GLOSS
888
GLOSS
patercE of the Catacombs, about the Sd centurj', being in them applied to the head of Clirist. About tlie close of the (ith century it was first applied to angels, and to the apostles and saints.
Tlie ylory was used in ancient art to signify power and dominion. In tliis sense it was occasionally used in Christian art, as when it was placed around the head t;f Constantine, of the empress Tlieodora, around six heads of the beast of the Apocalypse, and even around tliat of Satan. But usual!}' it signified holiness and purity. Th3 oblong glory, or the " vesica piscis," en- velopes the whole person only in representations of Christ, the Virgin Marj"-, or other saints who are rep- resented as ascending to heaven. The glory had man}- forms : thus it was a simple circle of light, or it con- tained a cross in the monoi^ram A Q or X P. It was sometimes applied to the head of a dove, a lamb, or other S3;mbol of the Saviour. — ]SIrs. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art; Martigny, Dktionnaire des Ardi- quites Chreliennes. (G. F. C.)
Gloss, Glossary. A gloss is a note appended to any word or phrase for the purpose of interpretation or illustration. "Sacred glosses" are such notes ap- psndcd to words or phrases occurring in the Scriptures. A glossary is a collection of such explanatory' notes properlj' arranged.
The word gloss is borrowed from the Greek yKiooGa. But in the sense above explained it has no support from classical usage. The process, however, by which the word passed from its original meaning to that in which it was used by medieval writers, and in which it is now used, may be traced. The Greek word yXCjaaa, meaning tongue or sp:>ec/>, came to be used hy the Greek grammarians in tlie sense of a word requir- ing to be explained. In process of time words often become obsolete, or come to be used in senses different from those in which they were originally used; new words are introduced ; and words frequentlv have spe- cial meanings attached to them of a professional or technical character, familiar on\y to a portion of the communit}'. To the multitude such words need to be explained ; and such words the Greek grammarians called yXioacat. Thus Plutarch speaks of certain ex- pressions in the poets which were not commonly un- derstood, and which belonged to the idiotisms of par- ticular regions or tribes, as rac Xsyofdvac yXiorrag (/>e audiend. poet. c. 0). Galen applies the same name to the antiquated words of Hippocrates, and explains the term thus : ona roii'vv tmv ovojiutmv tv ^liv Tolr TTCiXai Y|0'n'0(t," avvlfii] i]i' vvv Si oi'jk in trrri, ra jxtv ToiavTU yXwiTcrof KaXovm {Exeges. Gloss. Ilijypocrat. Proem.'). Aristotle applies the same term to provin- cialisms (Z)e arte poet. c. xxi, § 4-G ; xxii, 3, 4, etc.). And, not to multipl}' quotations, a scholiast on Dion. Halicarn., quoted by Wetstein on 1 Cor. xii, 10, ex- pressly says y\(o(jaai ' (piovai apxmai kui inro^ivi- apivcii j) tTrixwpiuZovryai. Quintilian also says of the synonymous word glossemit i, "Id est voces minus usitatas" (hist. Orat. i, 8, 15 ; comp. also i, 1, 35).
The next step was from calling a word needing ex- planation a gloss, to applj' this term to the explanation itself. These explanations at first consisted merely in adiiil>iting the word in common use (ih'opa Kvpiov, Aristot.) to tlie olisolete and peculiar word ; and thus the two viewed as one whole came to be called a gloss ; and ultimately this name came to be given to that part wliicli was of most interest to the reader, viz. the ex- planation.
These explanations constituted the beginnings of Greek Lexicography'. Thej' did not continue, howev- er, to be merely lexical ; they often embraced histori- cal, geographical, biographical, and such like notices. Nor were they arranged at first in an alphabetical or- der ; nor did they embrace the whole range of the lan- f];uagc, but only such parts of it as the glossographer was interested in (hence such works as the 'Arrf/cni VXwrjnai of Theodorus, etc.); nor were the words pre-
sented in their uninflected forms, but in the form in which they occurred in the course of the glossogra- pher's reading. More methodical collections of these explanations began to be made in the Middle Ages, and such as have been preserved to us in the works of Hesychius, Suidas, Phavorinus, Zonaras, Photius, and in tlie Etgmologicum Magnum.
I. The first class of extant scriptural glosses con- sists of explanations drawn from the Greek glossarists, a large number of the notes collected bj' whom are on words occurring in Scripture. Their works thus be- come valuable as excgetical aids, especially as they convey not tlie individual opinion of the collector so much as opinions which he had gathered from older writers. A Glossarium Grcecum in N. T., collected from these works, was published by Alberti in 1735. Valckenaer collected from Hes3'chius the explanations of scriptural words (0pp. i, 173 sq.) ; but this has been best done hy J. Ch. Gottl. Ernesti, in his GIosscb Sacrce Hesychii Greece, etc. (Lips. 1785), which was followed b}' a similar collection from Suidas and Phavorinus, with specimens from the Etymologicum Magnum (Lips. 1786). These are extremelv convenient books of ref- erence. Comp. Fabricius, Bibl. Grceca, iv, 540 sq. ; Rosenmuller, IJistor. Interpr. iv, 350 sq. Suicer's The- saurus Eccieslastlcus (Amst. 1G8"2, 1728, 2 vols, fol.) con- tains nearly all these exjdanatory words or glosses, and the most important of them arj also usually in the best modern Greek Lexicons of the N. T.