Glosses to the Bible
Encyclopedia
Biblical scholars use the word glossa or gloss
, in connexion with glosses of Biblical texts. A gloss meant an explanation of a purely verbal difficulty of the text, to the exclusion of explanations required by doctrinal, ritual, historical, and other obscurities. It can also refer to words inserted in the very text of the Bible.
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 codices, and ultimately in a regular alphabetical order. These collections of glosses thus formed kinds of lexicon
s which gave the concrete meaning of the difficult words of the text and even historical, geographical, biographical, and other notices, which the collectors deemed necessary or useful to illustrate the text of sacred writings.
A lexicon of the kind is usually called a glossary
(from Lat. 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.
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.
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 Latin Vulgate, in particular, these glosses grew to so many textual readings that Pope Sixtus V
, when publishing his official edition of the Vulgate in 1588, decreed that henceforth copies of it should not be supplied with such variations recorded in the margin. The Douay Version respected this idea.
James I of England
wanted the Authorized Version to be free of marginal notes, but it appeared in 1611 with such notes, usually recording various readings. The glosses or marginal notes of the British Revised Version published 1881-85, are greatly in excess over those of the Version of 1611. They give various readings, alternate renderings, critical remarks, etc. The marginal notes of the American Standard Revised Version (1900–1901) are of the same general description as those found in the British Revised Version.
, 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 Tanakh
before their time, and which were probably due to the fact that marginal explanations had of old been embodied in the text itself, recent scholars have treated as textual additions many words and expressions scattered throughout the Hebrew Bible. Thus the defenders of the Mosaic authorship
of the Pentateuch naturally maintain that the more or less extensive notices found in the Mosaic writings and relative to matters geographical, historical, etc., decidedly later than Moses' time, should be regarded as post-Mosaic textual additions. Others, struck with the lack of smoothness of style noticeable in several passages of the original Hebrew, or with the apparent inconsistencies in its parallel statements, have appealed to textual additions as offering a natural and adequate explanation of the facts observed. Some have even admitted the view that Midrashim, or kinds of Jewish commentaries, were at an early date utilized in the framing or in the transcription of our present Hebrew text, and thus would account for what they consider as actual and extensive additions to its primitive form. And it can hardly be doubted that by means of the literary feature known as "parallelism
" in Hebrew poetry, many textual additions can be detected in the Hebrew text of the poetical books
, notably in the Book of Job
.
The presence of similar textual additions in the text of the Septuagint, or oldest Greek translation of the Old Testament
, was well known to the Roman editors of that version under Sixtus V. One has only to compare attentively the words of that ancient version with those of the original Hebrew to remain convinced that the Septuagint translators
have time and again deliberately deviated from the text which they rendered into Greek, and thus made a number of more or less important additions thereunto. These translators frequently manifest a desire to supply what the original had omitted or to clear up what appeared ambiguous. Frequently, too, they adopt paraphrastic
renderings to avoid the most marked anthropomorphism
s of the text before them: while at times they seem to be guided in their additions by the Halacha and Haggadah.
, owing to a variety of reasons, the principal among which may be:
.
commentaries contain collections of glosses, or "glossaries", with chief object to supply explanations of Hebrew words. A part of the Masorah may also be considered as a kind of glossary to the Hebrew Bible; and the same thing may be said in reference to the collections of Oriental and Western readings given in the sixth volume of the London Polyglot. As regards the Greek Bible texts, there are no separate collections of glosses; yet these texts are taken into account, together with the rest of the Greek literature, in a certain number of glossaries which afford explanations of difficult words in the Greek language. The following are the principal glossaries of that description:
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 J. C. Ernesti (Leipzig, 1785–86). The best separate gloss on the Latin Vulgate, as a collection of explanations chiefly of its words, is that of Isidore of Seville
, which he completed in 632, and which bears the title of "Originum sive Etymologiarum libri XX". It is found in Migne
, P. L., LXXXII.
, thus called from its common use during the Middle Ages. Its author, the German Walafrid Strabo
(died 849), had some knowledge of Greek and made extracts chiefly from the Latin Fathers and from the writings of his master, Rabanus Maurus
, for the purpose of illustrating the various senses—principally the literal sense—of all the books of Holy Writ. This gloss is quoted as a high authority by Thomas Aquinas
, and it was known as "the tongue of Scripture". Until the 17th century it remained the favourite commentary on the Bible; and it was only gradually superseded by more independent works of exegesis. The "Glossa Ordinaria" is found in vols. CXIII and CXIV of Migne, P. L.
