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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Ancient Latin & ancient Greek writing
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Belle Ringer
Shipmate
# 13379
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Posted
I have seen short engravings in Latin on buildings, with no spaces between words, and no upper case/lower case distinction on letters. In ancient writings, were there spaces between sentences? Or between paragraphs? Was there any punctuation?
If there were no spaces between words, when a statement was engraved or written was each word kept intact so lines were of uneven length, or might a word be partially be one line partially on the next (as we do with hyphenated words)?
And - same questions about ancient Greek.
I could swear I was once in a library or bookstore and saw a Greek new testament where the texture was so smooth because there were no spaces anywhere, but when I look on line trying to find such a thing I get only Greek new testaments with spaces between each word, so maybe my memory of all wrong, or I'm using wrong search terms.
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Ariston
Insane Unicorn
# 10894
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Posted
Others will probably come along later and add to this, but the short answer is no; in one well-known passage from the Confessions, Augustine is amazed that the bishop Ambrose is able to read silently—as most people read aloud, the better to work out where the spaces, punctuation, etc. would have been. Embedded within the structure, grammar, and rhetoric of Latin and Greek are tricks that indicate (in a language with no word order) where sentences, clauses, and ideas should begin and end; if you read enough Plato, for instance, you notice that he often begins sentences with set formulae, while, in the Middle Ages, there was a rhetorical/poetic device known as the cursus, where you tried to end a sentence with a set pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. It's not something we consciously do today—though I do sometimes catch myself doing it—but the formula "and they all lived happily ever after" is a relic of this. Each author had his or her own way of working with cursus (some favored a 3-2-2 pattern, others a 3-3, others 2-2), and the proportion and placement of various types of cursus can be used to authenticate documents.
There are other examples, of course—one of the most helpful being the use of prepositions, which stand out even in a jumble of letters—but it takes training to be able to read old manuscripts. Paleography is not an easy subject, and not just because of this; medieval Latin and Greek, for instance, used many scribal abbreviations that we don't see in print. Even though I know the opening of John's Gospel in Greek by heart, when I saw one of the codices in the British Library open to that passage, I could hardly read it, having only ever worked with edited texts.
Which brings me to the last point—why does everybody insert spacing, punctuation, etc. these days? Part of it is that later authors and scholars (by which I mean the Byzantines) weren't going to put up with the idiosyncrasies of a language they no longer spoke natively; in order to read classical texts, they edited them to make them easier to read. Same thing with Latin. The other thing is the advent of printing, which all but eliminated scribal abbreviations and ligatures, especially as the importance given to Latin and, even moreso, Greek, waned; while there are a few specialist typefaces and revivals of the Greek faces cut by Mantinus and Garamond that include the old abbreviations, those are rare, and readable only by the scholars. For those of us who took a few semesters of Greek and Latin and want to read things in the original, we go to edited texts with their punctuation borrowed from the Byzantines and Later Latin; for the scholars, there's always the original manuscripts that need to be edited for us mere mortals.
As for that spaceless Greek NT—I have no idea how you found that. It's called an exception to the almost ironbound rule, and, while probably not valuable, is a rarity.
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
In some very early texts, the lines are written alternately left to right and right to left.
Also, there was no distinction between capital and lower-case letters.
My point is that modern texts have been modified so that it is easy to tell where one word ends and another begins, also where one sentence ends and another begins.
Most of us would be floored if we had to deal with those texts in their original form, no matter how well we knew the language.
Moo
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
In some very early texts, the lines are written alternately left to right and right to left.
Also, there was no distinction between capital and lower-case letters.
My point is that modern texts have been modified so that it is easy to tell where one word ends and another begins, also where one sentence ends and another begins.
Most of us would be floored if we had to deal with those texts in their original form, no matter how well we knew the language.
Moo
The alternate line style is called Boustrephedon, and apparently common throughout the ancient Mediterranean world.
