Nomina non sacra

[mbuckley3]

As a diversion, and as it touches on two staples of this forum, nomina sacra and Secret Mark, I offer an outline of a paper I came across. It is a cautionary tale of what can happen when a scholar strays beyond their area of core competence.

Ilaria Ramelli is a decent and prolific patristics scholar, with some interesting ideas. If you wanted to assess Gregory of Nyssa as an interpreter of Origen, she is someone worth engaging with. But in 2010, she published an outlier article, 'A New Reading of One of the Earliest Christian Letters Outside the New Testament and the Dangers of Early Christian Communities in Egypt'.

P.Oxy. XLII.3057, a letter from Ammonios to Apollonios, was first published in 1974. It was palaeographically dated to the end of the C1 or beginning of the C2 (1). The original editor floated the idea that the author was a Christian, but dismissed this due to his early dating of the papyrus. Subsequent discussion argued against any specifically Christian vocabulary.

Ramelli's innovation was to look at the actual document. She notes that in the initial greeting, ΧΑΙΡΕΙΝ (written out in full), there is a superlinear horizontal stroke over the Χ(2). Reflexively, she dives straight in : "[this] is probably the sign of a nomen sacrum, that of Christ." Ammonios refers to an ΚΕΧΙΑΣΜΕΝΗΝ ΕΠΙΣΤΟΛΗΝ he has received, which she translates as a 'letter marked with the Χ sign', and infers from this the use of a secret code among Christians utilising nomina sacra.

Having cracked the code, she is free to interpret the contents of the letter, almost allegorically. Vague injunctions along the lines of keeping your head down and not causing a fuss, are transformed into evidence of anti-Christian persecution. This is contextualised with an unproblematised sketch of C1/C2 'persecutions', and similarly naive dating of texts : 1 Clement is "a contemporary document", the Pastorals "are contemporary with Ammonius's letter, and..respond to the same concerns". Even more naively, her last eight pages include a full translation of the Letter to Theodore as the main evidence for "the notion of secrecy and cryptic communication" being central to the thought of Clement of Alexandria; which I presume is meant to support her interpretation by back-projection, secret codes being endemic to Alexandrian Christianity(3).

It's a bizarre confection, all based on the eye of faith seeing a nomen sacrum.


■■■■■


(1) FWIW, Brent Nongbri, the scourge of early dating of Christian papyri, agrees with this dating

(2) So Ramelli; actually, the line extends to the tip of the Α

(3) There is no internal evidence that Ammonios and Apollonios had any connection to Alexandria

[mlinssen]

As a diversion, and as it touches on two staples of this forum, nomina sacra and Secret Mark, I offer an outline of a paper I came across. It is a cautionary tale of what can happen when a scholar strays beyond their area of core competence.

Ilaria Ramelli is a decent and prolific patristics scholar, with some interesting ideas. If you wanted to assess Gregory of Nyssa as an interpreter of Origen, she is someone worth engaging with. But in 2010, she published an outlier article, 'A New Reading of One of the Earliest Christian Letters Outside the New Testament and the Dangers of Early Christian Communities in Egypt'.

P.Oxy. XLII.3057, a letter from Ammonios to Apollonios, was first published in 1974. It was palaeographically dated to the end of the C1 or beginning of the C2 (1). The original editor floated the idea that the author was a Christian, but dismissed this due to his early dating of the papyrus. Subsequent discussion argued against any specifically Christian vocabulary.

Ramelli's innovation was to look at the actual document. She notes that in the initial greeting, ΧΑΙΡΕΙΝ (written out in full), there is a superlinear horizontal stroke over the Χ(2). Reflexively, she dives straight in : "[this] is probably the sign of a nomen sacrum, that of Christ." Ammonios refers to an ΚΕΧΙΑΣΜΕΝΗΝ ΕΠΙΣΤΟΛΗΝ he has received, which she translates as a 'letter marked with the Χ sign', and infers from this the use of a secret code among Christians utilising nomina sacra.

Having cracked the code, she is free to interpret the contents of the letter, almost allegorically. Vague injunctions along the lines of keeping your head down and not causing a fuss, are transformed into evidence of anti-Christian persecution. This is contextualised with an unproblematised sketch of C1/C2 'persecutions', and similarly naive dating of texts : 1 Clement is "a contemporary document", the Pastorals "are contemporary with Ammonius's letter, and..respond to the same concerns". Even more naively, her last eight pages include a full translation of the Letter to Theodore as the main evidence for "the notion of secrecy and cryptic communication" being central to the thought of Clement of Alexandria; which I presume is meant to support her interpretation by back-projection, secret codes being endemic to Alexandrian Christianity(3).

It's a bizarre confection, all based on the eye of faith seeing a nomen sacrum.


