"]The Greek language has evolved over four linguistic periods: Classical, Koine, Medieval, and Modern. The New Testament section of the Christian Bible was written during the Koine Greek period. However, knowledge of Koine Greek rapidly disappeared during the Medieval Age.
The New Testament was first translated directly from Greek into English in the seventeenth century. But the scholars who did the translating didn’t know Koine Greek ever even existed. Therefore they translated the Biblical text using Classical Greek meanings – meanings which were up to four hundred years out of date.
In all languages, the meanings of words are fluid and can change over time. At one point, the English word ‘girl’ referred to a young person of either sex. The English word ‘sophisticated’ once meant corrupted. And the word ‘nice’ once referred to women with loose morals. The meanings of words can change significantly in just a few centuries. And this was the case between the Koine Greek meanings which were originally written and the Classical Greek meanings which the translators assigned.
At the turn of the twentieth century, archaeologists discovered a mother lode of Koine Greek papyri buried in the sands of Egypt. The amount of material was so massive that it was measured by the ton when it was shipped to London for analysis. Almost overnight, the world went from having none to literally tons of original Koine Greek manuscripts.
The Koine papyri provide the opportunity to reexamine afresh every single sentence in the New Testament. They provide the opportunity to finally recover the original meanings of the text (meanings which were lost when the Classical Greek definitions were applied). …Anyway, I investigated this further and found what I assume the above is referring to:
, Cliff Kvidahl"]In 1897, two archeologists stumbled upon the greatest cache of papyrus manuscripts ever discovered. B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt’s discovery of over two thousand manuscripts buried in a trash heap in the sands of Oxyrhynchus was a watershed event for New Testament and lexicography studies.
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, as they’ve come to be known, date from as early as the first century CE all the way through the ninth century CE. They include literary works from Homer, Plato, and Sophocles, as well as other important works from antiquity. Also buried in the sands were some of the earliest manuscript witnesses to the New Testament writings. Among these discoveries were fragments of Matthew 1, Romans 1, and 1 John 4, parts of 1 Corinthians and Philippians, and a leaf from Revelation. These discoveries gave paleographers and lexicographers new manuscripts to analyze and compare with the thousands already at their disposal.
"]Even more exciting is the fact that the Oxyrhynchus papyri take textual criticism beyond the New Testament. In these fifteen volumes, there are twenty papyri representing the Septuagint, which will provide an incredibly helpful resource beside the Göttingen Septuagint (65 Vols.). On top of that there are also five manuscripts from the Apostolic Fathers, eleven from the New Testament Apocrypha, two from Philo, and many more from a variety of Classical authors and documentary papyri.Awesome 