Particles: from Homer to the Apocalypse  From: clayton stirling
bartholomew ( Date: Sun Nov 08 1998 - 15:24:45 EST  Moving back
and forth between the NT and Homer leaves my head spinning. The
language of Homer seems to be about 30% particles. The
syntactical function and/or meaning of these words is often
maddeningly difficult to pin down, even with the aid of such
notable reference works as Smyth, Monro, and Denniston.  I am
speculating that one reason the use of particles has diminished
significantly in the NT period is the international character of
the Koine. The particles of the Homeric and Attic periods didn't
travel well. Those who spoke Koine as a second language found
that they could get along fine with a truncated syntax.  Moving
backward through the history of Greek from a document like the
Apocalypse of John, through the Attic authors and finally to
Homer produces a kind of syntactical vertigo. I can make sense
out of Homer with a lot of work, but I am still reading Homer as
if it were Koine. What