[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/





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