Greek Sources Research Articles

The anthropomorphism of Hestia: reconsidering the early Greek sources

The anthropomorphism of Hestia: reconsidering the early Greek sources

The Lexical and Syntactical Calque superaedificare in the Latin Tradition of the New Testament Epistles

Abstract The prefixed verb superaedificare, which is a calque of ἐποικοδοµέω, governs prepositional phrases and plain cases in the Latin New Testament Epistles. The Vulgate and Old Latin manuscripts feature constructions of superaedificare in agreement with the Greek source text. However, alternative translations are attested when the biblical text is cited by early Christian writers. In citations where the biblical passage is included in the author’s text, aedificare is frequently used instead of superaedificare. By contrast, when the biblical text is quoted for the first time and its source is acknowledged, superaedificare is employed and its construction matches that of the Greek text. These citation habits show that the construction of superaedificare is a syntactical calque of the Greek source text, which is attested when the citations are marked as such but is not used when the biblical text is embedded in the patristic text.

The Late Medieval Debate about the Nature of Phenomenal Reality in Franciscan Theology and Islamic Thought and its Greek Sources

The tendency to question the accuracy of sensory perception is found in various medieval theological traditions, including Franciscan and Islamic. In both these traditions, the source of the idea that we cannot trust our sensory perception seems to have been the Greek commentaries on Aristotle. However, both traditions go beyond ideas contained in Greek Aristotelian literature and independently develop similar arguments and come to similar conclusions about the reliability of sensory perception.

Poetic License, Textual Fidelity and the Liturgical Impulse in Aleksandr Sumarokov’s Early Spiritual Verse

The present essay considers the paraphrases of Psalms and other biblical and liturgical texts that Sumarokov composed between 1744 and 1769. He initially treated his paraphrases primarily as literary exercises: while taking care not to distort the Church Slavic and ipso facto Greek (Septuagint) source texts, he had no qualms about both expanding and abridging the original texts within the confines of traditional metrical and stanzaic structures. Subsequently in the 1760s, he began to experiment with variable iambic and trochaic lines in spiritual verse, though such forms are typically associated with less lofty genres such as fables and epigrams. His experiments in turn allowed him to achieve greater fidelity to the Church Slavic texts targeted for paraphrasis, and to bring his texts stylistically closer to the liturgical norms associated with the Church Slavic originals. At the same time, he strove to improve the fidelity of his own paraphrases of the Psalms by consulting German translations of the Hebrew (Masoretic) originals. Thus, Sumarokov paradoxically brings to his new translations of the 1660s the philological Protestant sensibility of German translations of the Psalter, and an Orthodox sensibility that favors the traditional Church Slavic register associated with the Psalter as a liturgical text. These new translations in free and frequently unrhymed iambs set the stage for the final, more radical experiments undertaken in 1773–1774.

Prometeu în viziune romantică și neoromantică

The Promethean vision of Shelley and Al. Philippides springs from the same Greek source, Aeschylus and Hesiod, but, along the way, undergoes modifications, according to the face and likeness of each poet, in part, because the poets, putting on the coat and the Promethean mask, and play differently, depending on the interior of each one, rebelling – however, in unison, against any external and internal authority or oppression, by borrowing the Promethean howl, to which they give different valences. Shelley's tragic poem preserves the Greek heritage, the legend itself, to a point, for Shelley's verses are not a genealogical presentation but clothe themselves in self-consciousness and tragedy, in the four acts of the poem that deserve its title as a masterpiece. Shelley reserves a personal and imaginative view of human nature: „The images I have used will be found in many illustrations, and have been drawn from the processes of the human mind (...)” (our translation) of the fatality of life and destiny to which mortals are subjected to.

Wer waren die Netinîm?

Abstract In view of the scarcity of sources on the class of the Temple servants (Netinîm), it is advisable to look at Mesopotamian and Greek sources, which offer analogies by much richer information. For the question of conceivable analogies to the scattered information in Ezr/Neh, it must also be considered whether the Jerusalem Temple owned land and who carried out the necessary work.

Ancient Translations and Reviews of the Holy Scriptures in The Greek Language. Contribution to the History of Biblical Translations

The article offers a scholarly overview of the historical translations and reviews of the Bible from Greek sources. It lists the historical ancient manuscript translations that have become widely accepted canonical models, known as the “Biblical canon” in the translations of the Holy Scriptures. The tradition of these translations is with extremely wide boundaries in chronological and linguistic terms is of interest for understanding the origin and semantics of the modern Synodal translation of the Bible.

The uses of stools in classical Athens: diphrophoroi in the Parthenon frieze, old comedy, Attic vases and beyond

Abstract The following article discusses the significance of a stool carried by persons referred to in ancient Greek sources (from Old Comedy to Plutarch) as diphrophoroi. As I argue, the iconography suggests that this piece of furniture was often used by attendants responsible for their mistresses’ outfit, make-up and hairstyle. By extension, the most famous representation of two girls with stools on their heads on the east Parthenon frieze can be interpreted as an allusion to the ritual dressing and embellishing of Athena's statue.