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 Interlinearis" being placed between the lines of the Vulgate text; while later, from the 14th century onward, the "Postilla" of Nicholas of Lyra
and the "Additions" of Paulus Burgensis were added at the foot of each page. Some early printed editions of the Vulgate exhibit all this exegetical apparatus; and the latest and best among them is the one by Leander a S. Martino, O.S.B. (six vols. fol., Antwerp, 1634).
Gloss
A gloss is a brief notation of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text, or in the reader's language if that is different....
, in connexion with glosses of Biblical texts. A gloss meant an explanation of a purely verbal difficulty of the text, to the exclusion of explanations required by doctrinal, ritual, historical, and other obscurities. It can also refer to words inserted in the very text of the Bible.
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; or
- 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 codices, and ultimately in a regular alphabetical order. These collections of glosses thus formed kinds of lexicon
Lexicon
In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...
s which gave the concrete meaning of the difficult words of the text and even historical, geographical, biographical, and other notices, which the collectors deemed necessary or useful to illustrate the text of sacred writings.
A lexicon of the kind is usually called a glossary
Glossary
A glossary, also known as an idioticon, vocabulary, or clavis, is an alphabetical list of terms in a particular domain of knowledge with the definitions for those terms...
(from Lat. 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 manuscriptsBiblical manuscript
A biblical manuscript is any handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Bible. The word Bible comes from the Greek biblia ; manuscript comes from Latin manu and scriptum...
and printed editions of the Scriptures. With regard to the Hebrew text, these glosses or marginal notes are mostly extracts from the Masorah
Masoretic Text
The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible and is regarded as Judaism's official version of the Tanakh. While the Masoretic Text defines the books of the Jewish canon, it also defines the precise letter-text of these biblical books, with their vocalization and...
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.
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 Latin Vulgate, in particular, these glosses grew to so many textual readings that Pope Sixtus V
Pope Sixtus V
Pope Sixtus V , born Felice Peretti di Montalto, was Pope from 1585 to 1590.-Early life:The chronicler Andrija Zmajević states that Felice's family originated from modern-day Montenegro...
, when publishing his official edition of the Vulgate in 1588, decreed that henceforth copies of it should not be supplied with such variations recorded in the margin. The Douay Version respected this idea.
James I of England
James I of England
James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...
wanted the Authorized Version to be free of marginal notes, but it appeared in 1611 with such notes, usually recording various readings. The glosses or marginal notes of the British Revised Version published 1881-85, are greatly in excess over those of the Version of 1611. They give various readings, alternate renderings, critical remarks, etc. The marginal notes of the American Standard Revised Version (1900–1901) are of the same general description as those found in the British Revised Version.
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 textHebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...
, 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 Tanakh
Tanakh
The Tanakh is a name used in Judaism for the canon of the Hebrew Bible. The Tanakh is also known as the Masoretic Text or the Miqra. The name is an acronym formed from the initial Hebrew letters of the Masoretic Text's three traditional subdivisions: The Torah , Nevi'im and Ketuvim —hence...
before their time, and which were probably due to the fact that marginal explanations had of old been embodied in the text itself, recent scholars have treated as textual additions many words and expressions scattered throughout the Hebrew Bible. Thus the defenders of the Mosaic authorship
Mosaic authorship
Mosaic authorship is the traditional attribution of the first five books of the Old Testament to Moses. The tradition is first definitively stated in the Babylonian Talmud, an encyclopedia of traditional Jewish learning compiled around the middle of the 1st millennium CE...
of the Pentateuch naturally maintain that the more or less extensive notices found in the Mosaic writings and relative to matters geographical, historical, etc., decidedly later than Moses' time, should be regarded as post-Mosaic textual additions. Others, struck with the lack of smoothness of style noticeable in several passages of the original Hebrew, or with the apparent inconsistencies in its parallel statements, have appealed to textual additions as offering a natural and adequate explanation of the facts observed. Some have even admitted the view that Midrashim, or kinds of Jewish commentaries, were at an early date utilized in the framing or in the transcription of our present Hebrew text, and thus would account for what they consider as actual and extensive additions to its primitive form. And it can hardly be doubted that by means of the literary feature known as "parallelism
Parallelism (rhetoric)
Parallelism means giving two or more parts of the sentences a similar form so as to give the whole a definite pattern.Parallelisms of various sorts are the chief rhetorical device of Biblical poetry in Hebrew. In fact, Robert Lowth coined the term "parallelismus membrorum Parallelism means giving...
