Nomina Sacra: Their Origin and Usefulness

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Peter Kirby
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Nomina Sacra: Their Origin and Usefulness

Post by Peter Kirby »

An interesting (and enlightening) post from James Snapp:

http://www.thetextofthegospels.com/2015 ... lness.html
Even before any New Testament books were composed, copyists of books of the Old Testament already treated the name of God with special reverence. In Hebrew, this name consists of four Hebrew letters, and for this reason is known as the Sacred Tetragrammaton. In some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, when the Sacred Tetragrammaton appears, it is written in its own distinct script; the copyists used ordinary lettering elsewhere but for the name of God, paleo-Hebrew letters were used. 11Q Psalms, a scroll of Psalms, has many examples of this.

The Sacred Tetragrammaton
The ancient custom of acknowledging the presence of the name of God without audibly pronouncing it persists in English Bibles to this day in translations in which the word “Lord” appears in small capital letters to represent the presence of the Sacred Tetragrammaton in the base-text. “Lord” in ordinary letters usually represents Adonai, a different Hebrew word.
In intertestamental times, the Old Testament was translated into Greek; the most popular Greek translation was known as the Septuagint. In the first half of the 200’s, the patristic writer Origen, in his Homily on Psalm 2, as he commented about the second verse, made this observation about some copies of the Septuagint: “In the most accurate manuscripts, the name [i.e., the name of God] occurs in Hebrew characters – not in modern-day Hebrew, but in the very ancient lettering.”
Very early in the transmission-history of the Gospels, Christian copyists developed four names to be treated in a manner congruent to the Judaic treatment of the Tetragrammaton; the first four Christian nomina sacra probably appeared as a group: ΚΣ , ΘΣ, ΙΣ, and ΧΣ. It was at this early stage that some Christian copyists (probably copyists who were already engaged in the production of copies of the Septuagint), modifying the practice of leaving space for the Tetragrammaton and adding it in a second copying-stage, left overlined space for these four words in the first copying-stage, and they were added during the proof-reading stage. Occasionally the proof-reader worked from memory and interchanged the names, or failed to insert a contraction in the space reserved for it.
The next words to become nomina sacra were Πατηρ, Υιος, and Πνευμα. Following this, the group of contracted words was expanded to include words that were components of titles of Christ – the Son of Man, the Son of David – or which were paralleled in the Gospels by a sacred name (as, frequently, Matthew refers to the kingdom of heaven where Mark refers to the kingdom of God). The contraction of Σωτηρ probably began at the same time, in the same way; it was considered a title of God and/or Christ.
The contractions of “Jerusalem” and “Israel” may have originated as ordinary abbreviations of names which obtained the same format as the nomina sacra to keep format-variations to a minimum. (The presence of the letters ι and η in these two nomina sacra may have had something to do with their adoption, too.) The contraction of μητηρ was a result of increased devotion to the Virgin Mary. This leaves the origin of one nomen sacrum unaccounted for: why would σταυρος be considered a word worth venerating?
The answer might have something to do with Greek numerals.
The nomina sacra are a significant part of a manuscript’s meta-text. In descriptions of a manuscript’s format and secondary features (such as chapter-titles, section-numbers, lectionary apparatus, decorations, etc.), its copyists’ treatment of the nomina sacra should also be noted. Unusual treatments of the nomina sacra shared by manuscripts may indicate a link between them.