I can't speak for other languages but breaking words out and denoting sentences was used in Wessex and Mercian texts, say 800 AD and perhaps even earlier.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
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Demas
Ship's Deserter
# 24
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Posted
THEUSEOFLOWERCASEANDUPPERC
ASETOAIDEREADINGISLATEREVE
NTHANUSINGSPACESITONLYCAME
ABOUTINTHERENAISSANCEWHENT
HEYCOMBINEDTHEROMANMAJUSCU
LEWITHTHECAROLINIANMINISCU
LEEVENTHETERMSARERELATEDTO
PRINTINGTHECOMPOSITORKEPTT
HELOWERCASELETTERSINALOWER
CASEANDUPPERCASEINAHIGHERB
OX
The use of lowercase and uppercase to aide reading is later even than using spaces – it only came about in the renaissance when they combined the Roman majuscule with the Carolinian miniscule. Even the terms are related to printing – the compositor kept the lowercase letters in a lower case and uppercase in a higher box.
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They did not appear very religious; that is, they were not melancholy; and I therefore suspected they had not much piety - Life of Rev John Murray
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Adam.
Like as the
# 4991
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Posted
Hebrew, on the other hand, almost always used spaces in between words even in very early manuscripts. It also used certain characters to represent caesurae similar to what we'd think of as paragraph breaks today.
Also, inscriptions are written much more telegraphically than most other forms of writing would be, somewhat like newspaper headlines today.
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Preaching blog
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Belle Ringer
Shipmate
# 13379
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Posted
Really interesting, especially the bit about no punctuation but sometimes rhythmic patterns to indicate ending of a section or thought. That reminded me of Shakespeare using a rhyme at the end of a scene, and only there.
I have seen Bibles disagree as to whether a particular clause ended one thought or began another, which noticeable difference in meaning. And obviously today some disagree with where a thought starts, by paragraphing in ways that start a chapter a few lines off from where someone put a chapter break.
That newly made me wonder - are there spots where people disagree whether a letter or two belong to the preceding or following word? My guess would be - possible but rare?
The all caps exercise - I could read it, but sometimes had to back up a bit to figure out what the word was. Spaces sure do make reading easier!
The Greek NT I saw with if I remember right no spaces was in a large public library 30+ years ago - and it's possible my memory was wrong. I just remember being startled and thrilled at the sense of almost tactile smoothness of texture.
It's possible the visual surprise and texture attraction was just from no paragraph breaks or punctuation, as well as no chapter/verse numbers.
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Belle Ringer
Shipmate
# 13379
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Posted
If there is no punctuation (except occasional clues from an author's way with words) and no word order change to show meaning like we often (but not always) use to indicate a question, then I'm guessing translation often requires awareness of context in a broad sense, not just the nearest few words.
Like in 1Cor 12:29, "Are all apostles? are all prophets?" that wording taken alone could be translated "All are apostles, all are prophets," but we conclude Paul did not mean to affirm "all are apostles and prophets" because that would contradict the immediately preceding discussion about various body parts having different valuable functions. Therefore we change word order and add a question mark. (Some translations are making it a statement by adding the word "not".)
But *if* someone could come up with a non-laughable argument that Paul was *contrasting* the physical body with the body of Christ/church instead of drawing a parallel, then "all are apostles and all are prophets" could stand as a valid translation? Or am I not catching on?
I am NOT proposing that translation! Just trying to get a sense of how the system works. The little bit of translating French to English I did decades ago, without having to figure out how letters sorted into words or words into sentences or whether a sentence was a statement or a question, gave me respect for the difficulty of moving between languages; ancient Greek to modern English sounds like a much bigger project!
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MSHB
Shipmate
# 9228
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
Like in 1Cor 12:29, "Are all apostles? are all prophets?" that wording taken alone could be translated "All are apostles, all are prophets," but we conclude Paul did not mean to affirm "all are apostles and prophets" because that would contradict the immediately preceding discussion about various body parts having different valuable functions. Therefore we change word order and add a question mark. (Some translations are making it a statement by adding the word "not".)
