ὑπερβυτεροι

Semantic Range, Lexicography, and other approaches to word meaning - in general, or for particular words.
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S Walch
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ὑπερβυτεροι

Post by S Walch »

Currently transcribing the Gospel of Mark in one of the numerous GNT minuscule manuscripts (127), and came upon this curious substitution for πρεσβύτεροι in Mark 14:53. Never seen this before, and as there's nothing in LSJ (or any Greek lexicon), nor the vast array of online search engines, I'm guessing this is no known Greek word, with what is usually a careful copyist bizarrely changing one preposition for another before βυτεροι. Anyone else come across this word at any point? I'm thinking it could be a sound confusion of οἰ πρεσβύτεροι (οι = υ; πρες = περ), however as the copyist has not yet confused οι for υ it would be very, very unusual.

Image

Online Images at Vatican Digital Library - 173v, line 5.
Jonathan Robie
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Re: ὑπερβυτεροι

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Fascinating. As far as I can tell, ὑπερβυτεροι does not occur in any lexicon, not even in Evangelinos Apostolides Sophocles' Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods (from B.C. 146 to A.D. 1100), which often contains words not described elsewhere. I haven't been able to find that word in use anywhere but here, not in inscriptions or papyri or literature.
S Walch wrote: June 3rd, 2025, 7:27 am I'm thinking it could be a sound confusion of οἰ πρεσβύτεροι (οι = υ; πρες = περ), however as the copyist has not yet confused οι for υ it would be very, very unusual.
That makes sense to me. οἱ πρεσβύτεροι and ὑπερβυτεροι could sound similar - In late Byzantine and modern Greek pronunciation, οι and υ are both pronounced as /i/ (like "ee"). But as you point out, this manuscript does not confuse these sounds elsewhere. But other manuscripts from roughly the same time period do conflate these sounds.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
S Walch
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Re: ὑπερβυτεροι

Post by S Walch »

Thanks for doing some checking on my behalf, Jonathan. As you will well know (so I'm repeating for those that might not), manuscripts post pretty much the 1st century CE start having sound confusions resulting in spelling differences (our beloved itacisms). The copyist of Min. 127 seems to have been pretty adept at avoiding such, with the most common itacism being the confusion of η > ει (6x in Gos. of Mark), followed by ο > ω (4χ), then ι > ει, ει > η, ε > αι, ε > η, ω > ο and η > ι (2x each), with the rest of the usual ones appearing only once. We have one instance of οι > η and η > οι, hence this rather odd non-existent word appearing is certainly a puzzle! Guess another option is the copyist was potentially working from a manuscript which had already made this error (based on some other variants, I believe the copyist was copying from another minuscule as opposed to an uncial), albeit this will be unproveable.

Interestingly our min. 127 copyist appears to have suffered from the curse of homoeoteleuton, with five long(ish) omissions in the Gospel of Mark: Mark 3:34 was originally missing due to the copyist jumping from οἱ ἀδελφοί μου in v33 to the same in v34; Mark 6:27-28 has καὶ ἀπελθὼν ἀπεκεφάλισεν αὐτὸν ἐν τῇ φυλακῇ καὶ ἤνεγκεν τὴν κεφαλὴν αὐτοῦ originally missing due to the jump from τὴν κεφαλὴν αὐτοῦ in v27; Mark 6:30 has καὶ ὅσα ἐποίησαν originally missing; the entirety of 15:28 is originally missing; the second ὁ θ(εό)ς μου was originally missing in Mark 15:34; with finally Μαρία ἡ Μαγδαληνὴ καὶ Μαρία ἡ Ἰωσῆτος ἐθεώρουν ποῦ τέθειται καὶ διαγενομένου τοῦ σαββάτου missing from Mark 15:47-16:1 due to a leap from one Μαρια to the next.

Two different correctors have replaced these missing long additions: the one I have designated corrector 3 appears to have added the Ammonian sections as well as the occasionally surrounding commentary (identifiable by the slightly different ink colour, thinner stylus, and handwriting style) and who has replaced the missing 3:34 and words in 6:27-28, and the second corrector (who has done the bulk of the 49 corrections, identifiable by the black ink used and different handwriting style) has added the missing portions of Mark 6:30, 15:34 and 15:47-16:1. This second corrector appears to have been working from a secondary exemplar, as they have corrected the smaller omissions, additions, substitutions, and transpositions in the main text of Min. 127 to readings which match the Byzantine majority. Saying that, the Gos. of Mark is predominantly Byzantine anyway (97.5% agreement before being corrected), with the final text matching it 98.55%. Interestingly, the long omissions in Mark 6:27-28, 15:28 and 15:47-16:1 all have support from Codex Sinaiticus, with minuscule 544 also agreeing with the omissions in 15:28 and 15:47-16:1. Evidently shows that even centuries apart, copyists could still make the same mistakes in the same places. :lol: (Well, presuming these omissions weren't already present in the exemplar!)
Jean Putmans
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Re: ὑπερβυτεροι

Post by Jean Putmans »

In the transcriptions of the INTF I found:
1: Mark 3:8, ms 949 firsthand: υπερ τυρον < οι περι τυρον
2: Mark 3»:21, ms L211 ακουσαντες υπερ αυτου < ακουσαντες οι περι αυτον
3:Rev 7:13, ms 2429: ουτοι υπερβεβλημενοι < ουτοι οι περιβεβλημρνοι

4: John 11:4 ms 892: αλλ’ οιπερ της δοξης < αλλ’ υπερ της δοξης

So even in the mass of transcriptions of the INTF these instances of οι περ/υπερ/οιπερ are very rare.
Jean Putmans
Netherlands
S Walch
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Re: ὑπερβυτεροι

Post by S Walch »

Good detective work there, Jean :D

Fascinating to see that three of these (1-3) result in the omission of the οι (= υ), and then essentially the replacement of the preposition περι with υπερ (both of which have semantic crossovers). The 4th one just seems to be a pronunciation/spelling error (υ > οι). At least in these cases we can see how οι περ(ι) can become υπερ rather easily - οι πρεσ to υπερ is however, a bit more on the rare and not-easily-able-to-account-for side.

In the mass of as yet untranscribed minuscules and lectionaries (INTF statistics show only around 2.27% of all minuscule and lectionary pages have been transcribed - little bit of a ways to go), I'm guessing there's quite a few instances of οι περ/υπερ/οιπερ still to be identified. :)
Jean Putmans
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Re: ὑπερβυτεροι

Post by Jean Putmans »

I'm guessing there's quite a few instances of οι περ/υπερ/οιπερ still to be identified. :)


Yes, I think so. And yes, it’s fun searching in the ms-pictures, but an awful lot of work. And I will not be volunteering!
Jean Putmans
Netherlands
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