And you can see on the Michigan U site what the religious want to make-believe:
- Screenshot_20210509-081903_Chrome_1.jpg (338.88 KiB) Viewed 2096 times
The superlinear strokes don't cover the entire word, but that most certainly doesn't prevent them from transcribing those as such.
Guillaumont does the same, Miss April does the same, while Layton neatly sticks to the text
There is a process to everything, and every process is the same: first there is chaos, and it slowly converges into order. Then, with order firmly established, offshoots start a new life on their own, in a much more orderly fashion. And when one zooms out, the entire process in itself appears as chaos
The NS end up in an orderly fashion with much less variation than in the beginning, and they are all neatly marked with strokes covering the entire word
So the closer to the beginning that one gets:
1. The more variation there is
2. The less the consistency in adding superlinear strokes
3. The less number of letters in a word that are covered with a superlinear stroke
Look at Thomas, and you will see a perfect example of the initial stage. I was just kidding about Grondin of course, all of his work is (very) sloppy and inaccurate: here is the Coptic list as it is in reality
ⲓ̅ⲥ̅ (Logion 0, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 92, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 100, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 114)
ⲓⲏ̅ⲥ̅ (Logion 13, 22, 90)
̄ⲡ̅ⲛ̅̅ⲁ̅ (Logion 14)
ⲡⲛ̅ⲁ̅ (Logion 29, 44, 53, 114)
ⲥ⳨ⲟⲥ (Logion 55)
IHS has only 2 letters covered, and PNA likewise - only on one out of six occasions does it have full stroke.
These are very important variations to notice, as they attest to a lack of order, an absence of rules, habit, custom
On a side note: sometimes it is hard to decide whether a stroke does or does not cover a letter, for example when it starts halfway. Perhaps cases of ambiguity can be marked as well, just to be perfect
Just for the record: naturally, like everything else, the so-called nomina sacra also started with Thomas. Why? I really wouldn't know. The most logical explanation would be that they represented numbers in Thomas:
ⲓ̅ⲥ̅ - 10 and 200
ⲓⲏ̅ⲥ̅ - 8 and 200
ⲡ̅ⲛ̅̅ⲁ̅ - 80 and 50 and 1
ⲡⲛ̅̅ⲁ̅ - 50 and 1