Aside from gaining linguistic skills and access to ancient texts, this study builds ‘Cultural Competence.’ Crucial to that component of our mission is a deeper understanding of how language and the ideas embedded in it change.

Our target texts cover a period of nearly a thousand years, from the time of Homer, ca. 700 BC (not long after writing reemerged in Hellas) to the era of early Christianity, as late as 300 CE.Over that long period the language mantained a remarkable consistency in grammatical structure and essential vocabulary. That linguistic conservatism is all the more remarkable because Greek was so widely adopted as the language of commerce and culture, after Alexander’s conquests and throughout the eastern Roman Empire.

Cross-cultural contact is reflected in the most obvious changes in the language: simplifying grammar and borrowing vocabulary. It was that language of adaptation we call koinē that served to connect scattered Jewish communities in the era of the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Torah); and that cross-cultural base (communities of hellenized Jews and converts) was the primary audience of the Gospels and the Pauline letters.The process continues to this day, in the way we adapt what we have borrowed from the Greeks, especially in drama and democracy (e.g., ‘tragic flaw,’ hamartia and ‘equality under the law,’ isonomia). Gaining that perspective helps us understand the beliefs of others and gives us a deeper understanding of our own values and assumptions.