Graecus Venetus and the divine name in Greek [topic split]

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Markos
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Graecus Venetus and the divine name in Greek [topic split]

Post by Markos »

Altair wrote:I also recently enjoyed comparing various Greek and Latin translations of Genesis...
Have you seen the Graecus Venetus?

https://archive.org/details/graecusvenetusp00marcgoog

What did you make of it?

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Barry Hofstetter
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Re: NT greek reading groups?

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Markos wrote:
Altair wrote:I also recently enjoyed comparing various Greek and Latin translations of Genesis...
Have you seen the Graecus Venetus?

https://archive.org/details/graecusvenetusp00marcgoog

What did you make of it?
I like Swete's evaluation:

https://books.google.com/books?id=t8JEd ... nt&f=false

"The result reminds us of a schoolboy's exercise..."
N.E. Barry Hofstetter

Cuncta mortalia incerta...

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Re: NT greek reading groups?

Post by jeidsath »

ὀντωτής, ὀντουργός, οὐσιωτής for the divine name are new to me. I notice that none of them are in WiP (was PAWAG).
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

Joel Eidsath -- jeidsath@gmail.com

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Re: NT greek reading groups?

Post by Altair »

I like Swete's evaluation:

https://books.google.com/books?id=t8JEd ... nt&f=false

"The result reminds us of a schoolboy's exercise..."
I would have been lost without this clue. I found the Greek quite difficult and still don’t understand some of the constructions (e.g., the two uses of ἀνά in verse 4 and the use of the perfect (τετέλεκα) in verse 5).

I have almost no academic background in the Greek, but happened to stumble on a site with various parallel translations of Genesis. I could read enough to be surprised at the degree of difference between them and to wonder about the sequence of tenses to render the Hebrew.

I read a very long time ago that there is something going on with the Hebrew tenses at the beginning of Genesis that is not captured in most of the traditional translations. To me, the tenses in the translations seem off. For instance, the series of aorists in the Graecus Venetus gave me the impression that God had made some kind of mistake when the earth turned out στέρησις κενόν τε.
ὀντωτής, ὀντουργός, οὐσιωτής for the divine name are new to me.
I am guessing that ὀντωτής was intended as a rendering of YHVH, but in what context did the other two names appear? I can’t guess what they refer to.

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Re: NT greek reading groups?

Post by opoudjis »

jeidsath wrote:ὀντωτής, ὀντουργός, οὐσιωτής for the divine name are new to me. I notice that none of them are in WiP (was PAWAG).
I can confirm that they don't occur in any lexicon I am familiar with, either (notably Trapp's Lexikon der Byzantinischen Gräzität, which has done cleanup after other dictionaries). Which means that this particular text seems to have been ignored by lexicographers (and also that those are one-off coinages, though they are perfectly comprehensible.)

I'd hate to think the text has been ignored because it was a late Jewish Greek text, and lexicographers have only paid attention to Christian Greeks :evil: . I know that the 1547 Pentateuch in Modern Greek has been quarried for Kriaras' dictionary of Early Modern Greek, so that's not a general malaise if so.

I've stumbled on this article which cites its renderings of the Tetragrammaton: https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/j ... 4-0006.pdf

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Re: NT greek reading groups?

Post by jeidsath »

opoudjis wrote:I've stumbled on this article which cites its renderings of the Tetragrammaton: https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/j ... 4-0006.pdf
Useful appendicies there too.
jaihare wrote:The good thing about Galatians or something similar is that it's short. We can make it through a book quickly and then move on to another. Finishing anything (even a small thing) encourages you to go on to something heavier.
Did you guys work out a schedule for your group?
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

Joel Eidsath -- jeidsath@gmail.com

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opoudjis
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Re: NT greek reading groups?

Post by opoudjis »

jeidsath wrote:
opoudjis wrote:I've stumbled on this article which cites its renderings of the Tetragrammaton: https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/j ... 4-0006.pdf
Useful appendicies there too.
I'd cite http://hellenisteukontos.opoudjis.net/2 ... ent-greek/ , but those appendices have covered it. :)

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Graecus Venetus

Post by Markos »

opoudjis wrote:...1547 Pentateuch in Modern Greek...
Do you happen to have a link to the text on line (preferably with a readable Greek font?)

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opoudjis
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Re: Graecus Venetus

Post by opoudjis »

Markos wrote:
opoudjis wrote:...1547 Pentateuch in Modern Greek...
Do you happen to have a link to the text on line (preferably with a readable Greek font?)
Alas, can't find it online, though I do own a photocopy. Google Books does not have it free, indicating that someone's reprinted it in some cheapo print-on-demand thing. The reference is:

‪D.C. Hesseling. Les cinq livres de la loi (le Pentateuque). Traduction en néo-grec publiée en caractères hébraïques à Constantinople en 1547, transcrite et accompagnée d'une introduction, d'un glossaire et d'un facsimile. S.C. van Doesburgh, Leiden 1897.

I have put a sample on my blog: http://hellenisteukontos.opoudjis.net/j ... sis-111-9/ Back when I used to tag my posts with keywords, I helpfully tagged my related posts as http://hellenisteukontos.opoudjis.net/tag/judaeo-greek/ .