Well, the text in Greek for "Are all apostles?" is actually "Not all apostles": "Μη παντεσ αποστολοι;" - where μη is a word meaning "not" in various contexts, such as rhetorical questions. The normal word for "not" was "ου", but that is not used here.
So the word "not" isn't exactly an addition put there by translaters.
[ 23. August 2014, 04:11: Message edited by: MSHB ]
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MSHB: Member of the Shire Hobbit Brigade
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Here's a website that explains how we know Paul expected a negative answer:
quote:
Me & Ou in Questions
... You will see me with the indicative mood in a question asked with the expectation of a negative response. ...
Ou (...often Ouchi) when an affirmative answer is expected, me when a negative one is expected. Thus Lk 6:39 Meti dunatia tuphlos tuphlon hodegein?('A blind man can't lead a blind man, can he?' Answer: 'Certainly not'); Ouchi amphoteroi eis bothunon empesountai? (Answer: 'Of course') (A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, p. 220, § 427.)
In connection with this point, consider again the question in 1 Cor. 14:23: Ouk erousin hoti mainesthe? The expected response is, "Of course they will!"
Basically, you use "me" meaning "not" (can't do the Greek on this computer at the moment, don't know why) to produce a question of the "All are not apostles, are they?" form; you use the other "not" form, "ou/ouk/ouchi" when you want to ask a question of the form "All are apostles, aren't they?" You can tell by the word Paul expected no.
[ 23. August 2014, 05:59: Message edited by: Lamb Chopped ]
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Bostonman
Shipmate
# 17108
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by MSHB:
quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
Like in 1Cor 12:29, "Are all apostles? are all prophets?" that wording taken alone could be translated "All are apostles, all are prophets," but we conclude Paul did not mean to affirm "all are apostles and prophets" because that would contradict the immediately preceding discussion about various body parts having different valuable functions. Therefore we change word order and add a question mark. (Some translations are making it a statement by adding the word "not".)
Well, the text in Greek for "Are all apostles?" is actually "Not all apostles": "Μη παντεσ αποστολοι;" - where μη is a word meaning "not" in various contexts, such as rhetorical questions. The normal word for "not" was "ου", but that is not used here.
So the word "not" isn't exactly an addition put there by translaters.
The takeaway, to pile on, is that "Are all apostles?" is not as clear a translation as "Not all are apostles, are they?" which is how contemporary English renders rhetorical questions assuming a negative answer. This provides a clearer meaning in English and answers your question about the Greek.
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Belle Ringer
Shipmate
# 13379
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by MSHB:
quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
Like in 1Cor 12:29, "Are all apostles? are all prophets?"
Well, the text in Greek for "Are all apostles?" is actually "Not all apostles": "Μη παντεσ αποστολοι;" - where μη is a word meaning "not" in various contexts, such as rhetorical questions. The normal word for "not" was "ου", but that is not used here.
So the word "not" isn't exactly an addition put there by translaters.
Ah ha! So the "are all apostles?" that I grew up on was the awkward translation! I've been puzzled for decades about Paul using rhetorical questions if there were no question marks or word order changes to indicate a question! Thank you all so much all!
(I'm still trying to wrap my brain around changing from left-to-right to right-to-left alternate lines. Our word processors aren't set up to do that so it's hard to experiment. By hand I guess!)
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
Interesting.
Somebody told me some years ago - I don't know whether they were right - that the now universal practice of putting gaps between words was invented by the Irish. Their scholars of the St Patrick, saints and scholars, period didn't speak Latin as a first language and so found Latin manuscripts of the time harder to read than those on the continent who still spoke some sort of late Latin. To make manuscripts easier to read, they started splitting the text up into words. The idea caught on. It seems to have spread rapidly, taking only a century or perhaps a bit more even to reach Greek.
