The Koine Conversation

This book is not primarily about grammar. It is about understanding the apostolic conversation, which happens to be in Koine. In all of the research that I have done over the last eighteen years, I discovered that I could not resolve any of the issues of higher criticism - or of lower theology - or of "Biblical interpretation" - unless I first allowed a comprehensive theory of communication and language and epistemology to be formed in my mind. As soon as I allowed this to happen, the landscape upon which the issues of Biblical criticism and Biblical interpretation are written, suddenly clarified. If Christ is the word, as John claims, then we cannot study grammar without him. We must study grammar Christologically, and we must translate Christologically and we must do theology Christologically. There is no alternative. If God is speaking to us through ordinary language and ordinary literary conventions in the New Testament materials, we must understand what we mean by language and literature and about the communication mechanics that necessarily exists between God and man. This book, then, is not an abstract study of the Greek language. It is a study of how the authors of the New Testament used this language to preach the everlasting Gospel of Christ.