So, you want to read the New Testament in its original language? You have to learn vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. While vocabulary and grammar are mostly settled — in other words, you’ll get more or less the same instruction from any textbook or teacher — pronunciation presents three basic options:

1) Byzantine (or modern) Greek[1], 2) Erasmian Greek, and 3) reconstructed Koine Greek. We can compare these choices along the dimensions of historical accuracy, utility in learning Greek, cultural continuity, and some miscellaneous features.

The first option which presents itself is to rely on modern Greek pronunciation. Greek is still a living language, and most of the pronunciation changes which occurred between ancient[2] and modern Greek had already transpired by the time of the writings of the New Testament.

Before continuing, it may be worthwhile reflecting, in brief, why sound changes take place. No language is ever static, and change comes in many forms: contact with other languages (e.g., borrowing terms like ‘coffee’ or ‘genre’); simplifying pronunciation (e.g., a native English speaker pronounces ‘unbelievable’ as ‘umbelievable’, and ‘I can bake’ as ‘I cam bake’ since the ‘m’ and ‘b’ are both pronounced with both lips); analogy (‘deer’, ‘trout’, and ‘goose’ are often pluralized as ‘deers’, ‘trouts’, and ‘gooses’ rather than ‘deer’, ‘trout’, and ‘geese’ since most nouns just add the ‘s’ sound to the end); and various others.

Greek likely changed significantly when it became the lingua franca of the Near East following the conquest of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC. With a sudden influx of second language learners, the pronunciation and morphology were greatly simplified. Stressing a primary syllable replaced the pitch accent (still common in languages like Welsh, Persian, Japanese, and the Bantu languages). Thus most of these changes were cemented by the first century CE, and then Greek appears to have evolved much more slowly as its influence slowly declined over the next millenium.

Using modern Greek is thus not only very close to the original pronunciation, but also permits interchange with speakers of modern Greek.[3] It is also relatively close to Koine Greek pronunciation. That said, one of the primary disadvantages is that since one of the hallmarks of modern Greek is that many of the vowels and diphthongs have merged to /i/ (‘ee’ as in ‘feel’). This can make it more difficult to spell or to understand the underlying motivations for various sound changes.

Second, Erasmian Greek is named after one of the greatest Renaissance scholars, Desiderius Erasmus, who is associated with its pronunciation. It is the most popular pronunciation system, but perhaps the least best option for one’s study.

Constantine Campbell’s Advances in the Study of Greek recounts three reputed origin stories for the appellation of this particular version.[4] In the first, Erasmus is duper: he pens a text mocking a particular pronunciation of Koine Greek, but instead his pronunciation catches on.[5] In the second, Erasmus is duped: while entertaining a scholar from Paris, the visitor relates a story of two visiting Greeks who relate a pronunciation system and Erasmus believes it.

The third tale watches Erasmus carefully building on the work of the Venetian scholar Manutius and the Spanish humanist Lebrixa with whom he participated in an ancient Greek reading and speaking group to reconstruct the pronunciation of Koine Greek. I find this last story the most compelling, if for no other reason than that Erasmus’ given pronunciation is actually very close to the pronunciation of ancient Greek. Unfortunately, this doesn’t make it close in pronunciation (even though it was closer in time) to the pronunciation of Paul and other first century Christians.

Erasmian Greek has also suffered from its use as language to read rather than speak, so while it theoretically adheres closely to the ancient Greek pronunciation, it tends to be highly nativized such that an English speaker borrows English sounds, a French speaker inserts French pronunciation, and a German deploys characteristics of his own language. The Greek is thus (at least in pronunciation) far from ancient, Koine, and modern Greek.

Third, more recent studies of the Greek of the first century have been able to put together a more accurate pronunciation. How can one reconstruct a dead language? Misspellings! When someone misspells a word, it provides insight that certain letters may have encoded similar (if not identical) sounds.[6]

English is not a great language to provide examples from, but we can do enough to elucidate the concept. ‘They’re they are!’ one might write. We know they mean ‘there they are!’ and can assume that ‘they’re’ is pronounced identically to ‘there’. Misspelling ‘caught’ as ‘cot’ (cf. ‘rot’, ‘pot’) or ‘cought’ (cf. ‘fought’, ‘bought’) reveal that these series of sounds can be pronounced similarly (or identically).

The problems with such reconstructions, however, is the dearth of evidence. We don’t actually know the geographical spread (was Paul’s Tarsus Greek the same as in Alexandria?) nor what other sociolinguistic factors (e.g., the prestige of certain pronunciations) may have contributed to variation, but we do know the particular way that someone somewhere was pronouncing these terms.

While Koine may be the closest to the original, there remains some disagreement with what exactly was spoken at the time. For example, John Schwandt recommends retaining the υ (often transcribed as y) as distinct from ι,[7] whereas John Lee differs suggesting that the sounds had already merged.[8]

I think the best system to use is Koine[9] due to its proximity to the original language of the New Testament. This will also help to simplify the learning of spelling variations since these can be understood based on their pronunciation. If you don’t want Koine, at least embrace modern Greek and not the Erasmian system – speak the language like a Greek speaker of some era rather than pretending that Greek is really just a dialect of English (or French, or German, or…etc.).


[1] Greek has apparently changed little in pronunciation and vocabulary since the Byzantine period.

[2] ‘Ancient Greek’ is a bit of a slippery category. Pronunciation varied heavily by region and time.

[3] One cannot speak ‘modern Greek’ by just pronouncing the New Testament in a modern Greek accent. They are still different languages (e.g., some words have fallen out of favor or drifted in meaning and case endings have merged).

[4] Campbell, Constantine (2015), Advances in the Study of Greek: New Insights for the Reading of the New Testament, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 193-196

[5] I myself have done something similar when I failed to read Voltaire’s Candide as satire.

[6] One great example is a child’s letter to his father, written in the second or third centuries, and found at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_Oxyrhynchus_119.

[7] http://biblicalgreek.org/grammar/pronunciation/

[8] Cited in Campbell, 201.

[9] A good resource is available here: https://www.koinegreek.com/koine-pronunciation. For some reflections on why to not use Erasmian, see here: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-the-Erasmian-pronunciation