Biblical gloss

In Biblical studies, gloss or glossa is an annotation written on margins or within the text of Biblical manuscripts or printed editions of the scriptures. With regard to the Hebrew texts, the glosses chiefly contained explanations of purely verbal difficulties of the text; 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. Later on, Christian glosses also contained scriptural commentaries; St. Jerome extensively used glosses in the process of translation of the Latin Vulgate Bible.

The English word gloss is derived from the Latin glossa, a transcript of the Greek glossa. In classical Greek it means a tongue or language. In the course of time it was used to designate first a word of the text which needed some explanation, and later the explanation or addition itself.

The words which were commonly the subject of explanatory glosses may be reduced to the following five classes:

Where these glosses consisted of a single explanatory word, they were easily written between the lines of the text or in the margin of manuscripts opposite the words of which they supplied the explanation. In the process of time the glosses grew in number, and in consequence they were gathered in separate books where they appeared, first in the same order of succession 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, geographical, biographical, and other notices, which the collectors deemed necessary or useful to illustrate the text of sacred writings.

A lexicon of the kind is usually called a glossary (from Lat. glossarium), or just "gloss". From a single explanatory word, interlined or placed in the margin, the word gloss has been extended to denote an entire expository sentence, and in many instances even a running commentary on an entire book.

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.

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