The Language of Ecclesiastical Greek

This article is intended to help beginners in Ecclesiastical Greek develop a strategy to translate a wide range of Church writings.

The Church fathers used the common written language in use during their time. This was Attic Greek.

There are two caveats though: first there are many sub-dialects in Attic Greek that the translator has to be conscious of. Secondly, many manuscripts were modified by medieval copyists and are mixed-bag of old and newer constructs.

Greek in the ancient world was much like the contemporary English language. There is koine English, which is a base form of English which many countries and regions share very similar commonalities. For example the United States south, British, and Australians can communicate with only a few problems. However, each one does have some distinct words and pronunciations that each party quickly recognizes and makes adjustments. Ecclesiastical Greek has many authors that wrote in their own sub-dialect similar to the slight differences found between British, American and Australian literature.

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Ancient Digitized Greek Dictionaries

How to utilize the internet for multiple ancient Greek dictionaries when translating Patristic or Ecclesiastical Greek

The Birth-Year of Christ according to the Regnal System

The problems and solutions using the Regnal Calendar system for calculating the birth year of Christ.

The following coverage shows that it is not a problem of the Christian religion to identify the year of Christ’s birth. Rather, it demonstrates that an internationally recognized calendar system was not available yet. Mankind was still figuring it out.

The Regnal system is one of the older calendar systems in the annals of human history. The origins are obscure but a natural fit.

It was widely used throughout the ancient Middle East and Mediterranean area and popularized by the Romans.

The problem with the Regnal system of calculating dates is political knowledge. If one does not know when the reign of a leader began or when he died, then this causes dating irregularities. We do not possess all the historical facts today to accurately date anything in history using this system. However, since the New Testament writers reference this system, it becomes an important factor in calculating the birth year of Christ.

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A Chronology of the Herods: More Details

Charting the dates and lives of the Herods in relation to the birth of Christ and making sense of the differences between competing histories.

A Chronology of the Herods

Charting the dates and lives of the Herods concerning the birth of Christ and making sense of the differences between competing histories.

Herod the Great was a living character described by the Bible narrators about the birth of Christ,1 therefore the reign dates of this leader and his family are of particular value.

a picture of Herod the Great
Herod the Great, founder of a family dynasty in the Middle East.

However, there are different timeframes in the significant historical sources, especially between the first century Jewish-Roman historian Josephus and several ancient church accounts. This work aims to define what Josephus and the church authorities wrote on the subject, compare the dates, find common patterns, and, hopefully, reconcile the differences.

The original writers of the Gospels never related time in relation to the Herod dynasty. This omission was likely done on purpose because the Gospels were for a universal audience that viewed the Herod family as minor players in a big act. Neither did the Christian writers want to parallel the Herods with time because they were so cruel and barbarous. This action would be too honorific.

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A History of Glossolalia: Did it exist before 1879?

To find out if the words ecstasy or glossolalia existed before the 1800s and how these terms have developed over time.

As described previously in A History of Glossolalia: Origins, it was approximately 1830 that the introduction of tongues as glossolalia first occurred in German religious circles, but it was not universal. Neither was the concept found in the realm of English works until Farrar introduced it in 1879. The previous article cited tertiary source materials with few references to primary and secondary ones.

A further examination of the primary, secondary, and additional tertiary sourcebooks is required to substantiate the addition of glossolalia as a tongues doctrine after 1879. Indeed, after careful review of such materials, this was found to be true. The Gift of Tongues Project likes to substantiate all claims. Therefore, the rest of the document is for providing the actual evidence. The article then goes one step further to document how this influence affects us today.

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A History of Glossolalia: Origins

Image of the five pioneers of the glossolalia doctrine
*There are a few more but these ones are the best documented

How glossolalia entered the christian doctrine of tongues vernacular and became the entrenched form of interpretation.

The 1800s was the era of a significant transition in the interpretation and understanding of the doctrine of tongues. This epoch was the time when the traditional interpretation which consisted of a supernatural spontaneous utterance of a foreign language gave way to enigmatic themes such as ecstatic utterances, prophetic utterance, ecstasy, and glossolalia.

Table of Contents

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Introduction to the History of Glossolalia

An examination on why the traditional interpretations of the miracle of tongues all but died and was replaced by tongues as ecstasy or ecstatic utterance.