" in Hebrew poetry, many textual additions can be detected in the Hebrew text of the poetical books
Biblical poetry
The ancient Hebrews perceived that there were poetical portions in their sacred texts, as shown by their entitling as songs or chants such passages as Exodus 15:1-19 and Numbers 21:17-20; and a song or chant is, according to the primary meaning of the term, poetry.- Rhyme :It is often stated that...
, notably in the Book of Job
Book of Job
The Book of Job , commonly referred to simply as Job, is one of the books of the Hebrew Bible. It relates the story of Job, his trials at the hands of Satan, his discussions with friends on the origins and nature of his suffering, his challenge to God, and finally a response from God. The book is a...
.
The presence of similar textual additions in the text of the Septuagint, or oldest Greek translation of the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
, was well known to the Roman editors of that version under Sixtus V. One has only to compare attentively the words of that ancient version with those of the original Hebrew to remain convinced that the Septuagint translators
Translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...
have time and again deliberately deviated from the text which they rendered into Greek, and thus made a number of more or less important additions thereunto. These translators frequently manifest a desire to supply what the original had omitted or to clear up what appeared ambiguous. Frequently, too, they adopt paraphrastic
Paraphrase
Paraphrase is restatement of a text or passages, using other words. The term "paraphrase" derives via the Latin "paraphrasis" from the Greek , meaning "additional manner of expression". The act of paraphrasing is also called "paraphrasis."...
renderings to avoid the most marked anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism is any attribution of human characteristics to animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits or deities. The term was coined in the mid 1700s...
s of the text before them: while at times they seem to be guided in their additions by the Halacha and Haggadah.
New Testament
Glosses as textual additions exist also in manuscripts of the New TestamentNew Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
, owing to a variety of reasons, the principal among which may be:
- Copyists have embodied marginal notes in the text itself;
- they have at times supplemented the words of an EvangelistFour EvangelistsIn Christian tradition the Four Evangelists are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the authors attributed with the creation of the four Gospel accounts in the New Testament that bear the following titles:*Gospel according to Matthew*Gospel according to Mark...
by means of the parallel passages in the other GospelGospelA gospel is an account, often written, that describes the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In a more general sense the term "gospel" may refer to the good news message of the New Testament. It is primarily used in reference to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...
s; and - sometimes they have completed New Testament's quotationQuotationA quotation or quote is the repetition of one expression as part of another one, particularly when the quoted expression is well-known or explicitly attributed by citation to its original source, and it is indicated by quotation marks.A quotation can also refer to the repeated use of units of any...
s from the Old Testament.
Vulgate versions
Textual additions appear in the manuscripts and printed editions of the Latin Vulgate. Its author, St. Jerome, freely inserted in his rendering of the original Hebrew historical, geographical and doctrinal remarks he thought necessary for the understanding of Scriptural passages by ordinary readers. Nevertheless, he complains at times that during his own life copyists, instead of faithfully transcribing his translation, embodied in the text notes found in the margin. After his death manuscripts of the Vulgate, especially those of the Spanish type, were enriched with all kinds of additional readings, which, together with other textual variations embodied in early printed copies of the Vulgate, led ultimately to the official editions of Jerome's work by Pope Sixtus V and Pope Clement VIIIPope Clement VIII
Pope Clement VIII , born Ippolito Aldobrandini, was Pope from 30 January 1592 to 3 March 1605.-Cardinal:...
.
Glosses as scriptural lexicons
Rabbinical TanakhTanakh
The Tanakh is a name used in Judaism for the canon of the Hebrew Bible. The Tanakh is also known as the Masoretic Text or the Miqra. The name is an acronym formed from the initial Hebrew letters of the Masoretic Text's three traditional subdivisions: The Torah , Nevi'im and Ketuvim —hence...
commentaries contain collections of glosses, or "glossaries", with chief object to supply explanations of Hebrew words. A part of the Masorah may also be considered as a kind of glossary to the Hebrew Bible; and the same thing may be said in reference to the collections of Oriental and Western readings given in the sixth volume of the London Polyglot. As regards the Greek Bible texts, there are no separate collections of glosses; yet these texts are taken into account, together with the rest of the Greek literature, in a certain number of glossaries which afford explanations of difficult words in the Greek language. The following are the principal glossaries of that description:
- the lexicon of HesychiusHesychiusHesychius , may refer to:*Hesychius of Alexandria, lexicographer*St. Hesychius of Cazorla, saint, martyr, and bishop*Hesychius of Jerusalem, presbyter and exegete*Hesychius of Sinai, hieromonk and Byzantine author*Hesychius of Antioch...
