David Stark at New Testament Interpretation reports on the (still beta) roll-out of Biblia.com, an excellent web resource for Biblical Studies. Check out the full report here, or if you’d just like to see the goods, check that out here.
Apr 202010
The always interesting Phil Gons has a wonderful guide to blogging in Greek and Hebrew. You can find that here.
Looks like he is prioritizing Gentium as a Greek font, which is also my font of choice. And if you don’t know how to type in (Unicode) Greek and Hebrew, make sure you check out this post.
- Image via Wikipedia
There is a new Unicode Polytonic Greek font available for all you font collectors out there. Rod Decker has the details and download instructions. His post is so complete, there is not much need for me to add to it.
The basic idea: this font supports a very wide range of characters—Hebrew glyphs, for example–but is not as professional looking as (my still-standing recommendation) Gentium (or GentiumAlt).
If you are clueless regarding this discussion, but want to better understand fonts and right way to type in Greek, start with this post by yours truly.
Though perhaps not as significant as yesterday’s exegetical insight, I put myself to the task of translating Jacob’s tapestry from last night’s lost (that pause button is wonderful, isn’t it!).
So here goes. First I transcribed it into miniscules:
θεοι τοσα δοιεν οσα φρεσι σησι μενοινας
So it’s two clauses:
θεοι τοσα δοιεν
οσα φρεσι σησι μενοινας
The latter clause is a relative clause, with μενοινας as the main verb. It’s a standard progressive active indicative, 3nd singular from μενοινάω, “to desire eagerly, be bent on a thing” according to Middle Liddell. The adjective σησι is just a possessive, with φρεσι as its head noun. So the phrase is something like “whatever/as much as you desire for your heart.”
Now to the main clause. δοιεν took me awhile because it’s an optative (not used to those in the NT). But the root δο is your clue, and it’s listed in Great Scott: Aor. act opt. 3rd plural from διδωμι. I think τοσα is nueter plural, the antecedent of οσα.
So here is my translation
May the gods give [to you] as many things as you desire for you heart.
Or more idiomatically (removing the repetitive relative pronoun and treating the dative of advantage as idiomatic):
May the gods give to you all your heart’s desire.
Or you could just search on the transliteration in the Perseus Project (I assumed it was a quote from something). It’s from Homer, Od. 6.180. Here.
Update: The bottom line, by the way, is the following
θεοι δε τοι ολβια δοιεν
This one is much easier. ὄλβιος, α, ον, used substantively here, means “blessing,” or “riches”. This line is actually listed in Middle Liddell as an example, and is also from the Odyssey. So the translation:
And may the gods give you riches/blessing.