Defining “Romans” in the Late Antique Near East: Some Preliminary Thoughts on the “Romans” in Sūrat al-Rūm

Abstract In the opening lines of the sūrah named after the “Romans,” Q Rūm 30, the qurʾānic preacher expresses his solidarity with the “Romans” who had then been defeated by the Persian army. In seeking to better understand these verses, one may start with the question: Who exactly are the “Romans” here? “Roman” was a broad, multifaceted term, as Yannis Stouraitis has lately pointed out, based mainly on sources written after the seventh century and stemming from the Greek-speaking “West” of the Byzantine Empire. In this study, using mainly Syriac sources but also some hitherto unnoticed Greek testimonies coming from the Near East, this semantic variability of the word “Roman” is shown to further expand when going East. Like in most Syriac sources, “Romans” in Q Rūm primarily means members of the Byzantine army (and state apparatus), be they ethnic Greeks, Syrians, or Arabs. At the same time, the “Romans” of this sūrah are all inhabitants, all “citizens” of the Byzantine Empire – not just its armies and magistrates. This latter sense corresponds to the broader sense in which “Romans” is used not only in Syriac, but also in Greek sources (and in other languages of the Late Antique Near East). That broader sense is one that we find in a definition by the Damascene Sophronios of Jerusalem, according to whom “Roman” is anyone “stemming from a city subject to the Romans.” Another qurʾānic passage that refers to the Byzantines (though without naming them), which has very much to do with the same geopolitical context of the Byzantine-Persian wars, Q Māʾidah 5:17, seems to criticize a “Byzantine” confidence in the invincibility of Christ and Mary. Why does the Qurʾān chose to name the Romans when expressing solidarity with them, yet leave them unnamed when criticizing them? Could it be the case that this difference between naming the “Romans” and leaving them unnamed is somehow meant to show that the solidarity with the “Romans,” as declared expressis verbis in the Sūrat al-Rūm, concerns the entire Byzantine world whereas the sharp criticism in al-Māʾidah is not general in the same sense?

Ocra — an Etymological Proposal

The ancient name of the mountain (pass) that lies at the junction of the Julian and Dinaric Alps (nowadays Mt Nanos and the adjoining Razdrto Pass in southwestern Slovenia) is attested as Ocra in Latin (Pliny) and ῎Oκρα in Greek sources (Strabo, Ptolemy). The name is surely Italic and is argued to go back to Proto-Indo-European *H2ok̑reH2- (to *H2ek̑ - ‘to be/become/make sharp’). Given that an o-grade root is not expected in a deverbal adjective in -ro- (i.e. *H2ek̑-ró- ‘sharp’), such a formation is only interpretable as a substantivized feminine form of the possessive adjective *H2ok̑-r-ó- ‘sharp,’ derived from an acrostatic heteroclite neuter abstract noun *H2ók̑-r-/*H2ék̑-n- ‘sharpness.’ As such, Ocra ~ ῎Oκρα is the only unambiguous evidence for the existence of a deverbal abstract with o : e ablaut in Proto-Indo-European. In the addendum a brief etymological account is given of the place-name Acumincum ~ Acimincum from Pannonia Inferior, which likewise goes back ultimately to the PIE root *H2ek̑ -, arguing in favour of the Ptolemaic variant with Acu- (as opposed to Aci-) as the forma difficilior. The proposed etymology starts from PIE *H2ek̑-m̥n-o- > *akumno- ‘rock’ + *-enko- (*akumnenko- ‘rocky (place)’), from which *akumenko- > *akuminko- would then be produced by simple regressive dissimilation.

Чудесата на св. Димитър от солунския хартофилакс Йоан Ставракий в южнославянската традиция: Предварителни бележки

The article describes the content and the internal textual features of the Greek collection of miracles of St. Demetrios of Thessalonica by John Stavrakios in the 13th century, in comparison with the only two Slavonic copies, autographs of Vladislav the Grammarian from the 15th century, which attest the Slavonic translation. The collection is one of the most recent chronologically, reproducing both older miracles reflecting the flexible adaptation of the cult of St Demetrios and the uninterrupted veneration of the saint across wide spatial and temporal boundaries. The comparison of the Greek and the Slavonic traditions does not allow the exact Greek prototype to be identified. It probably belongs, however, to the filiation attested in the 1940 edition of Joachim Iberites, since individual textual samples prove that the Slavonic translation follows its Greek source quite closely. The role of Vladislav the Grammarian and the historical context of the emergence of the translation is discussed. The appendix contains two previously unpublished miracles, known only from the work of Stavrakios, in Slavonic translation based on the Rila Panegyric of 1479 and translated into modern Bulgarian.

