Theodoret’s Commentary on the Psalms was widely read and copied, not only in its own right but also as a source for collections of excerpts and chains (“Rahmenkatene”). Some of the oldest extant manuscripts feature Theodoret’s commentary in the margins, with additions from another anonymous source. One example is the following pair of 10th-century manuscripts: Ra 9045, and Ra 9081, this last one is composed of a larger part preserved at the National Library of Greece in Athens, 4. (n^o. diktyon 2300) and of a fragment at Harvard University, Houghton Library, Gr. 13 (n^o. diktyon 12301) in Cambridge (USA).

They both share the same text expanded in the margins and appear to have served as models for some later manuscripts as well, for example, Ra 9015; Ra 9034, which contains the same additions (with minor modifications) found in Ra 9081¹. It is precisely an ‘external’ insertion found during the transcription of this divided manuscript within Theodoret’s commentary that will enable us to understand what appears to have been perceived as a ‘dilemma’: is it a pelican or a woodpecker?

We are in Psalm 101, where verse 7 is read by Theodoret as in our modern editions and the majority of witnesses in the following way: ὡμοιώθην πελεκᾶνι ἐρημικῷ, ἐγενήθην ὡσεὶ νυκτικόραξ ἐν οἰκοπέδῳ. However, the translation of the verse in question is not unambiguous; thus, we have scholars such as Hill (2001, 150) who translate it as ‘I became like a woodpecker in the wilderness, I resembled a night-raven in a building’; others, such as Schökel (1993, 1270), translate it as ‘Estoy como lechuza en el páramo, estoy como búho entre ruinas’; and others, such as Martone (2013, 283), translate it as ‘Sono divenuto simile a un pellicano del deserto, sono diventato come un corvo notturno in un luogo abbandonato’².

The three different translations presented in this blog stem from two distinct issues.

Firstly, Schökel’s Spanish translation: ‘Estoy como lechuza en el páramo, estoy como búho entre ruinas’ (I am like a barn owl in the wilderness, like an eagle owl among ruins)³ is a translation based on the text of the Psalm handed down through Jewish tradition, in which the correspondence between the words is as follows: πελεκᾶνι ] σ′ νυκτικόρακι Field | ἐρημικῷ] σ′ ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ Field | ἐγενήθην] σ′ (ἐγενήθην) Field | ὡσεὶ νυκτικόραξ ] α′ νυκτικόραξ Field; σ′ ὡς ἔποψ Field; ε′ νυκτικόραξ Field; ς′ γλαύξ Field; θ′ νυκτικόραξ Field | ἐν οἰκοπέδῳ] σ′ ἐν ἐρειπίοις Field⁴ .

Whilst in the case of the Hebrew tradition the differing translation is associated to a different text⁵ , in the Greek textual tradition the discrepancy in translation arises from the semantic ambiguity of the Greek term denoting the pelican.

A striking example of this ambiguity and uncertainty associated with the term πελεκᾶνι can be found on folio 64r of Ra 9081. At this point in the manuscript, the commentary emphasises that the numerous figurative comparisons have a precise meaning and that, through each of the birds mentioned (in line 8 we also find a small sparrow, στρουθίον), the intention is to convey fear and the absence of protection⁶. Theodoret’s text concludes with the following quotation: τὰ γὰρ οἰκόπεδα, ἐρείπια ὁ Σύμμαχος εἴρηκεν· οὕτω καὶ τὸ ἄλλο ὄρνεον ταῖς ἐρήμοις ἐνδιαιτᾶται⁷. At the end of Theodoret’s text, the scribe adds the following phrase ‘πελεκᾶν δὲ ὃ τρυπᾷ τὰ δένδρα’⁸, which would be translated, if one assumes an accent error —and thus the presence of the noun πελεκάν—followed by a gender error⁹, given that we have the neuter relative pronoun, ‘pelican that pierces the trees’. The phrase reveals that there is an error or an uncertain understanding at its core¹⁰. The psalm mentions the pelican, and linking its figure—directly or indirectly—to the activity expressed by the verb πελεκάω highlights the ambiguity inherent in the term πελεκάν (πελεκᾶνος), pelican. In the collective imagination, in fact, the activity of pecking is ethologically attributable to that of the woodpecker, which would be designated by the term πελεκᾶς (πελεκᾶντος).

