacular . Others chose to refer to Koine as "the dialect of Alexandria " or "Alexandrian dialect" ( ἡ Ἀλεξανδρέων διάλεκτος ), or even the universal dialect of its time. Modern classicists have often used the former sense. Koine Greek arose as a common dialect within the armies of Alexander the Great . Under the leadership of Macedon , their newly formed common variety

4224-525: The early 20th century some scholars argued that the use of the historical present tense in Mark was due to the influence of Aramaic , but this theory fell out of favor in the 1960s. Another group of scholars believed the historical present tense was used to heighten the dramatic effect, and this interpretation was favored in the New American Bible translation. In Volume II of the 1929 edition of A Grammar of

4312-562: The east by both individuals and families at home seven times a day, as well as for communal prayers as an introduction to Mass at church; this Christian practice has its roots in Psalm 119:164 , in which the prophet David prays to God seven times a day. The vast majority of the Coptic Christians learn the recitation and prayers of the Agpeya at an early age as children at home from their families. The Coptic Orthodox cycle of canonical hours

4400-543: The end of each Psalm … while saying the ‘ Alleluia ’; and multiple times" during the forty-one Kyrie eleisons (believers may use the mequteria to count these metanoias). It includes seven canonical hours, with an additional "Prayer of the Veil" which is usually recited by Bishops, Priests, and Monks. The Coptic terms for 'Matins' and 'Vespers' are 'The Morning Raising of Incense' and 'The Evening Raising of Incense' respectively, with reference to prayers rising to God. Before praying

4488-488: The functional load was extremely low. Bohairic did not have long vowels. / i / was only written ⟨ ⲓ ⟩ . As above, it's possible that / u / and / o / were distinct vowels rather than just allophones. In Late Coptic (that is, Late Bohairic), the vowels were reduced to those found in Egyptian Arabic, /a, i, u/ . ⟨ ⲱ, ⲟ ⟩ became / u / , ⟨ ⲉ ⟩ became / æ / , and ⟨ ⲏ ⟩ became either / ɪ / or / æ / . It

SECTION 50

#1732844914414

4576-407: The historical and linguistic importance of Koine Greek began only in the early 19th century, where renowned scholars conducted a series of studies on the evolution of Koine throughout the entire Hellenistic period and Roman Empire . The sources used on the studies of Koine have been numerous and of unequal reliability. The most significant ones are the inscriptions of the post-Classical periods and

4664-453: The initial stage in the fortition of the second element in the αυ/ευ diphthongs) and the loss of vowel-timing distinctions are carried through. On the other hand, Kantor argues for certain vowel qualities differing from the rest of the Koine in the Judean dialect. Although it is impossible to know the exact realizations of vowels, it is tentatively argued that the mid-vowels ε / αι and η had

4752-473: The intense Ionic elements of the Koine – σσ instead of ττ and ρσ instead of ρρ ( θάλασσα – θάλαττα , 'sea'; ἀρσενικός – ἀρρενικός , 'potent, virile') – considered Koine to be a simplified form of Ionic . The view accepted by most scholars today was given by the Greek linguist Georgios Hatzidakis , who showed that despite the "composition of the Four", the "stable nucleus" of Koine Greek

4840-417: The language retained an important position, and many hagiographic texts were also composed during this period. Until the 10th century, Coptic remained the spoken language of the native population outside the capital. The Coptic language massively declined under the hands of Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah , as part of his campaigns of religious persecution. He issued strict orders completely prohibiting

4928-491: The language. The passage into the next period, known as Medieval Greek , is sometimes dated from the foundation of Constantinople by Constantine the Great in 330 AD, but often only from the end of late antiquity . The post-Classical period of Greek thus refers to the creation and evolution of Koine Greek throughout the entire Hellenistic and Roman eras of history until the start of the Middle Ages. The linguistic roots of

5016-676: The liturgical language of services in the Greek Orthodox Church and in some Greek Catholic churches . The English-language name Koine is derived from the Koine Greek term ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος ( hē koinḕ diálektos ), meaning "the common dialect". The Greek word κοινή ( koinḗ ) itself means "common". The word is pronounced / k ɔɪ ˈ n eɪ / , / ˈ k ɔɪ n eɪ / , or / k iː ˈ n iː / in US English and / ˈ k ɔɪ n iː / in UK English. The pronunciation of

