Language

Koine Greek

The precise, philosophically-rich common Greek of the Hellenistic world.

Family: Hellenic (Indo-European)
Script: Greek alphabet
Era: c. 300 BCE – 300 CE

Character

Koine ('common') Greek is the everyday Greek that spread with Alexander's conquests. It preserved most of the grammatical richness of Classical Greek — a full case system, middle voice, and elaborate participial system — while shedding some literary complexity. It is the language of the Septuagint, the entire New Testament, and the early Church Fathers.

What it does well

Verbal aspect (aorist / present / perfect) makes fine distinctions between completed, ongoing, and resultant action.
The middle voice expresses subject-affecting action with no English equivalent.
Participles let a single word do the work of an entire English subordinate clause.
The definite article carries meaning: its presence or absence can shift the sense significantly.
Deep philosophical and technical vocabulary (logos, pneuma, dikaiosynē) inherited from Classical Greek.

Translation challenges

Aspect is often flattened to English tense, losing the author's emphasis.
Long, hypotactic sentences (see Ephesians 1) resist English sentence structure.
Loaded theological terms invite anachronistic imports from later Christian usage.