Commentary (philology)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

In

endnotes, or separate text cross-referenced
by line, paragraph or page.

Means of providing commentary on the language of the text include notes on

style. The aim is to remove, lessen or point out linguistic
obstacles to reading and understanding the text.

If a

technical terminology and facts of daily life, religious beliefs and philosophical perspectives, literary allusions, geographical settings, and cross-references to related passages in the same work, other works by the author, or sources used by the author.[1]

Some commentaries from

Servius on Vergil’s Aeneid
, written in the 4th century.

The production of commentaries began to flourish in the 16th century as part of the humanist project to recover the texts of antiquity, with its related boom in publishing. In the modern era, a commentary differs from an annotated edition aimed at students or the casual reader in that it attempts to address an exhaustive range of scholarly questions, many of which may be of concern or interest primarily to specialists. The commentator may take a position on variant readings of the text or on a point of scholarly dispute, but arguments are usually succinct, a paragraph or less than a page in length.

Mesopotamian commentaries

The earliest examples, and also one of the largest corpora of text commentaries from the ancient world, comes from first-millennium-BCE Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). Known from over 860 manuscripts, the majority of which date to the period 700–100 BCE, most of these commentaries explore numerous types of texts, including literary works (such as the

Enūma Anu Enlil), and from the appearance of a sacrificed sheep’s liver on the other (Bārûtu
).

As with the majority of the thousands of texts from the

cuneiform script. Text commentaries are written in the East Semitic language of Akkadian, but due to the influence of lexical lists written in Sumerian language
on cuneiform scholarship, they often contain Sumerian words or phrases as well.

Cuneiform commentaries are important because they provide information about Mesopotamian languages and culture that are not available elsewhere in the cuneiform record. To give but one example, the pronunciation of the cryptically written name of Gilgamesh, the hero of the Epic of Gilgamesh, was discovered in a cuneiform commentary on a medical text.[3] However, the significance of cuneiform commentaries extends beyond the light they shed on specific details of Mesopotamian civilization. They open a window onto what the concerns of the Mesopotamian literate elite were when they read some of the most widely studied texts in the Mesopotamian intellectual tradition, a perspective that is important for “seeing things their way.”[4] Finally, cuneiform commentaries are also the earliest examples of textual interpretation. It has been repeatedly argued that they influenced rabbinical exegesis. See Akkadian Commentaries and Early Hebrew Exegesis

The publication and interpretation of these texts began in the mid-nineteenth century, with the discovery of the royal Assyrian libraries at Nineveh, from which ca. 454 text commentaries have been recovered. The study of cuneiform commentaries is, however, far from complete. It is the subject of ongoing research by the small, international community of scholars who specialize in the field of Assyriology.

Online commentaries

  • Vergil
    (eds. Christopher Francese and Meghan Reedy)
  • The Vergil Project
    Vergil's Aeneid. It offers an online hypertext linked to interpretive materials of various kinds. These include basic information about grammar, syntax, and diction; several commentaries; an apparatus criticus; help with scansion; and other resources.[8]
  • Cuneiform Commentaries Project,[9] a research project led by Professor Eckart Frahm, and sponsored by Yale University and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The website includes an up-to-date catalogue and dozens of annotated editions, as well as introductory essays (including essays on the hermeneutic techniques used by the commentaries and the relationship between cuneiform commentaries and early Hebrew exegesis); photographs of the manuscripts (i.e., clay tablets), including those yet to be edited; and guides to further readings.

See also

Bibliography

  • Cameron, Alan. Greek Mythography in the Roman World. Oxford University Press, 2004.
    ISBN 0-19-517121-7
    . New perspectives on the purpose and use of scholia and annotations within the Roman intellectual milieu.
  • Frahm, Eckart. Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries. Origins of Interpretation (Guides to the Mesopotamian Textual Record 5; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2011).
  • Gibson, Roy K.; Shuttleworth Kraus, Christina (2002). The Classical Commentary: Histories, Practices, Theory (limited preview). Brill.
    ISBN 90-04-12153-6
    .
  • vergil.classics.upenn.edu
  • dcc.dickinson.edu
  • Wilson, Nigel (2007). "Scholiasts and commentators." Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 47.1.

References

  1. ^ Patrick Cheney, "'Jog on, jog on': European Career Paths," in European Literary Careers: The Author from Antiquity to the Renaissance (University of Toronto Press, 2002), p. 6 online.
  2. ^ Jerome, Apology for Himself against the Books of Rufinus 1.16; Alan Cameron, Greek Mythography in the Roman World (Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 3.
  3. ^ BM 54595 (CCP 4.2.R). See T. G. Pinches, “Exit Gišṭubar!”, The Babylonian and Oriental Record, vol. 4, p. 264, 1889.
  4. S2CID 162350464
    .
  5. ^ "Dickinson College Commentaries". Dickinson College Commentaries. Retrieved 11 July 2015.
  6. ^ "About". Dickinson College Commentaries. Retrieved 11 July 2015.
  7. ^ "Vergil project". upenn.edu. Retrieved 11 July 2015.
  8. ^ "Vergil Project Information". upenn.edu. Retrieved 11 July 2015.
  9. ^ http://ccp.yale.edu
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