To get into this in any more depth than I propose to here would turn it into a Great Debate. But I think it’s a legitimate GQ answer to your question to say that the universal attitude of those expounding on the Gospel According to John, from which the passage in question comes, is that John invests simple words like light, way, truth, life, bread, etc., with strong metaphorical connotations where they carry much more meaning than they would in a short newspaper account. “The Way” was the first name adopted by the Christian Movement (before it became institutionalized), and references “the way” for human beings to find God. You’d have to get into “how John uses these words” for the other two, but that one will serve as an example.
No it isn’t. Eta’s are pronounced as “ay” as in hay. There is no letter in classical Greek corresponding to a short i as in “pit” sound.
Of course it doesn’t you don’t translate both definite articles, I was only saying they’re present in Greek.
Note: the above hold for modern Greek, so I’m not sure how it was for ancient Greek.
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That probably explains the difference in the pronuniation of eta’s.
By the way, in Classical Greek "he skulax* is a puppy. The word for “dog” is ho kuon. “The brown dog” is he skulax he xanthos.
What is it with me and this thread? I can’t seem to make a coherent. Let’s try that last post again with all the necessary corrections.
No it isn’t. Eta’s are pronounced as “ay” as in hay. There is no letter in classical Greek corresponding to a short i as in “pit” sound.
Of course you don’t translate both definite articles, I was only saying they’re present in Greek.
That probably explains the difference in the pronuniation of eta’s.
By the way, in Classical Greek "he skulax* is a puppy. The word for “dog” is ho kuon. “The brown dog” is ho xuon ho xanthos.
Modern dhimotika Greek has experienced a sound shift very similar to those in English and Spanish. Delta, for example, which was a /d/ sound in classical and Koiné Greek, now has the voiced “th” sound of “the.” Unstressed iota has the “ih” sound, eta the /i/ sound, and so on.
Interestingly, after a quick Google search, I found this
As an aside, how can we know how the ancient Greeks pronounced letters?
They couldn’t record their voices, so did they have a way of describing how the letters are pronounced?
After posting, I see that **Polycarp **said the same thing.
Notice that even in English the articles don’t necessarily imply everything that you suggest they do.
Diogenes the Cynic, getting away from the pronunciation of eta and back to the issue in the OP, what is your opinion on the above?
In the case of the above, I believe the author of John did intend the definite articles to be emphatic and exclusive. The entire context of the statement makes it obvious that the author believed Jesus was a unique saving power.
You asked about how we know the pronunciations of ancient Greek and the answer is that we don’t exactly but we can get pretty close by studying writings about Greek that were done at the time.
There is still actually quite a bit of debate about it and until fairly recently an artificial set of academic pronunciations were used until more carefully researched and more accurate “reconstructed” Greek pronunciations were sussed out.