[B-Greek] -OTERAN or - WTERAN?
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Jun 14 10:58:57 EDT 2007
On Jun 14, 2007, at 10:01 AM, Eric Weiss wrote:
> In a Theotokion (prayer to the Theotokos), there is a phrase:
>
> THN TIMIWTERAN TWN CEROUBEIM
> KAI ENDOXOTERAN ASUGKRITWS TWN SERAFEIM
>
> "[the] More honorable than the Cherubim
> And more glorious without compare than the Seraphim"
>
> My all-Greek The Synechdemos spells the second comparative as
> above - i.e.,
> ENDOXOTERAN. However, a Greek-English prayer book that abridges
> The Synechdemos
> spells it as ENDOXWTERAN. The word is ENDOXOS. I can't tell from
> Smyth or my lexicons
> which would be the correct spelling.
>
> Since I have discovered misspellings in both the abridged version
> and the full Synechdemos
> - though far fewer in The Synechdemos, and the abridged one seems
> to have several
> punctuation discrepancies, too - I can't be sure which of the two
> is correct.
Two points:
(1) In earlier Greek, whether it's W or O before the comparative and
syperlative markers depends on whether the preceding vowel is short
or long respectively; that should mean that TIMIWTERAN and
ENDOXOTERAN are right;
(2) Hellenistic Greek doesn't distinguish O from W, so that one might
well expect orthographical confusion.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list