5104-440: The long Greek vowels ⟨η, ω⟩ . As with the vowels, there are differences of opinion over the correct interpretation of the Coptic consonant letters, particularly with regard to the letters ϫ and ϭ . ϫ is transcribed as ⟨j⟩ in many older Coptic sources and ϭ as ⟨ɡ⟩ or ⟨č⟩ . Lambdin (1983) notes that the current conventional pronunciations are different from

5192-669: The main of the Greek language. S. J. Thackeray, in A Grammar of the Old Testament in Greek According to the Septuagint (1909), wrote that only the five books of the Pentateuch , parts of the Book of Joshua and the Book of Isaiah may be considered "good Koine". One issue debated by scholars is whether and how much the translation of the Pentateuch influenced the rest of the Septuagint, including

5280-422: The majority of cases, the article marks number. Generally, nouns inflected for plurality end in /wə/ , but there are some irregularities. The dual was another feature of earlier Egyptian that survives in Coptic in only few words, such as ⲥⲛⲁⲩ ( snau ) 'two'. Words of Greek origin keep their original grammatical gender, except for neuter nouns, which become masculine in Coptic. Possession of definite nouns

5368-463: The medieval Islamic period, when Coptic was still spoken. There are some differences of opinion among Coptic language scholars on the correct phonetic interpretation of the writing system of Coptic. Differences centre on how to interpret the pairs of letters ⲉ/ⲏ and ⲟ/ⲱ . In the Attic dialect of Ancient Greek in the 5th century BC, the first member of each pair is a short closed vowel /e, o/ , and

SECTION 60

#1732844914414

5456-426: The notion of meeting and gathering of men, without any particular character. Therefore, etymologizing this word could be needless, or even misleading, when it could guide to false meanings, for example that ἐκκλησία is a name used for the people of God, Israel. The authors of the New Testament follow the Septuagint translations for over half their quotations from the Old Testament. The " historical present " tense

5544-452: The opening of ε . Influence of the Aramaic substrate could have also caused confusion between α and ο , providing further evidence for the back vowel realization. The following texts show differences from Attic Greek in all aspects – grammar, morphology, vocabulary and can be inferred to show differences in phonology. The following comments illustrate the phonological development within

5632-399: The period generally designated as Koine Greek, a great deal of phonological change occurred. At the start of the period, the pronunciation was virtually identical to Ancient Greek phonology , whereas in the end, it had much more in common with Modern Greek phonology . The three most significant changes were the loss of vowel length distinction, the replacement of the pitch accent system by

5720-523: The period of Koine. The phonetic transcriptions are tentative and are intended to illustrate two different stages in the reconstructed development, an early conservative variety still relatively close to Classical Attic, and a somewhat later, more progressive variety approaching Modern Greek in some respects. The following excerpt, from a decree of the Roman Senate to the town of Thisbae in Boeotia in 170 BC,

5808-505: The practice of translating closely from Biblical Hebrew or Aramaic originals, or through the influence of the regional non-standard Greek spoken by originally Aramaic-speaking Hellenized Jews . Some of the features discussed in this context are the Septuagint's normative absence of the particles μέν and δέ , and the use of ἐγένετο to denote "it came to pass". Some features of Biblical Greek which are thought to have originally been non-standard elements eventually found their way into

5896-548: The probable ancient pronunciations: Sahidic ϫ was probably pronounced [ tʲ ] and ϭ was probably pronounced [ kʲ ] . Reintges (2004 , p. 22) suggests that ϫ was pronounced [ tʃ ] . Beside being found in Greek loanwords, the letters ⟨φ, θ, χ⟩ were used in native words for a sequence of /p, t, k/ plus / h / , as in ⲑⲉ = ⲧ-ϩⲉ "the-way" (f.sg.) and ⲫⲟϥ = ⲡ-ϩⲟϥ "the-snake" (m.sg). The letters did not have this use in Bohairic, which used them for single sounds. It