■■■■■


(1) FWIW, Brent Nongbri, the scourge of early dating of Christian papyri, agrees with this dating

(2) So Ramelli; actually, the line extends to the tip of the Α

(3) There is no internal evidence that Ammonios and Apollonios had any connection to Alexandria

A pretty picture to go along with it: http://163.1.169.40/gsdl/collect/POxy/i ... .hires.jpg

Screenshot_20230306_222741_Chrome~2.jpg (278.04 KiB) Viewed 238 times

Most definitely not Christian or Chrestian, it is pristine - as in devoid of any of the usual scribal signs. It's not scriptio continua either, which could indicate earliness indeed, and I still have to figure out how that change came about

The alleged superlinear over the X is intriguing, though. Fun

[lclapshaw]

As a diversion, and as it touches on two staples of this forum, nomina sacra and Secret Mark, I offer an outline of a paper I came across. It is a cautionary tale of what can happen when a scholar strays beyond their area of core competence.

Ilaria Ramelli is a decent and prolific patristics scholar, with some interesting ideas. If you wanted to assess Gregory of Nyssa as an interpreter of Origen, she is someone worth engaging with. But in 2010, she published an outlier article, 'A New Reading of One of the Earliest Christian Letters Outside the New Testament and the Dangers of Early Christian Communities in Egypt'.

P.Oxy. XLII.3057, a letter from Ammonios to Apollonios, was first published in 1974. It was palaeographically dated to the end of the C1 or beginning of the C2 (1). The original editor floated the idea that the author was a Christian, but dismissed this due to his early dating of the papyrus. Subsequent discussion argued against any specifically Christian vocabulary.

Ramelli's innovation was to look at the actual document. She notes that in the initial greeting, ΧΑΙΡΕΙΝ (written out in full), there is a superlinear horizontal stroke over the Χ(2). Reflexively, she dives straight in : "[this] is probably the sign of a nomen sacrum, that of Christ." Ammonios refers to an ΚΕΧΙΑΣΜΕΝΗΝ ΕΠΙΣΤΟΛΗΝ he has received, which she translates as a 'letter marked with the Χ sign', and infers from this the use of a secret code among Christians utilising nomina sacra.

Having cracked the code, she is free to interpret the contents of the letter, almost allegorically. Vague injunctions along the lines of keeping your head down and not causing a fuss, are transformed into evidence of anti-Christian persecution. This is contextualised with an unproblematised sketch of C1/C2 'persecutions', and similarly naive dating of texts : 1 Clement is "a contemporary document", the Pastorals "are contemporary with Ammonius's letter, and..respond to the same concerns". Even more naively, her last eight pages include a full translation of the Letter to Theodore as the main evidence for "the notion of secrecy and cryptic communication" being central to the thought of Clement of Alexandria; which I presume is meant to support her interpretation by back-projection, secret codes being endemic to Alexandrian Christianity(3).

It's a bizarre confection, all based on the eye of faith seeing a nomen sacrum.


■■■■■


(1) FWIW, Brent Nongbri, the scourge of early dating of Christian papyri, agrees with this dating

(2) So Ramelli; actually, the line extends to the tip of the Α

(3) There is no internal evidence that Ammonios and Apollonios had any connection to Alexandria

A pretty picture to go along with it: http://163.1.169.40/gsdl/collect/POxy/i ... .hires.jpg

Screenshot_20230306_222741_Chrome~2.jpg

Most definitely not Christian or Chrestian, it is pristine - as in devoid of any of the usual scribal signs. It's not scriptio continua either, which could indicate earliness indeed, and I still have to figure out how that change came about

The alleged superlinear over the X is intriguing, though. Fun

No overlined nu either.

[mlinssen]

Add the Apocryphon of John to the list Lane.
Several names of the crazy sub creations have full superlinears

Do also note, in general, partial superlinears, as for instance in Thomas for IHS and PNA

Do also note that only 3 of the 14 stirograms in the NHL have a superlinear at all, partial or not



And do also observe how these have ornaments, the little balls on the sides of the Ti, how they are all very neat, well exercised, and uniform - whereas the 10 Christian ones are all dissimilar, untidy, while all fully covered with superlinears.
All the links to all of these can naturally be found; they're in the commentary, logion 55

[lclapshaw]

Those blobs at the ends of the staurogram are interesting.

It's assumed that the staurogram represents tau ro but what if that is not the case? Something to study here me thinks.

[mlinssen]

Those blobs at the ends of the staurogram are interesting.

It's assumed that the staurogram represents tau ro but what if that is not the case? Something to study here me thinks.