, 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 "Etymologium Magnum" by an unknown writer of the twelfth or the 13th century;
- the "Synagoge lexeon" of the Byzantine monk ZonarasJoannes ZonarasIoannes Zonaras was a Byzantine chronicler and theologian, who lived at Constantinople.Under Emperor Alexios I Komnenos he held the offices of head justice and private secretary to the emperor, but after Alexios' death, he retired to the monastery of St Glykeria, where he spent the rest of his...
; - 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 J. C. Ernesti (Leipzig, 1785–86). The best separate gloss on the Latin Vulgate, as a collection of explanations chiefly of its words, is that of Isidore of Seville
Isidore of Seville
Saint Isidore of Seville served as Archbishop of Seville for more than three decades and is considered, as the historian Montalembert put it in an oft-quoted phrase, "le dernier savant du monde ancien"...
, which he completed in 632, and which bears the title of "Originum sive Etymologiarum libri XX". It is found in Migne
Migné
Migné is a commune in the Indre department in central France.-References:*...
, P. L., LXXXII.
Glosses as commentaries
As Scriptural commentaries there are two celebrated glosses on the Vulgate. The former is the Glossa OrdinariaGlossa Ordinaria
The Glossa ordinaria , Lat., "the ordinary gloss/interpretation/explanation", was an assembly of glosses, from the Church Fathers and thereafter, printed in the margins of the Vulgate Bible; these were widely used in the education system of Christendom in Cathedral schools from the Carolingian...
, thus called from its common use during the Middle Ages. Its author, the German Walafrid Strabo
Walafrid Strabo
Walafrid, alternatively spelt Walahfrid, surnamed Strabo , was a Frankish monk and theological writer.-Theological works:...
(died 849), had some knowledge of Greek and made extracts chiefly from the Latin Fathers and from the writings of his master, Rabanus Maurus
Rabanus Maurus
Rabanus Maurus Magnentius , also known as Hrabanus or Rhabanus, was a Frankish Benedictine monk, the archbishop of Mainz in Germany and a theologian. He was the author of the encyclopaedia De rerum naturis . He also wrote treatises on education and grammar and commentaries on the Bible...
, for the purpose of illustrating the various senses—principally the literal sense—of all the books of Holy Writ. This gloss is quoted as a high authority by Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas, O.P. , also Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, was an Italian Dominican priest of the Catholic Church, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis, or Doctor Universalis...
, and it was known as "the tongue of Scripture". Until the 17th century it remained the favourite commentary on the Bible; and it was only gradually superseded by more independent works of exegesis. The "Glossa Ordinaria" is found in vols. CXIII and CXIV of Migne, P. L.
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
Anselm of Laon
Anselm of Laon was a French theologian and founder of a school of scholars who helped to pioneer biblical hermeneutics.Remembered in the century after his death as "Anselmus" or "Anselm", his name was more properly "Ansellus" or, in Modern French, "Anseau."Born of very humble parents at 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 Interlinearis" being placed between the lines of the Vulgate text; while later, from the 14th century onward, the "Postilla" of Nicholas of Lyra
Nicholas of Lyra
Nicholas of Lyra , or Nicolaus Lyranus, a Franciscan teacher, was among the most influential practitioners of Biblical exegesis in the Middle Ages. He was a doctor at the Sorbonne by 1309 and ten years later was appointed the head of all Franciscans in France. His major work, Postillae perpetuae...
and the "Additions" of Paulus Burgensis were added at the foot of each page. Some early printed editions of the Vulgate exhibit all this exegetical apparatus; and the latest and best among them is the one by Leander a S. Martino, O.S.B. (six vols. fol., Antwerp, 1634).
External links
- Website providing resources about the Glossa Ordinaria and other glosses to the Bible: Glossae.net