[B-Greek] Accents - who is responsible?

George F Somsel gfsomsel at yahoo.com
Sun Aug 17 14:44:07 EDT 2008


A. T. Robertson is like Prego spaghetti sauce -- "It's in there."
. 
V. Accent.
(a)The Age of Greek Accent. The MSS. are worth as little for accent as for breathings. The systematic application of accent in the MSS., like the regular use of the spiritus lenis, dates [Page 227] from the seventh century a.d. Hort caustically remarks that most modern grammarians have merely worked out “a consistent system of accentuation on paper” and have not recovered the Greek intonations of voice, though he has little to offer on the subject. Chandler indeed laments that modern scholars scatter their Greek accents about rather recklessly, but he adds: “In England, at all events, every man will accent his Greek properly who wishes to stand well with the world.” It is a comfort to find one’s accents irreproachable, and Chandlerrightly urges that the only way to use the accents properly is to pronounce according to the accent. The ancients were interested in Greek accent. Herodian in his Καθολικὴ
 προσῳδίαinvestigated the accent of 60,000 words, but the bulk of his twenty books is lost. Chandler found most help from Göttling, though others have written at length on the subject. There are no accent-marks in the early inscriptions and papyri; in fact tradition ascribes the invention of these signs as a system to Aristophanes of Byzantium in the third century b.c., though the beginnings appear in the preceding century. He and his disciple, Aristarchus, made the rules at any rate. The Alexandrian grammarians developed these rules, which have shown a marvellous tenacity even to the present day in the modern Greek, though, of course, some words would naturally vary in accent with the centuries. There is the Harrispapyrus of Homer in the first century a.d.which has accents, and clearly the word had the accent in pronunciation like English long before it was written out. After the fourth century a.d.the use of
 accentual rhythm in Greek in place of quantitative rhythm had a tendency [Page 228] to make the accent rather more stable. “Of all the phonetic peculiarities of a language accent is the most important.” The earlier use of accents and breathings was probably “for the text of poetry written in dialect” (cf. our reading-books for children). They were not written out “in ordinary prose till the times of minuscule writing,” though Euthalius (a.d.396) made use of them in his edition of the N. T. The Christian hymns early show signs of changing from tone (pitch) to stress as is the rule in modern Greek. Cf. Thumb, Handb., p. 6.
.
Robertson, A. (1919; 2006). A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research (226). Logos.
.
 george
gfsomsel.


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learn truth, love truth, speak the truth, hold the truth, 
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_________



----- Original Message ----
From: Barry <nebarry at verizon.net>
To: B-Greek B-Greek <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2008 2:33:21 PM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Accents - who is responsible?


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Vasile Stancu" <stancu at mail.dnttm.ro>
To: "'B-Greek B-Greek'" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 17, 2008 8:19 AM
Subject: [B-Greek] Accents - who is responsible?


>I would like to get some information (perhaps some good Internet ressources
> links, as this subject must be vast, I suppose) regarding the following:
>
>
>
> - How, when and by whom (if there is such information) were the old Greek
> manuscripts editted so as to be added the accents/spirits as we have them
> today? (I understand that the original manuscripts did not contain any 
> such
> marks).

Vasile, I know very little about this aspect of the history of Greek 
manuscripts, but I suspect that no massive editing at all was involved. 
It's most likely that over a period of time, as copyists who used accents 
copied from manuscripts which did not use them, they simply added them to 
the copy they were making.  If I'm wrong I hope someone more knowledgeable 
may correct...  :)

The invention of accents and punctuation is usually attributed to 
Aristophanes of Byzantium:

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Aristophanes_of_Byzantium.aspx

N.E. Barry Hofstetter
Professor, WRTS
http://www.wittenbergreformed.org
Mentor, TNARS http://www.tnars.net/
Classics Instructor, TAA
http://www.theamericanacademy.net

and me:

http://mysite.verizon.net/nebarry
http://my.opera.com/barryhofstetter/blog

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