Background
This website is guide for unveiling deeper insights into the Bible Koine Greek text using tools / methods accessible to someone without formal training in the Greek language.
The Bible, both the New Testament (NT) and the Old Testament (OT), were expressed in a particular generation of ancient Greek known as Koine. The Koine, which dates from ca. 300 B.C., and comes from the word meaning “common,” stems from its cohering multiple even older Greek language dialects and variations. Koine prevailed as a common language throughout (1) the period between the final book of the OT (Malachi) and first book of the NT, (2) throughout the period of the NT books (ca. 40 to 95 A.D.), and (3) continuing to approximately the end of the Roman Empire (5th Century A.D.). Koine is similar to both ancient Greek (“Classical Greek”) and modern Greek, but is distinct from both.
Learning Koine (henceforth I will drop the word “Greek”) was once a common requirement in colleges, along with Latin and in some cases (such as Yale in its early day) Hebrew. Such is not the case in either the current century or the one preceding. Teaching Koine has been relegated to multi-year courses in Classic Language majors for secular universities, and (primarily) in Christian Seminaries and to a limited degree in “Bible colleges.”
Even for those whose educational tracks included Koine much of what was learned-by-memorization erodes in time by the press of other priorities, even for so-called Christian ‘clergy.’
So the bad news is that, by the erosion of neglect, reading / understanding capabilities of Koine text has been relegated to secular classical language scholars and Christian Koine scholars / grammarians.
But there is good news. The power of software, the internet, and many language tools, that which required the up to date expertise of students with multi-year education in Koine is, in part, available to ‘amateurs’ who know and make use of such tools.
KAIS–Koine Accessible Insight Studies–is geared to making known and available such Koine language tools and usage to enable such of us ‘amateurs’ an opportunity to dig deeper into God’s Word in the original language it was written (in the NT) and translated into from the OT some 200 years before the period of the NT (in a form known as the Septuagint, abbreviated LXX, containing largely the OT in Koine as would have been accessible and used during the NT period).
Purpose
The outcome of such KAIS is not to suppose the capability of independently translating the Bible or any major portion of it. There are many complexities involved in creating a coherent accurate expression in English starting from a block of Koine, such as a NT book or even a whole chapter or paragraph. Rather, our goal here is to be able to dig deeply in specific Koine words, word phrases, and even whole verses, to understand more fully what translators have provided as their choices based on their understanding and to some extent their theology.
Map of this KAI Studies Site
This site begins with a study of the two most-prevalent, and in my view neglected, words and their uses, namely: the Koine word “kai” itself, and the various forms and uses of the Koine definite article (the “the” word in English).
These studies are at separate links in the menu bar: kai, and Article.