[B-Greek] Fwd: In defense of "Orthography"

Leonard Isaksson leonardo1orchardcity at mac.com
Fri Jan 8 08:59:43 EST 2010


You are not deflating my argument, kind Sarah.  I do like to look at 
pics of these manuscripts, whether uncial or cursive.  There are the 
abbreviations and symbols that you have to learn about.

> Here is a letter that I had meant to send to b greek, and now send off.

> This was part of my point.
>
> If you look at photographs of early papyri, such as the Beatty and 
> Bodmer papyri,  or the uncial texts, you see no breathings, no 
> accents, and capital letters.  And the letters of the words are all 
> put together in a continuing stream.  It is not so easy to read.  Are 
> you able to read these manuscripts well, with the words all pushed 
> together, and the various abbreviations and symbols?  That is how they 
> are in the bush of real life as a text.
>
> Ι like to take a picture of a real manuscript and see what I can make 
> of it, but I would not learn Greek well by not having the words 
> separated, and some of those marks help us to know whether you have a 
> pronoun or what, or a number or a preposition.  Those things one would 
> get from context, I think, but that necessitates learning the language 
> well enough.
>
> To learn the language, some things are helpful, such as learning what 
> the whole words look like.  I think we will not get away from this.  
> Personally, I love the little primer that Kinchin Smith and Melluish 
> wrote, and I like the Nunn/Wenham/ primer, too.  Like Smith and 
> Melluish said "If Aristotle and Plato did not  need the accents, why 
> do we?"  Those two primers ("Teach yourself.." and "Elements of NT 
> Grk") don't have accents.
>
> (I know that Sarah and Mark Lightman and Carl are talking about 
> breathings not accents(except Carl brought up the grave accent).
>
> But there is some good in being able to tell articles from relative 
> pronouns or any other words or numbers, especially for the learning 
> student.
>
> As I gather it, the marks were put in there to help readers also speak 
> the text, and have such knowledge not get lost.  Even if we don't know 
> how the Greeks in the various city states spoke, or how a Galilean 
> would speak.  Ιt is handy for me to have the little black marks to 
> inform me a little more, until I grow up enough to be able to read 
> those photographs.
>
> Leonard Isaksson
>
>
>
> On Jan 7, 2010, at 6:05 PM, jonathon wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 13:11, Leonard Isaksson  wrote:
>>
>>> These marks are handy for distinguishing between various words, it 
>>> helps me.   We rely  upon the work of those in antiquity who have 
>>> handed down to us the classical and Biblical texts(and the papyri in 
>>> Egypt too:)   )
>>
>> But are you reading photographs of those manuscripts, the actual
>> manuscripts, or something that has  been derived from those
>> manuscripts?
>>
>> From my personal perspective, if it isn't in the original manuscripts,
>> then it should not in modern renderings of those manuscripts.
>>
>> jonathon
>> ---
>> 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



More information about the B-Greek mailing list