Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 6.djvu/665

 GLOSSES

587

GLOSSES

terms; or (5) words actually employed in some un- usual sense or in some peculiar •grammatical form. As these glosses consisted of a siTit;li' explanatory word, they were easily written Ix-lwccn the lines of the text or in the niari^in of nianuscTipts opposite the words of which they supplied the explanation. In the process of time tiie flosses naturally grew in number, and in consequence they were j^athered in separate books where they appeared, first in the same order of succes- sion as they would have had if written in the margin of the codices, and ultimately in a regular alphabetical order. These collections of glosses thus formed kinds of lexicons which gave the concrete meaning of the difficult words of the text and even historical, geo- graphical, biographical, and other notices, which the collectors deemed necessary or u.seful to illu.strate the text of the Sacred writings. A lexicon of the kind is usually called a glossary (from Lat. glossarium), but bears at times in English the simple name of a gloss. From a single explanatory word, interlined or placed in the margin, the word gloss has also been extendetl to denote an entire expository sentence, and in many instances even a sort of running commentary on an entire book of Sacred Scripture. Finally the term gloss designates a word or a remark, perhaps intended at first as an explanation of the text of Holy Writ, and inserted for some time either between the lines or in the margin of the Sacred Books, but now embodied in the text itself, into which it was inserted by owners or by transcribers of manuscripts, and in which it appears as if an integral part of the Word of God, whereas it is but a late interpolation.

II. Glosses .'is Marginal Notes. — As is quite nat- ural, the margin has always been the favourite place for recording explanatory words or remarks of various kinds concerning the text of the Bible. And in point of fact, marginal notes of varying nature and impor- tance are found in nearly all manuscripts and printed editions of the Sacred Scriptures. With regard to the Hebrew text, these glosses or marginal notes are mostly extracts from the Masorah or collection of tra- ditional remarks concerning Holy Writ. They usu- ally bear on what was regarded as a questionable reading or spelling in the text, but yet was allowed to remain unmodified in the text itself through respect for its actual form. Thus, at times the margin bids the reader to transpose, interchange, restore, or remove a consonant, while at other times it directs him to omit or in.sert even an entire word. Some of these glosses are of considerable importance for the correct reading or understanding of the orij;inal Hebrew, while nearly all have effectually contributed to its uniform trans- mission since the eleventh century of our era. The marginal notes of Greek and Latin manuscripts and editions of the Scriptures are usually of a wider im- port. Annotations of all kinds, chiefly the results of exegetical and critical study, crowd the margins of these copies and printed texts far more than those of the manuscripts and editions of the original Hebrew. In regard to the Latin Vulgate, in particular, these glosses gradually exhibited to readers so large and so perplex- ing a number of various textual readings that to rem- edy the evil, Sixtus V, when publishing his official edition of the Vulgate in 1588, decreed that henceforth copies of it should not be supplied with such variations recorded in the margin. This was plainly a wise rule, and its faithful observance by Catholic editors of the Vulgate and by its translators, notably by the authors of the Douay Version, has secured the object intended by Sixtus V. Despite the explicit resolve of James I that the Protestant Version of Holy Writ to be pub- lished during his reign should not have any marginal notes, that version — the so-called Authorized Version — appeared in 1611 with such notes, usually recording various readings. The glosses or marginal notes of the British Revised Version published 1881-8.5, are greatly in excess over tho.se of the Version of 1011.

They give various readings, alternate renderings, criti- cal remarks, etc., and by their number and character have startled the Protestant public. The marginal notes of the American Standard Revised Version (1900-1001) are of the same general description as those found in the British Revised Version of Holy Writ.

III. Gi.o.ssi:s AS Te.xtual Additions. — As stated above, the word gloss designates not only marginal notes, but also words or remarks inserted for various reasons in the very text of the Scriptures. The exist- ence of such textual additions in Holy Writ is univer- sally admitteil by Biblical scholars with regard to the Hebrew text, although there is at times considerable disagreement among them as to the actual expressions that shoukl be treated as glosses in the Sacreel Writ- ings. Besides the eighteen corrections of the Scribes which ancient Rabbis regard as made in the sacred text of the Old Testament l)cfore their time, and which were probably due to the fact that marginal explana- tions had of old been embodied in the text itself, recent scholars have treated as textual additions many words and expressions scattered throughout the Hebrew Bible. Thus the defenders of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch naturally maintain that the more or less extensive notices found in the Mosaic writings and relative to matters geographical, historical, etc., decidedly later than Moses' time, should be regarded as post-Mosaic textual additions. Others, struck with the lack of smoothness of style noticeable in several passages of the original Hebrew, or with the apparent inconsistencies in its parallel statements, have ap- pealed to textual additions as offering a natural and adequate explanation of the facts observed. Some have even admitted the view that Midrashim, or kinds of Jewish commentaries, were at an early date utilized in the framing or in the transcription of our present Hebrew text, and thus would account for what they consider as actual and extensive additions to its prim- itive form. And it can hardly be doubted that by means of the literary feature known as " parallelism" in Hebrew poetry, many textual additions can be de- tected in the Hebrew text of the poetical books, not- ably in that of Job. All scholars distinctly maintain, however, and indeed justly, that all such glosses, whether actually proved, or simply conjectured, do not interfere materially with the substantial integrity of the Hebrew text. The presence of similar textual additions in the text of the Septuagint, or oldest Greek translation of the Old Testament, is an established fact which was well known to the Roman editors of that version under Sixtus V. One has only to compare attentively the words of that ancient version with those of the original Hebrew to remain convinced that the Septuagint translators have time and again delib- erately deviated from the text which they rendered into Greek, and thus made a number of more or less important additions thereunto. These translators fre- quently manifest a desire to supply what the original had omitted or to clear up what appeared ambiguous. Frequently, too, they adopt paraphrastic renderings to avoid the most marked anthropomorphisms of the text before them : while at times they seem to be guided in their additions by Jewish Halacha and Haggadah. Glosses as textual additions exist also in manuscripts of the New Testament, owing to a variety of causes, the principal among which may be given as follows: copyists have embodied marginal notes in the text it- self; at times they have supplemented the words of an Evangelist by means of the parallel passages in the other Gospels; sometimes they have completed the quotations from the Old Testament in the New. Finally, textual additions appear in the manuscripts and printed editions of the Latin Vulgate. Its author, St. Jerome, has freely enough inserted in his render- ing of the original Hebrew historical, geographical, doctrinal remarks which he thought more or less