[B-Greek] Interesting Typography In 1526 Bible Leaf

Murray Hogg muzhogg at netspace.net.au
Mon Feb 8 10:16:34 EST 2010


Hi Joey,

Here's a similar example...

Emanuel Contac referenced a poem attributed to King David in the b-hebrew list in September of last year.

Emanuel couldn't upload the file so he posted it on his blog;

http://vaisamar.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/stichoi_venice1687.jpg

Giuseppe Regalzi (who surely deserves attribution!) pointed out that this same poem occurs (in modern font!) in Rainer Stichel's Beiträge zur frühen Geschichte des Psalters und zur Wirkungsgeschichte der Psalmen (Schöningh, 2007), on p. 404.

This can be found online and Giuseppe provided a link to Google <http://tinyurl.com/yjjho2z> which didn't work for me, but somebody else provided the following which did <http://tinyurl.com/y9klc8t>.

Have fun!
Murray Hogg,
Melb, Aust.

Joey Gibson wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I've been subscribed to B-Greek for a few years, but I don't believe I've
> ever posted before. I've been studying Koine Greek by myself using Dr.
> Mounce's book since 2006 (with some unplanned breaks at various times), and
> am now making a concerted effort to move on to Dr. Wallace's book. As for
> the list, I just try to soak up as much knowledge as I can from those of you
> who know so much about Greek. :-)
> 
> I just bought a leaf from a Greek bible that was printed in 1526, and I'm
> intrigued by the typography in it. There are some weird ligatures that make
> it difficult to read in places. I am curious if anyone has seen these
> before, and if this typography is typical of the time. You can view scans of
> both sides of the page at http://bit.ly/cp1uJ8 According to the seller, it
> was printed "in Strassburg by W. Kopfel in 1526. Originally from volume 2 of
> a 4 volume set and is the third edition of the complete Greek Bible by
> Johannes Lonicerus (Lonitzer)."
> 
> The first interesting bit is that whenever τῷ (TW) appears, it looks sort of
> like two snakes twisted together into something that looks like a W with a
> lot of flourish. It took me a little while to figure out what it was by
> comparing this page with an online Septuagint and my Rahlfs-Hanhart
> hardbound Septuagint. Any time τὸν (TON) appears, it looks like the tau is
> on top of the omicron, looking sort of like the mirror symbol for woman, but
> upside down. Whenever περὶ (PERI) appears, it looks as if there is a caret
> over the epislon and rho. And anytime βασιλεὺς (BASILEUS) appears, the
> epsilon and upsilon look more like and o and an l, joined together. Also,
> words ending in ος (OS) look like they end with something resembling an @.
> And there's something that looks like a gigantic G in some words.
> 
> So, my question is does this look typical of typography of the period, and
> were these stylings of letters just something that publishers did to
> differentiate themselves? I am interested in anything that anyone has to say
> about the document. If you know anything about it, I'd love to hear it.
> 
> Thank you for any input,
> Joey Gibson
> 




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