The Obelus and Nomina Sacra

[Secret Alias]

I have a question for you of some importance (as it well help me conclude a rather important paper I hope to publish). Are there examples any of you can think of - perhaps in the Hexapla or elsewhere - where an obelus marked a passage as spurious and then the material which was marked with an obelus DID NOT ABBREVIATE the nomina sacra in that passage, as if to say the material is profane rather than sacred? It might be connected with a heretical group (i.e. where what they write/their gospel is not holy or sacred or deserving of sacred abbreviations) or some other context.

[Secret Alias]

I'll have to look if Epiphanius does when citing from Marcion's canon

[Secret Alias]

This is pretty close to what I am looking for:

Thus, the selection of nomina sacra forms by the copyist of P.Beatty II in 1 Cor 8.6, as opposed to the fully written out forms in the preceding clause, marks an identity distinction and asserts the superiority of Christian belief: «they with their many (false) gods» versus «us with our one (true) God»

Any other examples of this anyone can think of i.e. where the ungodly are refused nomina sacra?

[andrewcriddle]

This is pretty close to what I am looking for:

Thus, the selection of nomina sacra forms by the copyist of P.Beatty II in 1 Cor 8.6, as opposed to the fully written out forms in the preceding clause, marks an identity distinction and asserts the superiority of Christian belief: «they with their many (false) gods» versus «us with our one (true) God»

Any other examples of this anyone can think of i.e. where the ungodly are refused nomina sacra?

IMHO this is not really a good parallel, it is distinguishing between pagan gods and the Christian God. Different entities for which the same name is used.

IIUC you are looking for a distinction in usage between references to Jesus in an heretical text and references in a canonical or at least orthodox text. This seems a different issue.

Andrew Criddle

[Ben C. Smith]

This is pretty close to what I am looking for:

Thus, the selection of nomina sacra forms by the copyist of P.Beatty II in 1 Cor 8.6, as opposed to the fully written out forms in the preceding clause, marks an identity distinction and asserts the superiority of Christian belief: «they with their many (false) gods» versus «us with our one (true) God»

Any other examples of this anyone can think of i.e. where the ungodly are refused nomina sacra?

Okay, that is actually pretty common among the nomina sacra, though it does not seem to me to be the same phenomenon as what you originally asked for. There are quite a few manuscripts which tend to spell out what Paap calls profane instances of "lord," "god," "Joshua," and so one, but which tend to abbreviate what he calls sacred instances. This is his entry for God and Lord in Ƿ66, for example:

A. H. R. E. Paap, Nomina Sacra in the Greek Papyri of the First Five Centuries, page 10 (God, Lord).png (6.69 KiB) Viewed 4272 times

Few of the patterns are 100%, but God is always abbreviated when sacred (s.) and always unabbreviated when profane (pr.) here. Lord is always abbreviated in Ƿ66, apparently. The other names for this same papyrus are much more mixed. But you can definitely find little patterns like this amongst the manuscripts.

[Secret Alias]

Few of the patterns are 100%, but God is always abbreviated when sacred (s.) and always unabbreviated when profane (pr.) here.

It's not EXACTLY what I was looking for but the logic for not abbreviating or making a 'sacred abbreviation' is similar.

[Secret Alias]

Here is what I wrote in my rough draft of the paper I am writing (admittedly done while my wife was complaining she wanted to go to Starbucks so it was rushed):

The closest parallel to this proposed activity is found in the P.Beatty II in 1 Cor 8.5. In the preceding clause the nomen sacrum is fully written out. In 1 Cor 8.6 the form is fully written out which “marks an identity distinction and asserts the superiority of Christian belief: ‘they with their many (false) gods» versus «us with our one (true) God.’” Indeed in introducing the example Overcash notes “a consequence of thinking about the nomina sacra as signs formed out of their makers’ interests, as the foregoing example immediately reveals, is that they will necessarily reflect the ideological positions of their producers.” In other words, the bestowing or withholding of nomina sacra because of perceived ideological correctness or deficiencies of a group or community is manifest in the decisions of the Chester Beatty papyrus.

[Secret Alias]

But I would still gladly find plain examples of where heretical books gospels are cited and the 'divine names' are not abbreviated. Wasserman noted that the problem is that we likely have copies of copies of books like Epiphanius so we can't expect the scribes to have had the required sophistication.

The difficulty is:

1. we have so few examples of orthodox citing directly from heretical scriptures.
2. the long chain of transmission through the Dark Ages.