Academic and intellectual communities are known for various areas of subject expertise. When one thinks of Greek grammar, including that of the New Testament, one thinks of Germany, and possibly Great Britain, but rarely Canada. An examination of recent trends regarding the study of ancient languages, especially Greek, in various institutions within Canada serves in this paper as an analogy for the study of other, related subjects, indicating some possible reasons why our field of biblical studies is increasingly an embattled subject and what we can do to address some of the issues involved.

This article investigates the licensing properties of the cognate nouns of verbs that grammaticalize communication in the New Testament. The preliminary discussion reviews the semantic, syntactic, and lexical requirements of the fifty verbs of communication that have cognate nouns in the New Testament and develops general characteristics of the verbs’ sixty-four cognate nouns. The investigation of the cognate nouns describes their licensing properties, resolves their occurrences into six distinct usages, specifies all observed lexical realizations of required complements, and identifies the conditions for polysemy.

The use of ἵνα in Hellenistic Koine and in the New Testament texts has been sufficiently investigated and its linguistic development from Classical Greek to Modern Greek has been outlined. This paper intends to contribute to this discussion, drawing attention to the syntax of the substantive clauses in Latin introduced with the conjunction ut, and suggesting a similar syntax of ἵνα employed as a novel volitional expression in Hellenistic Koine. Concretely, while the prevailing view is that there is an independent parallel development, the present paper aims to reinforce the view that there is a Latin influence in this particular case. The sociolinguistic factors of bilingualism and language interference are highlighted, and for the first time, as far as we know, the Latin translation practice practiced widely in the Roman Empire is suggested as an argument to support this view.

Though several scholars have argued that συμμαρτυρέω was readily used without the associative sense ‘testify with or jointly’ prominent in standard lexica, a fresh examination of a wide range of texts discloses an even stronger than expected correlation between the use of συμμαρτυρέω and the occurrence of concordant affirmations in its context. This supports the argument that the verb’s meaning is normally associative after all. Aspects of its extra-biblical use also help to resolve theological objections that have been lodged against it being ascribed an associative sense in the New Testament.