Category: Manuscripts

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Greek-Language.com Version 3 (or is it 4?)

Today I uploaded a completely redesigned site at Greek-Language.com. Every page except the grammar has been redesigned. You will see much that looks familiar, but plenty that is new as well. The greatest changes are behind the scenes, with a thorough rewriting of the code that makes the site run. I have written many hundreds of lines of HTML and totally replaced all of the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) that control the look of the pages.

Here are some of the more obvious changes:

  1. The alphabet page now contains pronunciation recommendations for the Hellenistic period. (It always had them for Classical and Modern Greek.) I have inserted audio recordings with the Hellenistic Koine pronunciation suggestions. This slows down page load time, but has a big enough payoff to warrant it. The recordings are not stellar, but they provide an approximation of one of the many varieties of pronunciation that were current during the period.
  2. ALL informational pages now have a Google search bar at the bottom of the page.
  3. The bibliographies page has been cleaned up and now has a clearer, easier to follow organization. Several former pages have been combined into a single elegant page.
  4. The blogs page had become obsolete since the same information it contained is included here on this blog in the blogroll on the right. This page was simply replaced by a link that brings you here.
  5. The dictionaries page includes a number of additions, including a new section with basic information on Ancient Greek lexicographers—writers in the ancient world who wrote discussions of Greek vocabulary or early lexicons.
  6. In addition to cleaning up the epigraphy page I have added information on resources that have come online since the last major renovation of this site (2009).
  7. I added Textkit’s Greek and Latin Forum to the forums page and streamlined the look of all the resources presented there.
  8. Little has changes on the history page other than visual presentation and small improvements in wording.
  9. On the learn Greek page, I deleted references to sites that have not been updated in the last couple of years and added a link to William Mounce’s online resources for his Basics of Biblical Greek.
  10. The manuscripts page brings a range of improvements from updated information on the resources that were already listed there to adding resources that were not available in 2009.
  11. The software page has also seen updates with the deletion of links to organizations that have provided nothing new for the study of Greek in several years to the addition of one company that has recently begun a move into Ancient Greek software.
  12. Since the overwhelming majority of computers now on the market can use Unicode fonts, and there are many of them available on the internet, I have eliminated the fonts page here at Greek-Language.com.

I hope you enjoy the updated site and find it useful.

Like everything new in the world of computing, I’m sure there will be some mistakes in what I have created. I encourage you to point them out to me. You can do that either by emailing me, if you already have my address (I’m sorry I can’t post it here because of SPAM bots that read websites to find them!), or by using the contact option in the menu bar just under the picture at the top of this page.

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Updated Manuscripts Page

A few minutes ago I uploaded a new version of the Manuscripts page at Greek-Language.com. A few links needed repair, and some new resources have become available since the last time I updated that page.

I hope you like the new version.

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Punctuation in Ancient Greek Texts, Part II

Here is a good example of what I had to say in my last post about the lack of punctuation and spacing in Ancient Greek. The image is from Codex Sinaiticus, Philippians 1:1-2.

Philippians 1:1-2 in Codex Sinaiticus
Philippians 1:1-2 in Codex Sinaiticus

Here is the same text with spaces added between the words:
ΠΑΥΛΟΣ  ΚΑΙ  ΤΙΜΟΘΕΟΣ  ΔΟΥΛΟΙ ΧΥ  ΙΥ  ΠΑΣΙΝ  ΤΟΙΣ  ΑΓΙΟΙΣ  ΕΝ  ΧΥ  ΙΥ  ΤΟΙΣ  ΟΥΣΙΝ  ΕΝ  ΦΙΛΙΠΠΟΙΣ  ΣΥΝ  ΕΠΙΣΚΟΠΟΙΣ  ΚΑΙ  ΔΙΑΚΟΝΟΙΣ  ΧΑΡΙΣ  ΥΜΙΝ  ΚΑΙ  ΕΙΡΗΝΥ  ΑΠΟ  ΘΥ  ΠΑΤΡΟΣ  ΗΜΩΝ  ΚΑΙ  ΚΥ  ΙΥ  ΧΥ

Notice in addition to the lack of punctuation and spacing, the regular use of abbreviations for the words God (ΘΕΟΥ - ΘΥ), Lord (ΚΥΡΙΟΥ – ΚΥ), Jesus (ΙΗΣΟΥ – ΙΥ), and Christ (ΧΡΙΣΤΟΥ – ΧΥ). In Codex Sinaiticus as in all of the early manuscripts, such abbreviations are marked by a macron (¯) over the letters. I was not able to do that when I typed out the version with the spaces above. By including both the first and last letters in the abbreviation, the CASE of the words in question is clear (Genitive in this context for all of them), so even the abbreviations present minimal difficulty for a reasonably fluent reader of Hellenistic Greek.

