The Presence (and Absence) of Nomina Sacra in To Theodore

[Secret Alias]

Mystery will be solved soon. There's a Greek shorthand text with to Theodore on it somewhere.

[Secret Alias]

This is my updated solution to the problem of the Letter to Theodore.

1. a Greek living in the 18th century came across a document written in a script like this:



2. where the deciphered Greek uses κου (with overbar) = Κυρίου



3. he was amazed at what he read (a lost letter of Clement!) and grabbed the nearest paper at hand to copy it out:



4. and so we ended up with this:



Although right-side up.

Everyone has been looking for an original MS that looks like this:



But we should have been looking for a manuscript with κου or like this:



We should expect that at the Mar Saba monastery c. 1750 - 1800 CE there was an MS with THIS SORT OF WRITING preserving the Letter to Theodore from which our surviving copying is derived. It's all in the κου.

[Secret Alias]

From Agamemnon Tselikas

"Tετοια γραφή στο Πατριαρχείο δεν υπάρχει. Τέτοια γραφή είναι ελληνική Κατωιταλική"

"Such writing does not exist at the Patriarchate; this writing is called Greek from Southern Italy"

[Secret Alias]

It would seem that the handwriting style and its use of κος go back together to Italo-Greek. I've seen in every study of this style of writing that the documents are connected with Greek communities that still exist in Italy. Indeed there are Greek monasteries in Italy such as the Exarchic Greek Monastery of Santa Maria di Grottaferrata https://www.google.com/maps/place/Exarc ... 12.6667499.

[Secret Alias]

For those interested here are high resolution images of that Greek short hand in Vat Gr 1809 (I think it starts on p. 257) https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.gr.1809

[Secret Alias]

I just noticed this in an 1828 book by Bloomfield

Fourthly , it may easily be shown how the readings θεού , θεού και Κυρίου , and Χριστού , OeoŨ might creep in , since the words Ocòs , Kúplos , and Χριστός , were written θΟΣ , ΚΟΣ , ΧΟΣ , ΘΟΥ , ΧΟΥ , and then Κυρίου might accidentally pass into θεού , or be changed into it by the orthodox . The reading XplotoŨ seems an interpretation of Κυρίου.

Bloomfield is citing Christian Gottlieb Kühnöl here

Facile ostendi potest , quomodo lectiones Θεού , Θεού και Κυρίου et Χριστού extiterint . Lectio Θεού irrepere potuit , cum voces Θεός , Κύριος , Χριστός per compendium scriberentur ΘΟΣ , ΚΟΣ , ΧΟΣ , ΘΟΥ , ΚΟΥ , XΟΥ , potuit ab aliis Kupiov mutari in usitatius ab orthodoxis in aliis libris reponi Θεού. https://books.google.com/books?id=yCVwR ... el&f=false

So there appears to be a period where these forms were used θΟΣ , ΚΟΣ , ΧΟΣ , ΘΟΥ , ΧΟΥ and a confusion arose explaining the variant in Acts 20.

Funny how not a single scholar I contacted had ever seen a manuscript with these nomina sacra. Could someone please tell me what period is he speaking about?

[Secret Alias]

My professor friend and his associate (someone he recommended I contact about the origins of the modern abbreviation ΚΟΣ) argued that the use of ΚΟΣ in to Theodore is strictly ancient. One, they say, had nothing to do with the other. Geoffrey Smith implored me to investigate the possibility that ΚΟΣ was ancient. He's the one who cited Paap's one reference to the nomen sacrum in the Shepherd of Hermas. Then I came across the 11th century Vat Gr 1809 manuscript with repeated references to θΟΣ, ΚΟΣ, ΧΟΣ etc.

Hmmmm.

Kühnöl is clearly trying to make sense of what he sees as a switch from κυρίου to Θεού in the Vatican MS of Acts.

The Vatican MS . , indeed , exhibits Θεού , but that is manifestly an alteration from the genuine κυρίου ; since in the reading του αίματος του ιδίου infra , this MS . agrees with some others , with which it also does on ...

The facts are that Kühnöl wrote before the Greek shorthand script was deciphered by Gitlbauer. So he can't be thinking about that text. Moreover his arguments suppose that Origen had the right reading of Paul which was later 'falsified' according to the confusion over θΟΣ, ΚΟΣ, ΧΟΣ. But why is it so important to have THESE PARTICULAR FORMS rather than θΣ, ΚΣ, ΧΣ? Why does he suppose an error arose because of the addition of the omicron? I am not following the argument at all.

NOTE: in Vat Gr 1809 there is not only ΚΟΥ, ΘΟΥ, ΧΟΥ but also ΙΟΥ. ιου is known as one of the many variants of the tetragrammaton ; L . Blau , Altjüdische Zauberwesen ( Berlin , 1914 ) , 134 , note 3. Strangely the nominative abbreviation of 'Jesus' is ΙΣ in Vat Gr 1809 (see p. 48). Curious ... This solves one of spin's objection to my theories about ΙΣ. Could this have been an older system that the familiar one i.e. ΙΣ, ΙΟΥ etc. Given the pattern in the text (i.e. ΘΩ, ΧΩ) I also expect ΙΩ which strangely does appear in Irenaeus and Tertullian (i.e. 'ΙΩ, ΙΩ, ΦΩ, ΦΩ')

[Secret Alias]

θΟΣ Sinaiticus corrector cc https://books.google.com/books?id=0Mg4A ... A3&f=false

[Secret Alias]

As my last act of the holiday search for evidence my secretary (who is from Brescia) requested samples of seventeenth century manuscripts given the appearance of a system of abbreviation/nomen sacrum = first letter of noun + declension (ος ε ον ους ου ων ῶν ῳ) in Italo Greek manuscripts (which match what appears in to Theodore).

A Chi di Competenza,

Mi chiamo XXXXXXXXXXXX e Vi sto scrivendo dagli Stati Uniti per conto del Sig. Stephan Huller: sono io a scriverVi, poiche' il Sig. Huller non parla Italiano.

Il Sig. Huller sta scrivendo un documento accademico su un manoscritto che crede sia stato scritto da un autore greco in Italia nel diciasettesimo secolo, e vorrebbe cortesemente chiederVi alcune informazioni, poiche' sta cercando di risalire alla calligrafia di questo autore, per arrivare a capire chi sia.

Il Sig. Huller, sapendo che avete dei manoscritti greci nella vostra biblioteca, vorrebbe sapere quanti di questi sono del dicassettesimo o diciottesimo secolo. Vorrebbe sapere se e' possibile avere accesso a tali manoscritti (greci) o anche a semplici note scritte a mano (per esempio su un foglio bianco di un libro......), se doveste averne.

Inoltre vorrebbe sapere se gli potete indcare altre biblitoeche di monasteri in Italia, che possano evere documenti simili scritti a mano, che lui possa contattare.

Se riuscisse a trovare questi documenti, lo aiuterebbero moltissimo a risalire alla calligrafia dell'autore del manoscritto che sta studiando - e per cui all'autore stesso.

Vi ringraziamo in anticipo e vi mandiamo i nostri piu' cordiali saluti.

[Secret Alias]

The latest email from another expert

in the 17th century Italo-Greeks were mostly extinguished, culturally speaking, and the few remaining in rural southern Italy were mostly illiterate. Moreover, the hand doesn't exhibit any of the typical signs of a western person trying to write in Greek: whoever copied this text used the greek alphabet with the confidence of a native speaker.

Do you ever notice a pattern that I'm always wrong? My scholarly investigations are a lot like my marriage. Although they might be more like my single life: always hopeful but ultimately getting nowhere.