Glosses To The Bible - Glosses As Marginal Notes

Glosses As Marginal Notes

Marginal notes are found in nearly all manuscripts and printed editions of the Scriptures. With regard to the Hebrew text, these glosses or marginal notes are mostly extracts from the Masorah or collection of traditional remarks. They usually 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. 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 insert even an entire word. Some of these glosses are of importance for the correct reading or understanding of the original Hebrew, while nearly all have contributed to its uniform transmission since the 11th century.

The marginal notes of Greek and Latin manuscripts are annotations of all kinds, chiefly the results of exegetical and critical study, crowding 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 grew to so many textual readings that Pope 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. The Douay Version respected this idea.

James I of England wanted the Authorized Version to be free of marginal notes, but it appeared in 1611 with such notes, usually recording various readings. The glosses or marginal notes of the British Revised Version published 1881-85, are greatly in excess over those of the Version of 1611. They give various readings, alternate renderings, critical remarks, etc. The marginal notes of the American Standard Revised Version (1900–1901) are of the same general description as those found in the British Revised Version.