It's a very difficult text: utterly vernacular Northern Greek morphology and phonetics (of the level of detail that only transliteration will give you), but word to word translation in its syntax, and unidiomatic literal translations of words making it quite hard to understand.

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Re: Graecus Venetus and the divine name in Greek [topic spli

Post by jeidsath »

Here is a copy, possibly only accessible in America: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100617572

Google Books probably sometimes gets confused about copyright status due fake takedown notices by print-on-demand publishers, but creating a print-on-demand version of a public domain text doesn't take it out of the public domain. I had a conversation with a Google Books employee once who claimed to me that pre-1900 scans were usually unavailable for quality reasons. Still, Google is not very transparent on the subject, so it's hard to be sure of anything.

The above scan obviously originates with Google.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

Joel Eidsath -- jeidsath@gmail.com

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Re: Graecus Venetus and the divine name in Greek [topic spli

Post by Markos »

I've read Ruth and Genesis and am enjoying the crap out of this text.
LXX Exodus 3:14b: ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν...
GV Exodus 3:14b: ἔσομαι ὃς ἔσομαι...
Or, if you prefer a more gender neutral rendering: ὃ ὑπάρχω, ὑπάρχω.
LXX Exodus 4:21b: ἐγὼ δὲ σκληρυνῶ τὴν καρδίαν αὐτοῦ...
GV Exodus 4:21b: ἐγὼ δὲ κρατυνῶ τὴν ἐκείνου καρδίαν...
Gesenius, whose etymologies are more fun than anything else, in fact connects חזק with ἰσχύω.
And note the Constantinople Pentateuch (thanks, Joel, for finding the link:)

καὶ ἐγὼ νὰ δυναμώσω τὴν καρδιά του...

as compared to Bambas: θέλω σκληρύνει τὴν καρδίαν αὐτοῦ...

I would never say that one L2 rendering of the L3 original is better than the other, but only that I am grateful that we have both.
Altair wrote:I found the Greek quite difficult...
What makes the Graecus Venetus harder than the LXX (particularly for those more familiar with Koine than Epic) is the pervasive (though not universal) use of Epic pronouns, the occasional use of Epic vocab, the use of the dual at every opportunity and the the more frequent use of the optative. But the syntax of the GT remains very simple, like the Hebrew, and, if you put a gun to my head, I would say the GV is overall a better piece of literature than the LXX. And of course what makes the GV easy is precisely the fact that you can use the LXX as an L2 crib.
opoudjis wrote:I'd hate to think the text has been ignored because it was a late Jewish Greek text, and lexicographers have only paid attention to Christian Greeks :evil: .
More surprising to me is its neglect among those learning Greek, particularly for those who seek monolingual resources to supplement Grammar-Translation. I suspect this is due more to it being (putatively) late, than Jewish. Aquila and Theodotian get more attention, I think.
Barry Hofstetter wrote:I like Swete's evaluation:
"The result reminds us of a schoolboy's exercise..."

Okay, sure, but you say this like it was a bad thing. :lol: In fact, the Byzantines were above all crazy about the Greek language and fascinated by its development. To such folks inter-dialectical (and occasionally even intra-dialectical) paraphrases would be naturally compelling to produce and read. And, more recently, I think I remember Ken Penner saying that if you were serious about learning Greek and Hebrew, a good exercise would be to produce your own Greek translation of the MT and then compare that to the LXX. I would add, then compare both of these to the Graecus Venetus. "Had we but world enough, and time." :)

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Re: Graecus Venetus and the divine name in Greek [topic spli

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Markos wrote: More surprising to me is its neglect among those learning Greek, particularly for those who seek monolingual resources to supplement Grammar-Translation. I suspect this is due more to it being (putatively) late, than Jewish. Aquila and Theodotian get more attention, I think.
I think that's exactly right. The question arises as to why the LXX is valuable and why people study it, and it is neither to learn Greek nor because it is great literature in its own right. They do so in order better to understand the NT (since the LXX or something like it would have been the text familiar or at least potentially available to most readers of the NT documents), they do so because it is the first translation made in ancient times of any significant literary work, they do so because of its interpretation of the Hebrew text and its textual witness, and so forth.
Barry Hofstetter wrote:I like Swete's evaluation:
"The result reminds us of a schoolboy's exercise..."
Okay, sure, but you say this like it was a bad thing. :lol: In fact, the Byzantines were above all crazy about the Greek language and fascinated by its development. To such folks inter-dialectical (and occasionally even intra-dialectical) paraphrases would be naturally compelling to produce and read. And, more recently, I think I remember Ken Penner saying that if you were serious about learning Greek and Hebrew, a good exercise would be to produce your own Greek translation of the MT and then compare that to the LXX. I would add, then compare both of these to the Graecus Venetus. "Had we but world enough, and time." :)
Ha, good response, and Ken's exercise with your addendum would be amazing. :D However, the very fact that it's late, and that the author himself has essentially learned ancient Greek as a second language reduces the value of the text in the minds of many for the purposes we read ancient texts. It's like Harry Potter in ancient Greek, or Winnie the Pooh in Latin -- fun, and even instructive (I occasionally use such texts as supplements in my classes), but not of great value for reading what native speakers produced in the time periods in which we are interested.
N.E. Barry Hofstetter

Cuncta mortalia incerta...

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