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orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
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Posted
I think it's possible with any language or writing system that it mostly works, but occasionally hits a point that's ambiguous.
In English, we sometimes base jokes on the fact that something can be read differently to how it was probably meant (if you've never seen any version of the 'Church Ladies with typewriters' joke, you should, as it's hilarious). We laugh at signs that haven't been written correctly.
But it can also be a serious problem. Those of us involved in jobs like editing and drafting play around with words to avoid those unintended effects, and we read books like "Eats Shoots and Leaves".
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
The saying used be "eats roots and leaves". the meaning of which can vary considerably depending on how it's punctuated.
More seriously, threads such as this show the dangers in the usual arguments about biblical inerrancy. People espousing inerrancy put enormous faith in the edition upon which they rely. Just the slightest change in some of the punctuation in the translation can change the meaning dramatically.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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Ariston
Insane Unicorn
# 10894
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Belle Ringer:
(I'm still trying to wrap my brain around changing from left-to-right to right-to-left alternate lines. Our word processors aren't set up to do that so it's hard to experiment. By hand I guess!)
If you really want a headbreaker, the old Rongorongo of Easter Island would sometimes be written not just backwards but also upside down every other line.
As for there sometimes being confusion where one word ends, and another begins…it's complicated. The idea is that, in an oral society, you'd "write like you talked," or would be transcribing things that were meant to sound spoken—writing is meant to freeze speech, so to speak, and many important works (like Homer) were often memorized in their entirety. So the chances you'd be seeing something that couldn't be "spoken out," at least in the days before punctuation, spaces, and such, would be less.
Which is good, because classical languages, especially Greek, and most especially Attic Greek, are absolute pains in the ass to figure out, even in edited editions. Vowels at the end of words contract into one another, or get cut off when they would elide with the next word; the letter "o" can have about four very different and very common meanings, depending on which little marks you put over or above it; verbs and pronomial subjects often get suppressed, leaving you with no idea who is doing what, but, thanks to the five subordinate clauses you had to wade through, a very good idea of to, for, or with whom; and, in a few cases, the elision cuts off important information about who the subject or object of the sentence is, and context leaves either interpretation valid. In a few cases (I'm looking at you, Plato), the ambiguity seems almost intentional. For instance, Socrates' famous quote about the unexamined life can just as easily be translated as "the unexamining life is no life for a man." The ambiguity between whether it is life itself being examined or whether the activity proper to living should be examination—or whether both are true, and life should be spent examining life—is inherent in the language.
And so on.
As a side note: uppercase letters and spaces predate the Renaissance by some centuries; for instance, Carolingian minuscule, developed under Charlemagne, has both. Insular uncial (which would be Irish—think "Irish stereotype lettering," that's half uncial) was one of the earliest scripts to use spaces as word dividers—and it's early, as in "predates the Viking Age" early.
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“Therefore, let it be explained that nowhere are the proprieties quite so strictly enforced as in men’s colleges that invite young women guests, especially over-night visitors in the fraternity houses.” Emily Post, 1937.
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
I have heard that lower-case letters were devised in the middle ages as a scribal shortcut. It is quicker and easier to write δ than Δ.
Moo
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See you later, alligator.
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
More seriously, threads such as this show the dangers in the usual arguments about biblical inerrancy. People espousing inerrancy put enormous faith in the edition upon which they rely. Just the slightest change in some of the punctuation in the translation can change the meaning dramatically.
It's a tangent, but the inerrantists among whom I live and breathe and have my being are very well aware of these issues (we educate our pastors within an inch of their lives) and hold the view that inerrancy applies only to the autographs, and there with respect to what the author/s intended. Which naturally allows for some gray area, as we haven't got the autographs OR the authors to quiz. At which point we fall back on textual science to work out the more likely reading.
What we don't do is pick some one edition (Greek or even English, God forbid!) and tie our faith to it.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
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