Pedanius Dioscorides De Materia Medica online?

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Stephen Hughes
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Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Pedanius Dioscorides De Materia Medica online?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Can anyone help me locate a copy of Pedanius Dioscorides' De Materia Medica in an online format?
Failing that, does anyone know of an Oxford, Teubner or Loeb option?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
MAubrey
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Re: Pedanius Dioscorides De Materia Medica online?

Post by MAubrey »

Mike Aubrey, Linguist
SIL International
Koine-Greek.com
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Pedanius Dioscorides De Materia Medica online?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

MAubrey wrote:Is this what you're looking for?
Perhaps not exactly. I am trying to find the (ancient) scientific etymology for Acacia (the tree).
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Louis L Sorenson
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Re: Pedanius Dioscorides De Materia Medica online?

Post by Louis L Sorenson »

It is in TLG. Do you know which passage you are seeking? The word occurs 29x throughout the book.
Stephen Hughes
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Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Pedanius Dioscorides De Materia Medica online?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

No, I don't know which passage exactly of the 29 I want. The point of why I'm looking at ultimately to look at to whether (later) Greek patristic marian symbology made a cofused equation between the two senses of ἀκακία when exploring the theme that the ark of the conenant in which was carried the manna that came down from heaven was a type of the virgin Mary in whom our Lord was carried.
wiki:acacia wrote:The generic name derives from ἀκακία (akakia), the name given by early Greek botanist-physician Pedanius Dioscorides (middle to late first century) to the medicinal tree A. nilotica in his book Materia Medica. This name derives from the Greek word for its characteristic thorns, ἀκίς (akis; "thorn").
I'm asking for the data from a hellenistic "scientific" source and I want to know whether that a claim made by the authour of the wiki article was actually made by Pedanius Dioscorides himself.
Exodus 30:1 wrote:καὶ ποιήσεις θυσιαστήριον θυμιάματος ἐκ ξύλων ἀσήπτων καὶ ποιήσεις αὐτὸ

The LXX uses ξύλα ἄσηπτα here et passim for שִׁטִּים (so far as I trust my ability to search for that correlation). Is there a relevence in preserving the plural from the Hebrew here?
LSJ: ἄσηπτος (partial quotation) wrote:not liable to decay or corruption
which seems to suggest that the translation might be a descriptive one.
LSJ: ἀκακία(B) wrote: A.shittah tree, Acacia arabica, Dsc.1.101, Aret. CD2.6. II. = Genista acanthoclada. Dsc. l.c.
This is a later designation for the same tree, which is said by the above quoted wiki article to come from "ἀκίς" thorn. But to my thinking, ἄκακος is actually not very dissimilar in meaning from ἄσηπτος (if both are taken in a pysical rather than moral sense).

As a side point, I have read that it is said that שִׁטִּים (The shitta tree = acacia or one of its species in particular) derives from the Egyptian word šnd.t (šnd.t is a form that reflects the standard spelling of Egytological scholarship of a century ago). In fact scholars would now say that šnd.t (I'm sorry I don't know if this will display well for all users. It is d with a _ under it) is the standard spelling and that šnd.t is a later variant spelling from after the time when the palatalised d was pronounced the same as (the unpalatalised) d. You can see the reference to the varient spelling at the bottom of this page of the paper dictionary:
http://aaew.bbaw.de/tla/servlet/WbImgBr ... 20&bc=show!

The online Thesaurus Lingae Egyyptiae returns 3 results (a total of about 35 occurances) related to the word šnd.t :
Search results - http://aaew.bbaw.de/tla/servlet/BwlBrow ... n&bc=Start
šnd - http://aaew.bbaw.de/tla/servlet/GetWcnD ... 56500&db=0 (acacia thorn masculine form)
šnd.t - http://aaew.bbaw.de/tla/servlet/GetWcnD ... 56510&db=0 (standard spelling acacia tree - feminine form)
šnd.t - http://aaew.bbaw.de/tla/servlet/GetWcnD ... 56520&db=0 (variant spelling - feminine form)

This šnd doesn't seem to be related to any other Egyptian word that it would suggest that readers would consider it to have a metaphorical meaning other than just the tree.

I'm guessing that either the earlier Greek mercenary forces that served various dynasties, at Alexander's invasion or under Ptolemaic rule someone had a reason for calling the tree ξύλον ἄσηπτον, and that it wasn't just a LXX translators innovation.


I want to know whether Pedanius Dioscorides actually coined the word, and where did the LXX's ἄσηπτος stem from?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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