Koine Greek

common dialect of Greek spoken and written in the ancient world

6 dated entries naming Koine Greek, drawn from 6 separate years between 250 BCE and 1859 CE. Nothing here is written by us: each line is the sentence a Wikipedia year article used, and the link beside it opens the exact revision.

JSON Wikipedia article Wikidata Q107358

3rd century BC

250 BCEAccording to the Letter of Aristeas, Ptolemy II invited the Jewish residents of Alexandria to have their torah translated into Greek. Because around seventy translators are used to achieve this, the translation is known as the Septuagint.source
238 BCEThe Decree of Canopus, also called "Table of Tanis", is a memorial stone promulgated by an assemblage of priests in honour of Ptolemy III Euergetes and his consort Berenice. The decree, written in Greek, demotic, and hieroglyphs is an ancient bilingual Egyptian decree that provides a key for deciphering hieroglyphic and the simpler demotic scripts.source

2nd century

170Emperor Marcus Aurelius writes in Sirmium (Pannonia) his first of 12 books of the Meditations in Koine Greek.source

3rd century

300Possible date of the Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209 and Codex Sinaiticus, manuscripts of the Bible written in Greek.source

16th century

1567October 7 – Bible translations into Welsh: The New Testament is first published in Welsh, in William Salesbury's translation from the Greek.source

19th century

1859February 4 – German scholar Constantin von Tischendorf rediscovers the Codex Sinaiticus, a 4th-century uncial manuscript of the Greek Bible, in Saint Catherine's Monastery on the foot of Mount Sinai, in the Khedivate of Egypt and arranges for its presentation to his patron, Tsar Alexander II of Russia at Saint Petersburg.source