5984-526: The renaissance. Efforts at language revitalisation continue to be undertaken, and have attracted the interest of Copts and linguists in and outside of Egypt. Coptic uses a writing system almost wholly derived from the Greek alphabet , with the addition of a number of letters that have their origins in Demotic Egyptian . This is comparable to the Latin-based Icelandic alphabet , which includes

6072-401: The runic letter thorn . There is some variation in the number and forms of these signs depending on the dialect. Some of the letters in the Coptic alphabet that are of Greek origin were normally reserved for Greek words. Old Coptic texts used several graphemes that were not retained in the literary Coptic orthography of later centuries. In Sahidic, syllable boundaries may have been marked by

6160-516: The second member is a long open vowel /ɛː, ɔː/ . In some interpretations of Coptic phonology, it is assumed that the length difference is primary, with ⲉ/ⲏ /e, eː/ and ⲟ/ⲱ is /o, oː/ . Other scholars argue for a different analysis in which ⲉ/ⲏ and ⲟ/ⲱ are interpreted as /e, ɛ/ and /o, ɔ/ . These two charts show the two theories of Coptic vowel phonology: Dialects vary in their realisation. The difference between [ o ] and [ u ] seems to be allophonic. Evidence

6248-429: The spirantization of Γ , with palatal allophone before front-vowels and a plosive allophone after nasals, and β . φ, θ and χ still preserve their ancient aspirated plosive values, while the unaspirated stops π, τ, κ have perhaps begun to develop voiced allophones after nasals. Initial aspiration has also likely become an optional sound for many speakers of the popular variety. Monophthongization (including

6336-461: The spoken vernaculars of the time. As the dominant language of the Byzantine Empire, it developed further into Medieval Greek , which then turned into Modern Greek . Literary Koine was the medium of much post-classical Greek literary and scholarly writing, such as the works of Plutarch and Polybius . Koine is also the language of the Septuagint (the 3rd century BC Greek translation of

6424-508: The subject is a pronoun, it normally is not also expressed independently, unless for emphasis. Koine Greek Koine Greek ( ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος , hē koinḕ diálektos , lit.   ' the common dialect ' ), also variously known as Hellenistic Greek , common Attic , the Alexandrian dialect , Biblical Greek , Septuagint Greek or New Testament Greek , was the common supra-regional form of Greek spoken and written during

6512-520: The suffix inflection survive in Coptic, mainly to indicate inalienable possession and in some verbs. Compare the Middle Egyptian form *satāpafa 'he chooses' (written stp.f in hieroglyphs) to Coptic (Sahidic) f.sotp ϥⲥⲱⲧⲡ̅ 'he chooses'. All Coptic nouns carry grammatical gender , either masculine or feminine, usually marked through a definite article as in the Romance languages , the difference

6600-429: The temple scriptoria. Old Coptic is represented mostly by non-Christian texts such as Egyptian pagan prayers and magical and astrological papyri. Many of them served as glosses to original hieratic and demotic equivalents. The glosses may have been aimed at non-Egyptian speakers. Under late Roman rule , Diocletian persecuted many Egyptian converts to the new Christian religion , which forced new converts to flee to

6688-489: The term ⲅⲩⲡⲧⲓⲟⲥ ( gyptios ) "Egyptian", derived from Greek Αἰγύπτιος ( Aigúptios ). This was borrowed into Arabic as ‏ قبْط ‎ ( qibṭ/qubṭ ), and from there into the languages of Europe, giving rise to words like French copte and English Copt . Coptic is today spoken liturgically in the Coptic Orthodox and Coptic Catholic Church (along with Modern Standard Arabic ). The language

6776-454: The term koine to refer to the Proto-Greek language , while others used it to refer to any vernacular form of Greek speech which differed somewhat from the literary language. When Koine Greek became a language of literature by the first century BC, some people distinguished two forms: written as the literary post-classical form (which should not be confused with Atticism ), and vernacular as

6864-476: The translation of Isaiah. Another point that scholars have debated is the use of ἐκκλησία ekklēsía as a translation for the Hebrew קָהָל qāhāl . Old Testament scholar James Barr has been critical of etymological arguments that ekklēsía refers to "the community called by God to constitute his People". Kyriakoula Papademetriou explains: He maintains that ἐκκλησία is merely used for designating

