The Koine
Authors: Bentein Klaas , Monaco Chiara 
Published: November 2024

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.