[B-Greek] Interesting Typography In 1526 Bible Leaf

Nikolaos Adamou nikolaos.adamou at hotmail.com
Tue Feb 9 12:21:57 EST 2010


Thank you Joey for bringing this into the lists attention.
These are old Greek printing styles of the first Greek printing shops in Venice, Vienna and Odessa.
Many liturgical books are printed this way.
Now days there is an attempt to keep this style in computer fonts, and are available, many free, and some for purchase.
Some of the classical fonts I use are:


SKGrecianOldStylePolUni_W
GFS GAZIS
Grecs du Roi WG
SKParisOldStylePolUni_W
SKAthenianOldFacePolUni
SKAtticaOldStylePolUniW
SKGaramondOldStylePolUni_W
GFS BodoniClassic
GFS DitodClassc

The first three are similar to the one you gave us, although a bit simpler.
Some of the fonts operate only with Greek characters, but some others have Latin characters as well.
You may find them in http://www.polytoniko.org/index.php?newlang=en ( I give you the page in English).
I used them in my last book about the usage of YMΩΝ (you) & ΗΜΩΝ (us) in Chrysostom's Liturgy in Greece last summer, and it is really nice to utilize for biblical and ecclesiastical presentations very distinct and traditional fonts.
All have the circumflex the traditional way, the last three like a Tilda.
Try them.



Nikolaos Adamou, Ph.D.                        
Associate Professor of Business Management
BMCC / CUNY 



 
> From: joey at joeygibson.com
> Date: Sun, 7 Feb 2010 19:15:59 -0500
> To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> Subject: [B-Greek] Interesting Typography In 1526 Bible Leaf
> 
> 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
> 
> -- 
> Blog: http://joeygibson.com
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/joeygibson
> FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/joeygibson
> Facebook: http://facebook.com/joeygibson
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek
> B-Greek mailing list
> B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection.
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469227/direct/01/


More information about the B-Greek mailing list