Strange words in LXX: πιαγαριν / πισσαριν / κηριν

Greek Koine and Biblical and Medieval Greek
1

LXX-Genesis 37:25 (the Story of Joseph) : εκαθισαν δε φαγειν αρτον και αναβλεψαντες τοις οφθαλμοις ειδον και ιδου οδοιποροι ισμαηλιται ηρχοντο εκ γαλααδ και αι καμηλοι αυτων εγεμον θυμιαματων και ρητινης και στακτης επορευοντο δε καταγαγειν εις αιγυπτον (NETS: Then they sat down to eat bread, and looking up with their eyes, they saw, and see, Ismaelite wayfarers were coming from Galaad, and their camels were laden with fragnant substances and pine resin and oil of myrrh. Now they were traveling to bring them down to Egypt).

In the Apparatus of different critical Editions there are some words that I didn’t find in any of my dictionaries:

1: Holmes-Parsons: to ρητινης : κηριν ; to στακτης : πισσαριν (both refering to ms 131, superscript of second hand)

(Vers 24 in their edition: The Oxford Greek Septuagint – with critical readings — Volume 1 of 5 : Holmes, Robert 1748-1805 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.

2: Brookes-MacLean: to ρητινης : κηριν ; to στακτης : πιαγαριν (both refering to ms. 130 = Wien Nationalbibliothek Theol.Gr. 3 (Nessel 57) [NOTE from me: probably this reference is wrong], Between angled Brackets, meaning they mention the reading, relying on Holmes-Parsons, not having checked/found the reading in any manuscript)

(01. OTGreek. Vat.v 1. Octat.p 1. Gen. Brooke. Mc Lean. 1906.The Old Testament in Greek according to the text of Codex vaticanus, supplemented from other uncial manuscripts, with a critical apparatus containing the variants of the chief ancient authorities for the text of the Septuagint : Brooke, Alan England, 1863-1939; McLean, Norman, 1865-1947; Thackeray, H. St. J. (Henry St. John), 1869?-1930 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive .

3: Göttingen : to ρητινης : κηριν ; to στακτης : πιαγαριν (they refer to ms. 131, corrected by firsthand = Wien Nationalbibliothek Theol.gr. 57)

((Featured) Septuaginta, Vetus Testamentum Graecum - Auctoritate Academiae Scientiarum Gottingensis Editum - Vol. 1 Genesis, Edidit John William Wevers | PDF ; Web-page 360).

Since the Wien Nationalbibliothek has no online-exemplars of the above cited manuscripts I couldn’t check these.

I consulted my dictionaries (Jakobitz, Passow, Pape, Bailly, Montanary, LSJ):

None of them has either κηριν, πισσαριν, πιαγαριν.

At least the first two have similar words in the dictionaries:

κηρινος (waxen), κηριον (honeycomb)

πισσα (pitch), πισσηρης/πισσηεις/πισσηρος (pitch, pitchy)

There is no word listed that shows any similarity with πιαγαριν.

I could imagine, κηριν to be short for κηρινος, but what’s with πισσαριν and even more difficult πιαγαριν?

2

κηριν = κηρίον has an entry in Trapp. The following is from the Hippiatrica:

…δεῖ σε θεραπεύειν αὐτὸν οὕτως· βαλὼν ὑγρόπισσον, ψωροτεάφιν, κηρίν, ῥητίνην καὶ τερεβινθίνην ἕνωσον πάντα…

–

πισσαριν for πισσάριον seems reasonable to me, by the same process that gives κηρι(o)ν, Ι would suppose.

–

πιαγαριν looks like a copyist mistake for πισσαριν, which was presumably a fix by Holmes-Parsons?

3

κηριον (honeycomb) and πισσαριον (a little bit of pitch) both are nouns; these two products don’t really fit to the other goods, transported by the travellers. I was thinking these added superscriptions could be descriptions of the shape of the goods (like wax/honey resp. like pitch).
If πιαγαριν was a scribal error for πισσαριν (that looks very plausible to me), wouldn’t Brooke-McLean and the Göttingen-edition have mentioned that?

4

Brooke-McLean say, they haven‘t seen the ms 131, they just gave the info of Holmes-Parsons.
So Brooke-McLean wrote πιαγαριν instead of πισσαριν; if Göttingen is right in giving πιαγαριν as the text of the ms. 131, that would mean that Brooke-McLean by accident have exactly the right text! that would be quite a miracle.

I Think the case is
Holmes-Parsons read πισσαριν (a plausible addition to the word στακτης)
Brooke-McLean made an error writing (a non-existing word) πιαγαριν
Göttingen copied the Brooke-McLean error.

Alas there is no way to check this, unless someone has admittance to the vienna-Manuscripts.

5

I would assume that they are neuter nominatives meant to serve as glosses to unfamiliar words. But they are incorrect glosses, if so.

6

The National Library in Vienna kindly provided me with a picture of the ms 131 - page with the part jn question.

The Direktor, Mrs. Mag.Dr. Kaska, informed me, that ms gr 23 (Rahls 130) had no superscripts, ms gr 57 (Rahlfs 131) had.

Link 1: ms-page

Link 2 (enlarged)

(I hope both links work!)

κηριν seems to be ok. Though still unclear to me, what the word eactly means.

But neither πισσαριν, nor πιαγαριν seems to fit to the second superscript.

The Ink of the additions is not the same as the text, but I am not an expert to decide wether the additions are first or second hand, though I am leaning to the latter.

I don‘t think the piece between the two α is a gamma or a double sigma. I even doubt πι and α?αριν are one word (because of the gap behind πι). I think the part between the two α is just a connection.

But still I don‘t have a clue, what the superscript-additions mean.

Alas the other Note further down on the page in the left part is not very clear; I have tried to locate the text in the LXX, but didn‘t succeed.

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Nice! On the new server, we can post images directly to posts.

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π…ν is one word, I believe. The gap isn’t unusual, and the single accent mark settles things. I’d like the 3rd and 4th letters to be σσ, but I can’t quite convince myself of it. Maybe there is a faint horizontal mark at the top of the second “σ” that is hard to make out in the scan.

Text on the left.

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8

I checked some θαλασσα instances in the INTF-ms-Pictures: it’s indeed a double signma, so it reads πισσαριν, not πιαγαριν. An example (ms 30054):

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1 Like
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Statistical Addition
To decide the plausibility of the change ριον > ριν I checked the INTF-manuscripts:

In 400 Textverses of the NT (19.161 Manuscript-instances) there is NONE with the change ιον/ιν vv. Except REV 14:11 ms 025: firsthand θηριν, corrected second hand θηριον.

10

Diminutive in -ιν is not unusual in Byzantine Greek. Notice all these examples in the Ptochoprodromika

It’s still present in Pontic Greek. Search for παιδίν in the Wikipedia article.

If it’s not happening in the NT manuscripts, it may be due to their distance from the demotic.

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On the otherhand: Why should there be a distance from the demotic in the NT-mss (most of them are of the Byzantine-type!), and not in the LXX-mss.?

I don‘t know where this ms was written or when and where eventually the parts were bound to one codex. The Vienna-Library-Info mentions parts of Athanasius from Alexandria and Evagrius Ponticus. The latter origins indeed from the pontic area, but lived also half his life in the Palestine-area.

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I suspect that scribes made vernacular glosses while being as conservative as they knew how with the main text.

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That could be very well the case in this ms.