MrMacSon wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2020 6:17 pm
Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2020 5:08 pmI established that, in Christian manuscripts (Greek ones, whether of the Old or of the New Testament), the names both of
[ Ἰησοῦς/Iēsous [Jesus]
] the Christian savior and of
Joshua Yeshua /Ἰησοῦς [Iēsous] the Hebrew hero were often rendered as
nomina sacra.
Cheers. So, it would be the use of Greek that has given rise to the use of nomina sacra?
- and the [use of the] Coptic that has given rise to the superlinear/s ??
Well, the origins of the
nomina sacra are debated. But they are practically ubiquitous throughout the Greek manuscripts of sacred or semi-sacred texts. I do not think that the Coptic, Latin, and other translations retained as many
nomina sacra as the Greek has; for example, Coptic Thomas, IIUC, has only two: Jesus and Spirit, whereas the Greek fragments of Thomas have the four I mentioned earlier: Jesus, God, Man, Father (there is no opportunity for Spirit in the fragments). So, where the Greek has a
nomen sacrum for God, Man, or Father, the Coptic just uses the full Coptic translation for that word (this is all from Michael W. Grondin).
Coptic, as I understand it, uses supralinear strokes for grammatical and/or orthographic purposes, and I do not know what purpose, if any, would apply in the case of IS/IHS, since I do not know Coptic. No supralinear strokes exist in normal Greek for such purposes; rather, they serve, in the case of the
nomina sacra, as a signal that the word has been abbreviated. Oh, and in the Byzantine era, I think, they also signaled a Greek letter being used as a numeral (since Arabic numerals had yet to be adopted and Roman numerals were a pain), but this usage is easily distinguished.
OK. Good question/s. One/s I'm not sure I'm qualified to answer, but one/s I'd like to explore (and maybe eventually be able to answer or at least provide commentary about or for).
To start that discussion: more questions (somewhat rhetorically, of course) -
How much of the interchangeability of those words that came to be represented by nomina sacra - God, Lord, (LORD?), Father, Saviour, Man, and Ἰησοῦς [Iēsous] - might derive from Second Temple Judaism and how much subsequently, ie. after the Fall of the Temple or in the so-called Inter-Testamentary Period?? I have always been struck by the interchangeability of words for entities or characters in each of the chapters of the book of Zechariah: in the same chapter the entity who appeared in a dream of vision and is said to speak to/with Zechariah is said to be, for example: a man, an angel and Lord, (+/- other terms)
I am not completely sure what you are asking here, and we do not see any
nomina sacra in any manuscripts until verifiably "Christian" manuscripts start to appear, so this would be a century or more after the fall of Jerusalem in 70. The practice may have existed earlier, but we do not have the manuscripts, so we cannot say for certain.
It may help just to list the
nomina sacra outright. I am consulting Metzger and Hurtado here. The four which are found well nigh universally in the Greek manuscripts are Lord, God, Jesus, and Christ. The rest, still very common, are Son, Spirit, David, Cross, Mother, Father, Israel, Savior, Man, Jerusalem, and Heaven, for a total of 15. Of these, Mother (for the Virgin Mary) is attested the latest (not until century IV; the rest are century III or earlier). There are quirky manuscripts which will abbreviate other words, like Moses, as well, but the above list is supposed to consist of the most common ones.
How sure can we be Ἰησοῦς [Iēsous] (or any other entity eg. G_d, Lord, Saviour, Man) is represented or meant by some of the nomina sacra in some of these texts?
Extremely likely. I mean, the counterargument would have to be divinely inspired or something. First, the
nomina sacra fluctuate by case ending, meaning that we can see what those case endings are, and thus which declension each noun belongs to. Second, they exist in quotations of or allusions to the Hebrew scriptures where we can see exactly which word is being translated and simultaneously abbreviated, because the Hebrew does not use them and thus writes out each word in full. Third, while the
nomina sacra are very common, they are not quite universal, meaning that sometimes the full word is left in the text instead. Fourth, as mentioned above, the various translations of the Greek NT texts do not retain them all the time, meaning that we can see which Coptic, Latin, Syriac, Ethiopic, Slavonic, or Armenian words are translating those Greek abbreviations. Fifth, context can often tell us which word is intended, especially since the abbreviations are just that: abbreviations, so their spelling and composition are not random. Sixth, there were two main ways of abbreviating the words: suspension (whereby Jesus would become Je) and contraction (whereby Jesus would become Js). Comparing words using different abbreviation techniques at particular spots in different manuscripts give us more letters for the word than just one abbreviation would give us. Seventh, just like cracking a code, you can tell you have a sequence cracked when you can insert the replacement into the original code meaningfully in all the other contexts in which it appears (in other words, once you guess that Jm might be Jerusalem, just plug Jerusalem into all the other spots in all the manuscripts where Jm appears and see if the sentences still make sense); the
nomina sacra, however, would have to be regarded as the world's easiest code of all time to crack, since they are truly hiding nothing from us. Eighth, Christian authors sometimes write about the words themselves in ways that betray exactly which Greek word they have in mind, regardless of how it is abbreviated. Ninth, they are generally marked with an overstroke, so there is no mistaking them for shorter, unabbreviated words (which many/most of them cannot be anyway, phonetically speaking). Tenth, so much ink has been spilled on the matter from scholars who disagree with each other strenuously on what the
nomina sacra mean in an overall sense that it would be incredible that something as obvious as "Jm with an overstroke does not mean Jerusalem after all" were to prove to be the case. Nothing is impossible, but such a thing would be remarkable.
Can we say Ἰησοῦς [Iēsous/Jesus] - or God, Lord, Saviour, Man, etc., - is more likely in some texts than others?
I would have to see the text and context. If it is a short nonword with a line over it, and if it matches perfectly one of the
nomina sacra listed above both in form and in apparent or possible contextual meaning, and if it occurs in a text which is at least similar to other texts in which the
nomina sacra have been found, then I would want to see a magnificent argument against the easiest conclusion to reach from such a convergence of evidence.