I am well aware of the oceans of typos that I make, but these are s-Ti-Rho-grams, not staurograms

https://www.academia.edu/49455506/How_t ... stirhogram

I've transferred some Coptic Ti from adjacent leaves to one where the stirogram sits:

Screenshot_20230310_233402_ReadEra Premium~2.jpg (279.77 KiB) Viewed 143 times

It is evidently a stirogram to the Copts, yet the Greek didn't recognise it as such and turned it into a staurogram because they had only a Tau.
Do observe how all the Greek ones have no spacing between the top loop and the horizontal bar, and struggle with planning both. The Coptic ones? Splendidly uniform

Does that have incredible repercussions for its original meaning?
Yes.
Does that matter for its application in the NT?
No

But yes, it wasn't a staurogram

[lclapshaw]

Those blobs at the ends of the staurogram are interesting.

It's assumed that the staurogram represents tau rho but what if that is not the case? Something to study here me thinks.

I am well aware of the oceans of typos that I make, but these are s-Ti-Rho-grams, not staurograms

Right on, and I am looking at your paper, but concerning staurograms, something just doesn't make sense to me. Take Ϲ⳨ΟC for instance, isn't the omicron redundant here? If ⳨ stands for tau + rho then the omicron (Ο) isn't needed is it? What you end up with is STAUROOC not STAUROC. Ϲ⳨C would be much more elegant don't you think? Or better yet ⳧ with the sigmas on each side being the "blobs" of the crossbar.

Any thoughts on this?

Fun contribution btw mbuckley3.

[MrMacSon]

... but concerning staurograms, something just doesn't make sense to me. Take Ϲ⳨ΟC for instance, isn't the omicron redundant here? If ⳨ stands for tau + rho then the omicron (Ο) isn't needed is it? What you end up with is STAUROOC not STAUROC. Ϲ⳨C would be much more elegant don't you think? Or better yet ⳧ with the sigmas on each side being the "blobs" of the crossbar.

Not sure about that ie. someone may have felt the need for -OC (as a suffix or the like)

[mlinssen]

Those blobs at the ends of the staurogram are interesting.

It's assumed that the staurogram represents tau rho but what if that is not the case? Something to study here me thinks.

I am well aware of the oceans of typos that I make, but these are s-Ti-Rho-grams, not staurograms

Right on, and I am looking at your paper, but concerning staurograms, something just doesn't make sense to me. Take Ϲ⳨ΟC for instance, isn't the omicron redundant here? If ⳨ stands for tau + rho then the omicron (Ο) isn't needed is it? What you end up with is STAUROOC not STAUROC. Ϲ⳨C would be much more elegant don't you think? Or better yet ⳧ with the sigmas on each side being the "blobs" of the crossbar.

Any thoughts on this?

Fun contribution btw mbuckley3.

Great point Lane, never thought about that. Yes, for both ligatures it would be superfluous

Question now is, what would it do in Coptic? Dunno ...

One other thing: perhaps you have heard of the SATOR square, yet another mystery - and one with greatly similar letters.
All I could make of Ϲ⳨ΟC is Stirros, 'stiff'. Still in line with my initial idea of Satyros, satyr. Think of the god Min and Pan, the abundance of statues of them, and an erect penis really is a very good thing to have under almost all circumstances, especially in Egypt

"In my manner" as it says in Thomas, ⲧⲁϩⲉ, is the exact same word for 'drunk'. I won't go there, but you know the effect...

I still think Satyros was a better gamble, but:

Min (Egyptian mnw[1]) is an ancient Egyptian god whose cult originated in the predynastic period (4th millennium BCE).[2] He was represented in many different forms, but was most often represented in male human form, shown with an erect penis which he holds in his right hand and an upheld left arm holding a flail.

Then I think of logion 62:

62. said IS : I say [dop] my(PL) Mystery to they-who be-worthy of my(PL) Mystery he-who your(F.SG) right-hand will make-be he there-is-not to-cause your(F.SG) left-hand understand : [dop] she/r make-be them

Your right hand makes them - Min, what is he holding in his right hand?
Trouble with the damn deities in Egypt is that there are so many of them, with such great overlap, that any of them will function the way a horoscope does: always a tempting bit of truth in it

Ah well. Fine point Lane, I'll ponder it - yet you can ascertain in the Commentary that I've gone over the 163k words of the LSJ already :/

[lclapshaw]

... but concerning staurograms, something just doesn't make sense to me. Take Ϲ⳨ΟC for instance, isn't the omicron redundant here? If ⳨ stands for tau + rho then the omicron (Ο) isn't needed is it? What you end up with is STAUROOC not STAUROC. Ϲ⳨C would be much more elegant don't you think? Or better yet ⳧ with the sigmas on each side being the "blobs" of the crossbar.

Not sure about that ie. someone may have felt the need for -OC (as a suffix or the like)

Fair enough, but why be consistent with it?