Joel, something that I just thought about is the “Christ Hymn” in Colossians 1:15. Many scholars consider this to be a quotation of an early hymn or poem. There are some other fragments in the NT that are believed to be taken from hymns of the early christian community, but I think that one is the longest. It runs from verse 15 to verse 20. I couldn’t find any discussion about vowel length but it would be something to look into. I don’t know verse well enough to recognize if there are any patterns that would indicate a sensitivity to vowel length.
a search on: Hymn Colossians 1:15 greek meter in Google, top hit was
The Colossian Hymn in Context: An Exegesis in Light of Jewish and Greco …
By Matthew E. Gordley, pp 181ff “Metrical Analysis” where the author begins his argument by saying “One dimension that is completely overlooked in modern discussions of the Colossian hymn is the issue of meter and rhythm.”
Others will need to evaluate if Matthew E. Gordley has anything to offer. It’s outside my domain.
Larry W. Hurtado, How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?: Historical Questions about Earliest … p 85, commenting on Phil. 2:6-11 “Clearly, the passage does not exhibit the formal features of poetry, such as poetic meter. … In the earliest period of Christianity, the use of meter and melody … was looked down on by Christians as pagan …”
Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity, p506
commenting on Col. 1:15ff " The error in trying to ‘reconstruct’ the hymn on the basis of Greek poetic meter is the assumption that classical Greek poetic conventions are relevant. Among many Greek-speaking Jews and Christians of the time … the Greek Old Testament was scripture … [which had a] strong influence on their vocabulary and discourse patterns … The principal stylistic feature of Colossians 1:15-20 is in fact parallel structure that is also the primary poetic feature of the Psalms."
I think Hurtado has nailed it. Hebrew parallelism reflected in the Greek versions of the Old Testament is the right place to start if you are looking for poetry in the New Testament.
I came across two interesting passages in Allen’s Vox Graeca, that I had probably been thinking of in the above.
The first, on pg. 92, says that between 100 B.C. and 100 A.D., the use of ει for long ι in papyri can be used to discover hidden vowel qualities in some words, such as ῥιπτω (ῥειψαι in in an Herculaneum papyrus). After 100 A.D. ει begins to be used for short ι as well.
Later, on pg. 94, Allen says that the movement towards a stress accent (and no vowel length distinctions) began to accelerate around 100 A.D. and “was complete by about the middle of the 3 C…the loss of distinctive vowel-length may also be placed most probably in the 2-3 C. A.D.”
In a footnote, he writes:
In non-literary papyri the loss of length distinctions and interchange of vowels in unaccented syllables from the 2 C. B.C. suggests the effects of stress; but this could be a peculiarity of Egyptian speech (cf. Gignac, p. 142 of article cited p. 81, n. 53 above; also C. M. Knight, ‘The change from the Ancient to the Modern Greek accent’, JPhil Cambridge), 35 (1920), pp. 51 ff. (56 ff.)).
The cited Gignac article is “‘The language of the non-literary Greek papyri’, Proc. XII Int. Cong. of Papyrology (= Amer. St. in Papyrology, vol. 7, 1970), pp. 139 ff. (141).”
I will see if I can get a hold of any of these articles – I’m typing this from the airport, so it may be sometime next week before I have any results.