γυμνὸς or γυμνοὶ in Clement's Letter to Theodore?

[Ken Olson]

In addition:

Three nouns that end in -νος

ἐκλεγόμενος (first page)
χρησάμενος (second page)
περιβεβλημένος (third page)

Do any of these look like γυμνοὶ on page three? Completely different ligature already recognized by Tselikas. https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/wp- ... ions-1.pdf

Somehow I have managed to have three different photos of each page of the original manuscript for proper comparison. Notice the final ligature -νος consistent throughout:

That is a good argument.

After consulting with a few scholars on the subject, I find that this argument is inconclusive. The three words from the letter which are used as comparanda, ἐκλεγόμενος (first page), χρησάμενος (second page), περιβεβλημένος (third page), all end in -μενος, not just -νος. Words ending in -μενος are common and -μενος had its own distinct form of abbreviation or ligature. Here is a table from of William Wallace, 'And Index of Greek Ligatures and Contractions' The Journal of Hellenistic Studies 43.2 (1923) 183-193:

Wallace - Index of Greek Ligatures and Contractions 189.png (116.97 KiB) Viewed 818 times

(Note that the table shows particular ligatures for -μενος and for -ος, but not for -νος)

https://www.jstor.org/stable/625810

See also Andrew Smith's site on Greek ligatures:

https://airtable.com/appgrNuo12M56MZkN/ ... LCvhcXcIbN

And the Fordham University site here (under: 'Abbreviations: through contraction together with superposition, suspension or combination'):

https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ikon/greekabb.asp

There are numerous other sites that document that -μενος had its own particular form of abbreviation/ligature, just google it.

In light of this fact, I think the argument that if the word under dispute in The Letter to Theodore III 13 had been γυμνὸς, rather than γυμνοὶ, we should expect to see the same ligature found in ἐκλεγόμενος, χρησάμενος, and περιβεβλημένος, does not establish that the final letter of γυμνὸ- is not a Sigma.

Best,

Ken

[Ken Olson]

This is our subject (to the right of the omicron).



I will leave a discussion of the subject character for another post.

Here is the subject character alongside other instances of iota after omicron.

oi.jpeg

Here are some examples of final sigma, which were mentioned above.

sigma.png

The subject character is an iota, not a sigma.

Peter,

I am not convinced of your conclusion that the subject character is an iota, not a sigma.

I think you should include the final sigma in ἔχοντος from page 2, line 16 among the comparanda.

Theodore 2.16 ἔχοντος.png (58.42 KiB) Viewed 793 times

I could be wrong, but the final letter in ἔχοντος (a sigma following an omicron) looks to me a great deal like the final letter of γυμνὸ- on page 3, line 13.

You can look at it for yourself in the better quality image of the second page I uploaded.

Best,

Ken

[Ken Olson]

Here is another image of the word in dispute, this one from the unreduced (338 MB) image file that Roger Viklund has now sent me.

Theodore III 18.png (231.15 KiB) Viewed 739 times

Best,

Ken

[Peter Kirby]

Thanks for sharing the additional images and asking questions on the subject of ligatures. I'm not able to comment on the ligature subject without further study. I'm okay with bracketing the ligature stuff and the accent stuff as beyond my paygrade currently and inconclusive, respectively.

I am not convinced of your conclusion that the subject character is an iota, not a sigma.

At this point, how would you summarize what can be said on the subject?

We seem to have relatively clear pictures and many other examples for comparison.

Do you think we really need to turn to considerations less objective than the visual evidence to identify this character?

[Ken Olson]

Thanks for sharing the additional images and asking questions on the subject of ligatures. I'm not able to comment on the ligature subject without further study. I'm okay with bracketing the ligature stuff and the accent stuff as beyond my paygrade currently and inconclusive, respectively.

I am not convinced of your conclusion that the subject character is an iota, not a sigma.

At this point, how would you summarize what can be said on the subject?

We seem to have relatively clear pictures and many other examples for comparison.

Do you think we really need to turn to considerations less objective than the visual evidence to identify this character?

Okay. I'll attempt to summarize.

1) Neither you nor I are experts in Greek paleography and I don't believe anyone else on the forum is either. It would be nice if we could get a paleographer to comment on the discussion so far and especially on how the scribe of the Letter to Theodore is using ligatures/abbreviations.

