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Actually, only Mark and John are written in the "rough" Greek style. Luke is very stylistic, and a bear to translate (probably Luke and Acts are the hardest, except for Hebrews). Mark and John are full of bad grammar, poor syntax, and exactly what you would expect from Jews who spoke a little Greek. That is why first year (Koine) Gk students start with Mark or John. They are EASY.

However,(and this is REALLY cool!) When you go to the gospel of Luke, it bears the marks of a well educated, proper speaking person who was well versed in Greek....., in the first chapter (what you would expect from a physician... educated, right?). The second chapter lapses back into what I call "pidgin" Greek, and reads more like John, or Mark. Then, after the events of the nativity, the styliltic, classically influenced Greek picks up (I took a year of classical Greek in undergrad, and about 4 years more Koine Gk. in grad school). My own theory is that Luke, who spoke very good greek, was "transcribing" word for word the events of the nativity from someone. Who better to give the details, and who better to know some of the more intimate details of Mary's heart revealed there, than Mary herself? She would have been old by this time, but still just a Hebrew peasant, whose Greek would have been stammering and poor. Look at the Christmas story in Luke, look at the personal details that only would have been know my Mary, and then visualize someone "switching on" a foreign voice with bad grammar and uneducated style being quoted directly. I think we got Mary's direct story That is my theory of the lapse into "bad" Greek for Luke 2, anyway. It is a cool theory, even if unprovable.

Neat to know! (I was just quoting Lewis - my Greek is entirely Classical and I just bounce through the New Testament with a crib!)

That is a great idea that Luke was transcribing the oral testimony of an eyewitness -- and we do know from one of the early Church Fathers (Irenaeus?) that Mary survived to quite an old age.

If you took 4 yrs of koine Greek in grad school, I guess you weren't in an Episcopal seminary!

(I used to give my ECUSA rector fits, because he couldn't read word one of any kind of Greek at all - no Greek requirement for graduation any more, apparently. I can't do that now that I'm a Catholic, because our rector is excessively fluent in both Latin and Greek and can even hold an intelligent oral conversation in Latin (he went to seminary back in the days when all the courses were taught in Latin!))

I don't understand how any seminary worthy of the name would fail to educate its students in the languages the Bible was written in. I'd expect at least Greek and Hebrew, and Latin ideally for the Vulgate and all the early Fathers . . .