What is this word?

Semantic Range, Lexicography, and other approaches to word meaning - in general, or for particular words.
Alan Bunning
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What is this word?

Post by Alan Bunning »

Here is part of a transcription of an ostracon I am going to add to my collation. Lines 7-8 contain a version of Luke 2:14. What do you make of the words εκιστησ and ανθρ.γιν?
tait.jpg
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Stephen Hughes
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Re: What is this word?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

οἱ ἄγγελοι ἐπὶ γῆς χορεύουσιν.
"Angels are dancing upon the earth". :lol: That sounds like some some 20th century NT Greek primers.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
cwconrad
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Re: What is this word?

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Hughes wrote:
οἱ ἄγγελοι ἐπὶ γῆς χορεύουσιν.
"Angels are dancing upon the earth". :lol: That sounds like some some 20th century NT Greek primers.
I think that happened at Wrigley Field in Chicago last night.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Stephen Hughes
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Re: What is this word?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

@Alan Could you post a picture of the shard. The "words" might make more sense then.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Alan Bunning
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Re: What is this word?

Post by Alan Bunning »

Stephen Hughes wrote:@Alan Could you post a picture of the shard. The "words" might make more sense then.
I don't have access to an image of it. The transcript is all I have in this case.
Stephen Hughes
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Re: What is this word?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Alan Bunning wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:The "words" might make more sense then.
The transcript is all I have in this case.
I can't find an image either. The closest I come is the Trismegistos citation.

I used the inverted commas, because, I don't think Tait intended a reader to take ανθρ.γιν as parts of a single word. The snipit you have posted seems professionally typeset with proportional spacing. To my eye, the space in the line containing the γιν could have contained the ανθρ. too, with a little adjustment during the typesetting. P. M. Head presents this ostracon near the end of his section on ostraca containing New Testament texts (pages 433 - 438), among some other hymns, liturgical and magical texts. By not writing the γιν, he evidently reads ανθρ. and γιν as separate words too:
Peter M. Head, [i]Additional Greek Witnesses to the New Testament[/i], in Bart D. Ehrman and Michael W. Holmes (Editors), [i]The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis[/i] (1995), page 438 wrote:A hymn to the Virgin Mary contains a quotation from Luke 2:14 in lines 7–8: τοξα εν εκιστη θ[εω γ]ης ειρηνης εν ανθρ.³⁶
_____________________
³⁶Cambridge, UL, Ostraca inv. 118 (vH 832; LDAB 5902). Tait, Greek Ostraca, 171.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Hughes
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Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: What is this word?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

cwconrad wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:
οἱ ἄγγελοι ἐπὶ γῆς χορεύουσιν.
"Angels are dancing upon the earth". :lol: That sounds like some some 20th century NT Greek primers.
I think that happened at Wrigley Field in Chicago last night.
Was it a home team win?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: What is this word?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

τοξα εν εκιστης θεω γης ειρηνης εν ανθρ.
Alan, about τοξα. Does your automatic parsing (lemmatising) routine interpret this τοξα to mean, "Arrows (are flying) torturously to the god (or to the tortured god) of the peaceful earth inside a person."? :lol: :? Dada sixteen centuries too early.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Alan Bunning
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Re: What is this word?

Post by Alan Bunning »

Stephen Hughes wrote:
Alan Bunning wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:The "words" might make more sense then.
The transcript is all I have in this case.
I can't find an image either. The closest I come is the Trismegistos citation.

I used the inverted commas, because, I don't think Tait intended a reader to take ανθρ.γιν as parts of a single word. The snipit you have posted seems professionally typeset with proportional spacing. To my eye, the space in the line containing the γιν could have contained the ανθρ. too, with a little adjustment during the typesetting. P. M. Head presents this ostracon near the end of his section on ostraca containing New Testament texts (pages 433 - 438), among some other hymns, liturgical and magical texts. By not writing the γιν, he evidently reads ανθρ. and γιν as separate words too:
Peter M. Head, [i]Additional Greek Witnesses to the New Testament[/i], in Bart D. Ehrman and Michael W. Holmes (Editors), [i]The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis[/i] (1995), page 438 wrote:A hymn to the Virgin Mary contains a quotation from Luke 2:14 in lines 7–8: τοξα εν εκιστη θ[εω γ]ης ειρηνης εν ανθρ.³⁶
_____________________
³⁶Cambridge, UL, Ostraca inv. 118 (vH 832; LDAB 5902). Tait, Greek Ostraca, 171.
In that case, what would γιν mean?
Alan Bunning
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Re: What is this word?

Post by Alan Bunning »

Stephen Hughes wrote:
τοξα εν εκιστης θεω γης ειρηνης εν ανθρ.
Alan, about τοξα. Does your automatic parsing (lemmatising) routine interpret this τοξα to mean, "Arrows (are flying) torturously to the god (or to the tortured god) of the peaceful earth inside a person."? :lol: :? Dada sixteen centuries too early.
Treating it as a spelling error of δοξα.
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