In addition, if the theory that some early copyists added the nomina sacra at a secondary copying-stage can be maintained, then some special considerations should come into play in the evaluation of variant-units that involve nomina sacra:
(1) Even a text that is otherwise excellent may not be reliable where nomina sacra are involved; during the proof-reading stage of an ancestor-manuscript, when the nomina sacra were added, the proof-reader might have relied on his memory to a greater degree than the copyist relied on his exemplar. (For example, Codices B and À, in the hands of their initial copyists, both read Ις Χς in Matthew 16:21.)
(2) Evidence of secondary-stage insertion of nomina sacra, either in the production of an extant manuscript or in the production of a manuscript’s ancestor, might be detected via the detection of nomina sacra which are uniquely out-of-place. (For example, ΚΩ where the text should be ΚΥ in Matthew 21:42 in À, and ΠΝΚΟΣ in First Corinthians 15:47 and ΧΡΥ in Ephesians 5:17 in P46.)
(3) Evidence of secondary-stage insertion of nomina sacra, either in the production of an extant manuscript or in the production of a manuscript’s ancestor, might also be detected via the detection of the loss of otherwise secure nomina sacra; the explanation being that a copyist, in the secondary copying-stage, simply failed to notice the overlined blank space. (See, for example, the loss and subsequent insertion of Κε in À in John 13:6 and 13:9.)
(4) The text, as read with nomina sacra, must be considered when evaluating rival variants. Sometimes a nomen sacrum could elicit a parableptic error which would not be elicited without the contraction. For this reason, publishers of Greek texts for textual critics ought to consider printing the nomina sacra in the text and in the apparatus.
(5) In a close contest between ancient rival variants which both (or all) consist of nomina sacra, when a form of Κυ is one of the readings, it should be preferred, on the grounds that it is the less specific reading.
(6) Inconsistencies in a copyist’s contraction or non-contraction of nomina sacra are sometimes opaquely arbitrary; something, though, they may indicate how the copyist, or the copyist of his exemplar or ancestor-copy, interpreted the text. Similarly, anomalous treatments of nomina sacra may alert researchers to other anomalies. (The non-contraction of Ιησουν in Mark 16:6 in À, for example, is part of the copyist’s attempt to stretch the text into the following column.)
(7) In passages where several nomina sacra occur in close proximity, a contraction could be lost if the overlines were not neatly separated, as the proof-reader, encountering what appeared to be one overline, casually assumed that one overline implied that one name should be inserted.
(8) If an overline and blank space were longer than necessary, the proof-reader might assume that two nomina sacra were called for. This, rather than a natural tendency for embellishment, may have contributed to expansions from one name to two names.
Image
Nomina sacra were used not only in Scriptures,
but also in inscriptions such as this one, from
a mosaic in Megiddo which was part of
the floor of a building used for
Christian gatherings in the late 200's:
“Akeptous, she who loves God,
has offered the table to God Jesus Christ
as a memorial.”
Oh hush, James. Everyone knows the real explanation is, "Constantine did it." :lol:

No surprise, of course, but nomina sacra are also found in the Dura Parchment 24 ('the crucified', Jesus, and God, respectively).

It looks like this piece of paper is not done haunting LC. ;)

Image

You can also find it (applied to the word God) in an early fourth century letter from a Christian sent during the Great Persecution (probably from Alexandria).

Image

http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... 140#p30627
(3) The problem of a satisfactory theory of the universal use of the orthodox "nomina sacra" by heretics.

Why did the heretical authors consistently used the orthodox nomina sacra? The alternative theory offers the
explanation that Constantine, as the rightful Pontifex Maximus, had the right to nominate and patronise the god of his
choice. Constantine's god was an encrypted name in a sacred codex. The heretics were responding to the emperor's agenda
and they used his explicit literary forms for these sacred name. The universal use is explained on account of the small
time frame of a decade or so, rather than two or more centuries required under the mainstream theory. The longer the
timeframe, the lesser is the possibility of universal consistency.
http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... 519#p30507
As such we only need a very small timeframe to generate a mass of diverse literature related to the SACRED CODEX manufactured by Constantine. This small timeframe elegantly explains the history of the use of the nomina sacra in the non canonical literature, and its almost universal consistency. The one generation which wrote and produced the "Christian gnostic literature" simply copied the nomina sacra convention employed in Constantine's Bible (think Vaticanus, Sinaticus, Alexandrinus).
Nonsense.

Naturally, "There Is No Evidence" of which Leucius Charinus is aware that contradicts his ideas. He doesn't look very hard, and, then, if someone points it out, he tries very hard to work around it.
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Stephan Huller
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Re: Nomina Sacra: Their Origin and Usefulness

Post by Stephan Huller »

Let's start with the origin of these things =

1. 'something Jewish' agreed place to start?
2. that they go back to the use of 'paleo-Hebrew' within a text that was not written in 'paleo-Hebrew' letters in the Qumran literature, an agreed source for the phenomenon?
3. that its use (i.e. the use of special letters) denote 'something special' about the name, an agreed definition?
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Re: Nomina Sacra: Their Origin and Usefulness

Post by slevin »

Thank you, Peter, for the link to James Snapp's interesting article. Fascinating stuff..

two small, (microscopic) points of contention: 1.
In Hebrew, this name consists of four Hebrew letters, and for this reason is known as the Sacred Tetragrammaton. In some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, when the Sacred Tetragrammaton appears, it is written in its own distinct script; the copyists used ordinary lettering elsewhere but for the name of God, paleo-Hebrew letters were used. 11Q Psalms, a scroll of Psalms, has many examples of this.
Snapp is discussing YHWH, and the significance of its appearance, in conventional written form, as opposed to the notion, often encountered in the lay press, that ancient Jews were afraid to say the name of god: YHWH. I guess that Snapp, were he present on the forum, would argue that "adonai", aka "Lord" in English, was the typical word spoken, not YHWH, to designate god's name, by the Jews themselves, in those days. I don't know, of course, but I reckon that this idea came later, not at the time of DSS--after gospels and other nt docs.