Sometimes the noun πελεκᾶς was regarded as a synonym of πελεκάν/πελεκῖνος (πελεκίνου). One of the earliest attested uses of the term πελεκᾶς is found in two passages from Aristophanes’ Aves, where, however, it too seems to refer rather to the ‘woodpecker’ as an ornithological category. In the context of the aforementioned comedy, this term appears in an ‘ornithological litany’ within a solemn prayer recited by the Priest (lines 878–888), and the identification of the term πελεκᾶντι with the woodpecker seems to be inferred from the fact that the pelican is mentioned immediately afterwards (πελεκίνῳ) and specifically from the term πελεκῖνος¹¹. In lines 1154–1157 of the same play, moreover, the πελεκᾶντες are described as the birds tasked with working with their beaks (ἀπεπελέκησαν) on the wooden gates of the new city, an activity requiring a tool capable of piercing wood and thus woodpeckers.

Elsewhere (fr. 591.64–65 K.-A.) Aristophanes speaks of someone who ‘walks swaying with flat feet like a pelekás (ὥσπερ πελεκᾶς πλατυγίζων)’ and this therefore suggests that the πελεκᾶς in question must be a pelican, and consequently the πελεκᾶς in Aves 1154–1157 can also be seen as a playful way for the comedy-writer to have fun with words that are similar in appearance and sound within equally ambiguous contexts. According to Arnott (2007, 251), the author was simply joking, playing on the name of the bird ‘πελεκᾶς’ and on various other Greek words (for example ‘πέλεκυς’: ‘axe’), with the aim of making the audience smile at the incongruity of seeing pelicans using their enormous pouch-like beaks in the same way as woodpeckers do.

This is a play on words which a scholiast already highlighted in line 1155 (Holwerda 1991, 177), pointing out the ambiguity of the term as follows: πελεκᾶντες: despite the fact that ‘πελεκᾶν’ refers to chopping wood, the term was likely used in a play on the name of the bird.

However, this reasoning cannot be extended to line 882 of the comedy, where πελεκᾶς is necessarily another type of bird, distinct from the pelican unambiguously designated by the name πελεκῖνος a few lines later, although, according to the scholia on Ar. Av. 882¹², πελεκᾶς and πελεκάν are synonyms, the former being the Attic form and the latter the Koine form.

From an etymological point of view, according to Chantraine (DELG, 874f.), the two terms are quite distinct in meaning. The noun πελεκᾶς refers to the green woodpecker because it cuts wood like an axe; its suffix is thought to derive from -α-ϝεντ - and is believed to have been formed from the term πέλεκυς, εως (battle axe)¹³ . The noun πελεκάν, πελεκᾶνος, bearing a non-Attic suffix – reminiscent of that found in the names of peoples such as Ἀκαρνᾶνες – is instead used specifically to describe the white pelican (Aristot. HA. 597 b) and πελεκῖνος, pelican (Ar. Av. 884, Dionys. Av. 2.6), would then be a derivative of the term.

The confusion created by these two terms is also found in the metaphrase of Psalm 101 attributed to Apollinaris of Laodicea; in verses 11–13, the supplicant compares himself to solitary birds; the first comparison is with an ‘ἐρημονόμον πελεκᾶνα’, in which the accusative ‘πελεκᾶνα’—chosen first in Ludwich’s edition (1912) and then in Faulkner’s recently revised edition (2020), is in fact a variant transmitted by only one manuscript. The other witnesses transmit πελέκαντα or πελεκάντα, a form subsequently printed by Migne in PG 33.