To see the earlier discussion, go here:

On January 6, 2013 I added a third post on the topic of punctuation:

Important! [Added Jan. 19, 2015]
While the earliest manuscripts of the biblical texts did not contain punctuation, it is usually clear to a competent reader of Ancient Greek where the punctuation belongs.

It is a serious mistake to assume that the absence of punctuation in those manuscripts means a person who does not read Greek is free to choose where to put the punctuation in an English translation. To make decisions about where the punctuation belongs it is necessary to read Ancient Greek very well. Many options that would seem to be available in an English text are ruled out by the structure of the Greek text.
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Punctuation in Ancient Greek Texts, Part I

Recognizing that readers of this blog represent various levels of competence in reading Ancient Greek and levels of familiarity with Hellenistic Greek texts, I am posting an email I wrote to a user of Greek-Language.com back in 2005 in response to the question, “Did Ancient Greek use punctuation?” If you already know the answer to that question, just skip this post! (Or better yet, comment!)

On Mon, August 29, 2005 I wrote:

Dear __________:

Thank you for your letter. Your question is an interesting and important one, and we have considerable evidence with which to answer it.

The ancient Greeks did not have any equivalent to our modern device of punctuation. Sentence punctuation was invented several centuries after the time of Christ. The oldest copies of both the Greek New Testament and the Hebrew Old Testament are written with no punctuation.

In addition, the ancient Greeks used no spaces between words or paragraphs. Texts were a continuous string of letters, with an occasional blank line inserted to mark the end of a major section, though even this was not always done.

They also had no equivalent to our lower case letters. Texts were written in all capitals.

While this clearly creates some challenges for Bible translation, those challenge are seldom very large. As a simple test, try reading the English text in the following line:

WHATDOESTHISSAY

With very little difficulty you can probably tell where the spaces should be and what kind of punctuation belongs at the end. You can tell this because you are a native speaker of the language in which the text is written, so you can easily recognize the words as well as the implication of the word order. Native speakers of Ancient Greek, in the same way, could recognize where one word ended and another began even though the spaces were not written. They could also distinguish a question from a direct statement without the need of punctuation.

Here’s the real problem: You and I are NOT native speakers of Ancient Greek.

While I read Ancient Greek quite well, I did not grow up speaking it. All modern scholars, including those who grew up speaking Modern Greek, are in this same situation.

When there is more than one possible way of dividing the words in a sentence or paragraph, or when there is more than one possible set of punctuation, we must look for clues as to what the author intended in order to correctly determine which is the correct division and what punctuation the author would have used if it had been available.

Of course there is an element of subjectivity in this process, but many scholars have dedicated the better part of their lives to reading the Biblical documents in the original languages and have come to have a good sense of the style and preferences of each author. As we develop this skill, it becomes easier to see what the author would most likely have intended in each of the few places where a sentence could be divided more than one way.

If you do not read Ancient Greek and Hebrew, it is important to compare various translations to see what the options for punctuation might be. Then you should ask yourself which punctuation results in something that the author would most likely have said. This may not always provide you with the correct answer, but it will be a valuable learning experience.

Thank you again for your letter. I wish you well in your studies.

Micheal W. Palmer
Greek Language and Linguistics Gateway
http://greek-language.com

 

Since the writing of this post on December 27, 2010, two other discussions of the lack of punctuation in Ancient Greek have been posted. You can find them by following the links below:

Another topic tangentially related to this one is available here:

 

Important! [Added Jan. 19, 2015]
While the earliest manuscripts of the biblical texts did not contain punctuation, it is usually clear to a competent reader of Ancient Greek where the punctuation belongs.

It is a serious mistake to assume that the absence of punctuation in those manuscripts means a person who does not read Greek is free to choose where to put the punctuation in an English translation. To make decisions about where the punctuation belongs it is necessary to read Ancient Greek very well. Many options that would seem to be available in an English text are ruled out by the structure of the Greek text.