Thoughts of Muslim Scientists Al-Kindi and Ibn Sina

Al-Kindi and Ibn Sina were Muslim philosophers AL Kindi was the first Muslim philosopher to compile Islamic philosophical thought with a clear systematics. Al-Kindi's philosophical thought was a reflection of doctrines derived from classical Greek sources and Neo-Platonic heritage combined with Islamic religious beliefs. Al-Kindi opened the conversation room as an effort to integrate philosophical and religious doctrines. The knowledge of God by Al-Kindi is referred to as the early philosophy or the first philosophy; A philosophy that discourses al-Haqq as a telos that will end the entire work of philosophy. Al-Kindi divided reason according to each stage as follows; reason that is always active (is the core of all reason and all objects of knowledge), potential reason (reason that guarantees man's readiness to understand things that may be rational and require external stimulation), actual reason (potential reason that has gone out of potential limits when the soul begins to understand rational and abstract things) and reason is born (reason that has been serious about understanding rational things and turning something potential into actual). He marked the pinnacle of Islamic philosophy with his thoughts on paripatetic philosophy, known as Masya'i, which is syncretic philosophy (synthetical from the teachings of Revelation, Islam, Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism). Ibn Sina was the perfect digger and immortal translator of paripatetic philosophy who pointed to the gates of theosophical philosophy signifying the integral union of philosophy and spirituality. A century and a half after the philosophy of masya'i he led Shihabuddin Suhrawardi to the philosophy of illumination (al-ishraq).

Mythological References in Ausonius’ Epistolary

Ausonius’ letters constitute a specimen of the way he employs references to Greek mythology. The process by which Ausonius reworks mythological material fol- lows patterns that were already well established in the Latin literary tradition of re-working Greek sources. The recycling of such material is not only proof of his technical prowess, but also demonstrates his ability to perform precise thematic choices. Frequently, the use of mythology is part of the metaliterary and metapoetic discourses tackled by Ausonius while addressing his friends as recipients of letters. The analysis of individual letters reveals how the poet used mythological references for two main purposes. The first is to elevate the tone and content of the discourse, employing a series of artificial comparisons with mythical characters and events. Brief mythological references used to formulate playful numerical periphrases are also worth noting here. The second aim is encomiastic, namely the celebration of his friends, the recipients of his letters, who are transferred from everyday reality to the higher level of the mythical dimension and the superhuman sphere.

Заметки о числах

The article discusses some cases, where the manuscripts with early Slavonic translated texts, namely the Old Bulgarian translation of the apocryphal Narration of our father Agapius and the Pandects of Nikon of the Black Mountain, show varying numerals. The apparent arbitrariness in the use of numbers is not always accidental and often finds an explanation in the graphics and spelling of manuscripts, and sometimes receives justification on a broader historical and cultural background. The need of textual criticism and attention to Greek sources for an adequate interpretation and reconstruction of the original text is emphasized.

Лексічныя і граматычныя асаблівасці перакладу глаў 1 і 2 Евангелля паводле Мацвея на беларускую мову (праваслаўная і каталіцкая рэдакцыі 2017 г.)

This article provides a comparative analysis of certain lexical and grammatical peculiarities in the Catholic and Orthodox editions of the Belarusian translation of Chapters 1 and 2 of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. The study is based on biblical textual sources in Belarusian, Polish, Greek and Russian, including explanatory and other dictionaries, as well as works on modern Belarusian literary lexicology. It is emphasized that while adapting the Gospel of Matthew into Belarusian, translators exhibit a certain dependence on the influence of foreign languages and the traditions of confessional writing, thus sometimes disregarding encyclopedic variants, or ignoring lexical, semantic and grammatical processes characteristic of the modern Belarusian literary language.

‘It is Not Good for the Human to be Alone…’ (Gen. 2:18): yhwh Elohim Among the Weeping Gods of the Ancient Near East

Abstract Regarding the creation account in Genesis 2–3, D.M. Carr observes that this text freely repurposes prior cosmological traditions, and so it is a case of a ‘fluid adaptation of its Near Eastern precursors…’ (Carr, [2020], 52–53). Building on his discussion, this article analyzes an ane motif that has not been linked to Genesis 2–3 yet, i.e., the formation of humanity from divine tears or in the wake of divine laments. Known in various configurations from Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Greek sources, this motif includes tears of a god or gods either as a generative substance in the making of humans or as a driving force for their origins. In light of these traditions, this article considers the pronouncement ‘It is not good for the human to be alone’ (Gen. 2:18), arguing that it is a variation on the ‘divine tears’ myth. As such, this pronouncement addresses a multi-faceted form of ‘aloneness’ in the emerging cosmos.