In the case of Apollinaris, Nicola Zito (2024, 308–310) asserts that πελεκᾶνα is a vulgarisation of the text of the Metaphrasis and that consequently the correct reading lies in the rarer and more poetic πελακᾶς. In our case, the Greek text transmitted in Psalm 101 is unambiguous¹⁴, confirming that poeticism was and remains one of the distinctive features of the Psalter.

Our copyist, in his superfluous and hasty clarification, confirms that he was caught up in a long-standing linguistic and semantic dilemma in which the two names, though different, actually referred to the same group of birds that used mechanical, non-vocal ‘beak clicks’ or ‘beak flaps’ during territorial defence, courtship rituals and social communication¹⁵.

In fact, there is no doubt that the two terms share the same root or, at the very least, have a common origin traceable back to PIE (Proto-Indoeuropean) or even pre-PIE¹⁶ and it is precisely this commonality, most likely representing a characteristic feature or sound¹⁷, that is at the root of the confusion. This misunderstanding was skilfully exploited by Aristophanes, but it is rather amusing when one considers the confusions and misinterpretations it could cause, as the copyist of manuscript Ra 9081 confirms.

Photo from Ra 9081f.64r

Bibliography:

Arnott (2007): W.Geoffrey Arnott, Birds in the Ancient World, from A to Z, London-New York.

Bain (1999): David Bain, ‘Greek ῥάμφιος, middle Greek πελεκᾶνος (Cyranides 3.39.1–2)’, in «HSF» 112.2, 279-285.

Davidson (1970): Benjamin Davidson, The Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, London-New York.

Dunbar (1995): Nan Dunbar, Aristophanes. Birds, Oxford.

Driver (1955): Godfrey Rolles Driver, Birds in the Old Testament, in «PEQ» 87, 5-20.

Faulkner (2020): Andrew Faulkner, Apollinaris of Laodicea - Metaphrasis Psalmorum, Oxford.

Hill (2001): Robert C. Hill, Theodoret of Cyrus, Commentary on the Psalms 73-150, Washington, D.C.

Holwerda (1991): Douwe Holwerda, Scholia in Vespas, Pacem, Aves et Lysistratam, II, Groningen.

Ludwich (1912): Arthur Ludwich, Apolinarii Metaphrasis Psalmorum, Leipzig.

Macé-Gippert (2021): Caroline Macé-Jost Gippert, The Multilingual Physiologus Studies in the Oldest Greek Recension and its Translations, Turnhout.

Macé (2025): Caroline Macé, Pelican, «EBR» 23, 858-859.

Martone (2013): Corrado Martone, La Bibbia dei Settanta, Libri Poetici, III, Brescia.

Nepi (1993): Antonio Nepi, I Salmi, II, Roma.

Rahlfs-Albrecht (2025): Alfred Rahlfs-Felix Albrecht, Psalmi cum Odis, Septuaginta X, Göttingen.

Sassi (2026): Islème Sassi, Quid sibi volunt tres aves? – Pelikan, Nachtvogel und Spatz in Hippo und Nola: Exegese bei Augustinus, Therasia und Paulinus, «ZAC» 29(3), 501-517.

Schökel-Carniti (1993): L. Alonso Schökel - Cecilia Carniti, Salmos, II, Estella.

Schneider (2019): Horst Schneider, Tiere in symbolischer Deutung: Der Physiologus, in I.Schaaf (ed), Animal Kingdom of Heaven, Berlin-Boston, 59-76.

Vaccari 1940: Alberto Vaccari, Note al Salmo 102 (101), 7, «Bib» 21(3), 310-311.

Zito 2024: Nicola Zito, πελεκάν ou πελεκᾶς? Remarques sur le nom du pélican dans la métaphrase hexamétrique du Psaume 101 attribuée à Apollinaire de Laodicée, in S.Lazaris-S.Aragon (eds), Identification des espèces animales, Valenciennes, 303-310.