That said, there are a few logical issues we can look at: Does the occurrence of a ligature at the end of I 17 ἐκλεγόμενος, II 4 χρησάμενος and III 8 περιβεβλημένος in the letter establish the existence of a distinctive -νος ligature that the scribe would have used in γυμνὸς if the final letter were a sigma? It would be useful to have comparanda for such a ligature outside of the Letter to Theodore itself (indeed, if there are none, that would raise our suspicions). Morton Smith recognized an -ος ligature (Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark, 293) and he was able to read the three examples using the ligature correctly, though there were many other examples where -ος was written out and did not use the ligature. Was there a distinctive -νος ligature that Smith failed to recognize? There are considerations that tell against such a theory. Roger Viklund pointed out to me that for νεανίσκος in III 3, III 4 and III 8 the -ος is written with ligature while in Μάρκος on I 15 and I 19 it is not. This suggests to me that whether -ος is written in ligature or not is not governed by the letter that occurs immediately before it but by something else.

I would add an observation of my own concerning γυμνοῦ in III 8, which Tselikas read incorrectly as γυμνῷ though the final characters do not resemble the clear example of γυμνῷ in III 13. The example of γυμνοῦ shows a Nun followed by a ligature for Omicron Upsilon, but ἀποκρίνου on ΙΙ 14 does not use a ligature for -νου but writes out the letters. The use of three consecutive letters with a ligature in some cases does not establish that the same three letters will be written with the same ligature in other cases.

2) I agree that the visual information (by which I take it you mean the shape of the letters) from the images are probably the best basis we have for discussion of what the final letter of γυμνὸς/γυμνοὶ is (though again, I would welcome input from more experienced paleographers).

3) I agree that the placement of the accent in the case of γυμνὸς/γυμνοὶ is an inconclusive indicator, as we have the statement from Venetia Anastasapoulou's report that the accent is placed over the letter or to the right of the letter and have examples of both.

Best,

Ken

[RandyHelzerman]

FWIW my go-to greek guy (a greek historian I'm facebook friended with) says without reservation that the two words are γυμνοί γυμνώ

Yeah I know, random guy on the internet quoting random guy on the internet, discount accordingly.

[Ken Olson]

FWIW my go-to greek guy (a greek historian I'm facebook friended with) says without reservation that the two words are γυμνοί γυμνώ

Yeah I know, random guy on the internet quoting random guy on the internet, discount accordingly.

Yes, if you've found this person reliable in the past this might give you reason to trust his judgment. However, appeal to authority, especially anonymous authority, is not likely to persuade anyone else.

The problem is we have very few published works since Tselikas that consider the two possible readings. By that I mean scholars who publish under their own names their considered opinion along with a discussion of how the came to their conclusion (ligatures, comparanda, etc.). I would be very happy to consider such if they were available.

Best,

Ken

[Ken Olson]

This is Appendix A: Paleographical Peculiarities from Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark (Harvard, 1973) in which Smith lists the abbreviations and ligatures he found in the manuscript.

M. Smith - Clement of Alexandria - Paleographic Peculiarities p. 293.png (59.24 KiB) Viewed 571 times

I think that Smith is correct that there is a particular abbreviation for Omicron Sigma that is used in some, but not all, cases where those letters occur at the end of a word. To restate what I said in a previous post, the -ος abbreviation is found at the end of the words ἐκλεγόμενος, χρησάμενος, and περιβεβλημένος and νεανίσκος, but not at the end of of other words ending in -ος (including Μάρκος). I do not think Tselikas has enough data in the Letter to Theodore to prove there is a distinct -νος ligature different from Nun + the -ος abbreviation. At present, we cannot tell (or I cannot) why the scribe uses the -ος abbreviation in some cases for Omicron Sigma and not in others, but it does not appear to be determined by the letter immediately preceding the -ος abbreviation - Kappa Omicron Sigma sometimes has it and sometimes does not.

Best,

Ken

[RandyHelzerman]

I experimented around with some image processing/edge detection/contour detection algorithms. Results posted here w/o comment. I've selected 3 examples which Ken highlighted, an unambiguous final sigma, his defeaser example, our favorite gymnastic example, and finally another letter I believe to be an iota, but which looks as different as possible from all the rest that I could find

Edit: one of the transformed picture is just from a standard edge-detection algorithm, and the other the sobel transform. They are used by optical character recognition algorithms for detecting/recognizing the outlines and the skeletons of characters.

words.jpg is the entire word, letters.jpg is zoomed into the letters in question.

[RandyHelzerman]

Here is the entire 3rd page in the same two transforms, if anybody wants to cf with other instances of the letters. I can do all 3 pages if anybody is interested.