A Cost-Effectiveness and Budget Impact Analysis of AbobotulinumtoxinA in Greece.

This study aimed to assess the cost-effectiveness of abobotulinumtoxinA (aboBoNT-A) plus Best Supportive Care (BSC) compared with BSC alone for managing limb spasticity in adult patients in Greece, as well as to conduct a budget impact analysis of the introduction of aboBoNT-A in the Greek healthcare system compared to onabotulinumtoxinA (onaBoNT-A). Clinical studies were utilized to extract data on drug efficacy and patients' utility, while cost data were collected from Greek sources. The results of the study showed that aboBoNT-A plus BSC was a cost-effective treatment option for both upper and lower limb spasticity in adult patients compared to BSC. Additionally, introducing aboBoNT-A into the Greek healthcare system resulted in cost savings in pharmaceutical spending over a 5-year period. The findings suggest that incorporating aboBoNT-A into the Greek healthcare system could improve patient access to treatment and healthcare resource efficiency, as it is a more economical option compared to onaBoNT-A.

Evolution of the institute of abuse of right

The abuse of right is an important institution in the legal system. Although the concept and methods of its use may differ from country to country, the basic concept remains the same: an individual cannot use his legal rights to harm others or to achieve an illegal goal. The historical background of the institution of abuse of right to be traced on the example of Roman law, which introduced the concepts of contra bonos mores (from Latin to harm the moral well-being of society) and in fraudem legis agere (from Latin to act contrary to the law), which today are considered forms of abuse of right. It is important to note that the doctrine of the «abuse of right» in ancient Greece was limited by the fragmentary nature of the surviving legal and philosophical texts. Unlike Roman law, which had a complex legal system and was represented by numerous legal works, ancient Greek legal thought is known mainly through philosophical treatises and historical narratives. As a result, specific discussions of «abuse of right» in ancient Greek sources are unfortunately hard to come by. However, the general ideas of moderation, concern for others, and the pursuit of justice nevertheless indicate a concern and responsible use of rights in ancient Greek society, even if this concept, compared to Roman law, was not clearly formulated. In the Middle Ages, in the Anglo-Saxon law, the theory of abuse of rights developed through the concepts of equity. In the period of recent history (from the middle of the XV century to the end of the XIX – the beginning of the XX century), this institute continues to develop and adapt to the changing conditions of modern society. Some countries, such as France, were among the first to attempt to legislate abuse of rights in their Civil Code. Over time, other jurisdictions have incorporated the statute of abuse of right into their domestic legislation. This concept is also reflected in international law, where it can be applied in the context of human rights, private law, and other fields. The modern understanding of the abuse of right assumes that the use of the right can be recognized as abuse if it does not correspond to its true purpose, harms the interests of other persons or society, and does not comply with the principle of justice. Based on the research and established judicial practice, we conclude that at least one of the following four conditions must be used to establish «abuse of the right»: 1. The predominant motivation for using the right is to cause harm. 2. There is no legal basis for exercising its right. 3. The exercise of the right contradicts the principle of contra bonos mores or violates good faith or justice. 4. The right is not used for its intended purpose. Key words: abuse of right, the Roman law, principle of the inadmissibility of the abuse of right, judicial discretion, principle of good faith, principle of justice.

Notation Methods and Reference Systems: On the Phenomenon of Cultural Translation in the Eastern Mediterranean

Abstract Traditional art music in the Ottoman Empire was essentially shaped by phenomena of transculturality. It can be assumed that dynamic cultural transfer processes took place between the cultural groups involved, including Armenians, Greeks, Jews, and Arabs, in addition to Turks, and that these processes are visible today through circumstantial evidence. Each cultural group has an individual-specific music-theoretical, as well as music-historical background, so that the cultural intersection of Ottoman art music is considered from different perspectives. Using Greek sources from the 18th and 19th centuries as examples, this contribution is devoted to the phenomenon of cultural translation that accompanies the transfer processes. The central question is whether and in what form the detailed information given on the pitch system can contribute to a better understanding of Ottoman music theory in the nineteenth century, and how it can be made useful for the critical edition of music practical sources from the period.

Olivier ou palmier ?

Abstract The oldest Greek sources narrate how Leto at the time of childbirth held on to a palm tree on the island of Delos to help herself with the effort of contractions. Under this palm tree, the god Apollo was born, making it an element of sacred worship of which the ancients said that it never died. Despite the clarity of the sources in the plant identification from the 5th century BC onwards, we can observe an attempt to appropriate the sacred tree of Leto’s childbirth that is made manifest through written and visual sources. Thus, the olive tree or the image of Athena began to appear as protagonists of the myth. They began to oversee the birth of the god Apollo. This iconographic manipulation had a single purpose: to justify, through religion, the economic and political control of a key commercial centre in the Greek world.