2.
so far as I am aware, (i.e. probably wrong), the ancient scribes, for DSS, placed little dots above a word, like YHWH, for example, to signal something that could be contentious.... Perhaps the little dots triggered the notion of "nomina sacra", which are not exclusively used for "sacred" people or places!!
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Re: Nomina Sacra: Their Origin and Usefulness

Post by Stephan Huller »

Contentious is the wrong word. 'Special' is better.
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Re: Nomina Sacra: Their Origin and Usefulness

Post by Stephan Huller »

The closest parallel in the DSS (the Damascus Document or whatever it is called today) has that thing - do not swear by AD(onai) or EL(ohim). The idea however that the nomina sacra were originally first and last letter IesouS is a bridge too far for me. I have always argued for IS(u) and that the orthodox corrupted the original development from the Jewish tradition.
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Re: Nomina Sacra: Their Origin and Usefulness

Post by Stephan Huller »

The Epistle to Barnabas's explanation for the 318 in the Eleazar story with Abraham (borrowed in part by Clement) is not the original explanation. Something else lurks here in the waters and is related to the original nomen sacrum. https://books.google.com/books?id=ZR-5A ... 18&f=false
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Re: Nomina Sacra: Their Origin and Usefulness

Post by Stephan Huller »

Actually I've been thinking about it and I don't think this originally had anything to do with Jesus or any god. I wonder if שיח originally denoted some sort of demonic power which Abraham controlled like a golem. Look at 2:5 and the use of sadeh there beside it. Everyone in antiquity read the same three letters in Ecclesiastes chapter 2 as denoting Solomon had control of demons (shidah and shiddoth). The story makes its way into early Christian literature (see the Testimony of Truth from Nag Hammadi) and 'Bethsaida' as a reference to the temple I think reflects this tradition. The idea that Abraham controlled 'Jesus' and led him around to defeat hostile kings couldn't possibly have been an actual Christian belief in the early period. Too bizarre. Therefore I suspect the 318 is a red herring. It has nothing to do with the origins of the nomina sacra despite the evidence of Barnabas and Clement. The original understanding was that god established the שיח on earth and Abraham and Moses being master magicians managed to control demons and powers of various kinds.
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Re: Nomina Sacra: Their Origin and Usefulness

Post by Leucius Charinus »

Stephan Huller wrote:The Epistle to Barnabas's explanation for the 318 in the Eleazar story with Abraham (borrowed in part by Clement) is not the original explanation.
Besides the 318 significance, what are the numerical values of the other dozen (or so) nomina sacra and do they have any significance?


LC
Last edited by Leucius Charinus on Mon Mar 23, 2015 5:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Nomina Sacra: Their Origin and Usefulness

Post by Leucius Charinus »

AFAIK there is no theory of the origin of the nomina sacra that has any consensus. The hypothesis that the authors of the canonical books all shared a list of nomina sacra codes before they wrote is a little outrageous. Especially if the span of authorship of the canonical books exceeds a century Alternatively there is the hypothesis that the ns were introduced to the collection of canonical texts by a later editor. This makes more sense, but there are some obvious questions:

1) Who was this editor? (Marcion? Clement? Ignatius? Polycarp? Not Papias.)
2) When did the standard application of the ns take place? (What is the earliest date; 100-150 CE? What is the latest date: 250 CE via Dura Fragment 24?)
3) How did this editor acquire the authority to impose an almost universal consistency of use?

Alternatively ...

4) Suppose "Paul" was the first to write any canonical text. Are all the 12+ nomina sacra found in the Pauline writings? And if so is it possible that "Paul" invented the ns and that these "Pauline ns" were subsequently used by later authors of the canonical texts?


Does anyone have any answers for these questions?



LC
A "cobbler of fables" [Augustine]; "Leucius is the disciple of the devil" [Decretum Gelasianum]; and his books "should be utterly swept away and burned" [Pope Leo I]; they are the "source and mother of all heresy" [Photius]
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Re: Nomina Sacra: Their Origin and Usefulness

Post by Peter Kirby »

Leucius Charinus wrote:Marcion? Clement? Ignatius? Polycarp? Not Papias.
Sorry, but I chuckled a bit here. Why all of the others but "not Papias"? Poor Papias, never picked for the team... ;)
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