6952-467: The two sounds appear to be in free variation in Coptic, as they were since the Middle Egyptian period. However, they are contrasted only in Greek loans; for example, native Coptic ⲁⲛⲍⲏⲃ ( anzēb ) and ⲁⲛⲥⲏⲃⲉ ( ansēbə ) 'school' are homophonous. Other consonants that sometimes appear to be either in free variation or to have different distributions across dialects are [ t ] and [ d ] , [ ɾ ] and [ l ] (especially in

7040-401: The use of Coptic anywhere, whether in schools, public streets, and even homes, including mothers speaking to their children. Those who did not comply had their tongues cut off. He personally walked the streets of Cairo and eavesdropped on Coptic-speaking homes to find out if any family was speaking Coptic. As a written language, Coptic is thought to have completely given way to Arabic around

7128-441: The word ebenos , which was taken directly from Greek ἔβενος ("ebony"), originally from Egyptian hbnj . Many place names in modern Egypt are Arabic adaptations of their former Coptic names : The Coptic name ⲡⲁⲡⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ , papnoute (from Egyptian pꜣy-pꜣ-nṯr ), means "belonging to God" or "he of God". It was adapted into Arabic as Babnouda , which remains a common name among Egyptian Copts to this day. It

7216-464: The word ⲧⲃⲁⲓⲧⲱⲩ '(Who is) in (His) Mountain', is an epithet of Anubis . There are also traces of some archaic grammatical features, such as residues of the Demotic relative clause , lack of an indefinite article and possessive use of suffixes. Thus, the transition from the old traditions to the new Christian religion also contributed to the adoption of Greek words into the Coptic religious lexicon. It

7304-656: The word koine itself gradually changed from [koinéː] (close to the Classical Attic pronunciation [koi̯.nɛ̌ː] ) to [cyˈni] (close to the Modern Greek [ciˈni] ). In Modern Greek, the language is referred to as Ελληνιστική Κοινή , "Hellenistic Koiné", in the sense of "Hellenistic supraregional language "). Ancient scholars used the term koine in several different senses. Scholars such as Apollonius Dyscolus (second century AD) and Aelius Herodianus (second century AD) maintained

7392-512: Was adapted from the Greek alphabet . The earliest attempts to write the Egyptian language using the Greek alphabet are Greek transcriptions of Egyptian proper names, most of which date to the Ptolemaic Kingdom . Scholars frequently refer to this phase as Pre-Coptic. However, it is clear that by the Late Period of ancient Egypt , demotic scribes regularly employed a more phonetic orthography,

7480-451: Was also borrowed into Greek as the name Παφνούτιος ( Paphnutius ). That, in turn, is the source of the Russian name Пафнутий ( Pafnuty ), perhaps best known in the name of the mathematician Pafnuty Chebyshev . The Egyptian language may have the longest documented history of any language, from Old Egyptian , which appeared just before 3200 BC, to its final phases as Coptic in

7568-412: Was also used in many texts to indicate the bilabial approximant / w / . Coptologists believe that Coptic ⲃ was articulated as a voiced bilabial fricative [ β ] . In the present-day Coptic Church services, this letter is realised as / v / , but it is almost certainly a result of the pronunciation reforms instituted in the 19th century. Whereas Old Egyptian contrasts / s / and / z / ,

7656-541: Was spoken between the cities of Asyut and Oxyrhynchus and flourished as a literary language across Egypt in the period c.  325  – c.  800 AD. Bohairic, the language of the Nile Delta , gained prominence in the 9th century and is the dialect used by the Coptic Church. In Coptic the language is called ϯⲙⲉⲧⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ ( timetremǹkhēmi ) "Egyptian" or ϯⲁⲥⲡⲓ ⲛ̀ⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ ( tiaspi ǹremǹkhēmi ) "the Egyptian language". Coptic also possessed

7744-546: Was spoken from the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt to the Seleucid Empire of Mesopotamia . It replaced existing ancient Greek dialects with an everyday form that people anywhere could understand. Though elements of Koine Greek took shape in Classical Greece , the post-Classical period of Greek is defined as beginning with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, when cultures under Greek sway in turn began to influence

#413586