Biblical gloss
This article includes a improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (September 2016) ) |
In
Etymology
The English word gloss is derived from the Latin glossa, a transcript of the Greek glossa. In classical Greek it means a tongue or language. In the course of time it was used to designate first a word of the text which needed some explanation, and later the explanation or addition itself.
Explanatory glosses
The words which were commonly the subject of explanatory glosses may be reduced to the following five classes:
- foreign words
- provincial dialectical terms
- obsolete words
- technical terms
- words employed in some unusual sense or in some peculiar grammatical form
Where these glosses consisted of a single explanatory word, they were easily written between the lines of the text or in the margin of manuscripts opposite the words of which they supplied the explanation. In the process of time the glosses grew in number, and in consequence they were gathered in separate books where they appeared, first in the same order of succession as they would have had if written in the margin of the
A lexicon of the kind is usually called a "glossary" (from Latin glossarium), or just "gloss". From a single explanatory word, interlined or placed in the margin, the word gloss has been extended to denote an entire expository sentence, and in many instances even a running commentary on an entire book.
Glosses as marginal notes
Marginal notes are found in nearly all manuscripts and printed editions of the scriptures. With regard to the Hebrew text, these glosses or marginal notes are mostly extracts from the Masorah or collection of traditional remarks. They usually bear on what was regarded as a questionable reading or spelling in the text, but yet was allowed to remain unmodified in the text itself through respect for its actual form. At times the margin bids the reader to transpose, interchange, restore, or remove a consonant, while at other times it directs him to omit or insert even an entire word. Some of these glosses are of importance for the correct reading or understanding of the original Hebrew, while nearly all have contributed to its uniform transmission since the 11th century.[citation needed][clarification needed]
The marginal notes of Greek and Latin manuscripts are annotations of all kinds, chiefly the results of exegetical and critical study, crowding the margins of these copies and printed texts far more than those of the manuscripts and editions of the original Hebrew. In regard to the
Glosses as textual additions
Hebrew Bible
The word gloss designates not only marginal notes, but also words or remarks inserted for various reasons in the very text of the scriptures. The existence of such textual additions in the Bible is universally admitted by Biblical scholars with regard to the Hebrew text, although there is at times considerable disagreement as to the actual expressions that should be treated as such.
Besides the eighteen corrections of the Scribes which ancient Rabbis regard as made in the
The presence of similar textual additions in the text of the
New Testament
Glosses as textual additions exist also in manuscripts of the New Testament, owing to a variety of reasons, the principal among which may be:
- copyists have embedded marginal notes in the text itself
- they have at times supplemented the words of an Evangelist by means of the parallel passages in the other Gospels
- sometimes they have completed New Testament's quotations from the Old Testament
Vulgate versions
Textual additions appear in the manuscripts and printed editions of the
Glosses as scriptural lexicons
Rabbinical
- the lexicon of Hesychius, of the 4th century;
- the "Lexeon synagoge" (collection of glosses) of Photius (died 891);
- the lexicon of Suidas, apparently an author of the 10th century;
- the "Etymologicum Magnum" by an unknown writer of the twelfth or the 13th century;
- the "Synagoge lexeon" of the Byzantine monk Zonaras;
- the "Dictionarium" of the Benedictine Varius Phavorinus, published early in the 16th century.
Most of the glosses illustrating the language of Scripture which are found in the works of Hesychius, Suidas, Phavorinus, and in the "Etymologium Magnum", were collected and published by
Glosses as commentaries
As Scriptural commentaries there are two celebrated glosses on the Vulgate. The former is the
The second gloss, the Glossa Interlinearis, derived its name from the fact that it was written over the words in the text of the Vulgate. It was the work of Anselm of Laon (died 1117), who had some acquaintance with Hebrew and Greek.
After the 12th century copies of the Vulgate were usually supplied with both these glosses, the Glossa Ordinaria being inserted in the margin, at the top and at the sides, and the Glossa Interlineari" being placed between the lines of the Vulgate text; while later, from the 14th century onward, the "Postilla" of
References
- Johann Albert Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca (Hamburg, 1705–28)
- J. A. Ernesti, De vero usu et indole glossariorum graecorum (Leipzig. 1742)
- Hesychii Alexandrini glossae sacrae (Leipzig, 1786)
- Johannes Alberti, Glossarium sacrum in sacros Novi Fœderis libros (Leyden. 1735)
- Paulin Martin, De l'origine du Pentateuque (Paris, 1887), I
- Karl Josef Rudolph Cornely, Introductio in utriusque Test. libros sacros (Paris, 1885), I
- Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, Essays chiefly on the Original Texts of the Old and New Testaments (London, 1891)
- Henry Barclay Swete, Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek (Cambridge, 1900)
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Scriptural Glosses". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
External links
- Website providing resources about the Glossa Ordinaria and other glosses to the Bible: Glossae.net