Jax wrote: ↑Wed Jan 05, 2022 12:31 pm
Thank you for that link. I wonder, do you know, is the codex written in Latin first on the left hand column and then translated into the Greek on the right? This is what it seems like to me, where the author had two copies of Acts, one Latin and one Greek, and first wrote the Latin out and then found the Greek equivalent word in the Greek text for the left column. Unfortunately, I read neither Latin or Greek well enough to tell on my own.
Lane
Codex E is a bi-lingual manuscript containing the text of Acts in Greek and Latin. The use of so-called 'nomina sacra' in the manuscript presents one or two unusual features. In the Greek column, most of the expected abbreviations occur; but there are over twenty occurrences where one would expect to find an abbreviation for one of the four alleged 'base' words of the system (God, Christ, Jesus, Lord) but where the word is written in full. Proportionally (in relation to the length of the manuscript), this figure may be unusually high. In the Latin column, there are virtually no abbreviations at all, a phenomenon which is very unusual amongst Latin biblical manuscripts. The article attempts primarily to present this evidence. In addition, some possible further considerations are offered which might suggest (albeit tentatively) that the number of non-abbreviations in the Greek column may have been even higher in an earlier Vorlage of the text. Hence codex E appears to be a witness to the fact that the abbreviations of some of the key words, even in Christian biblical manuscripts, may not have been as uniform as some in recent studies have maintained
The so-called nomina sacra are very far from uniformly used.
The abbreviations came first, the attempts to interpret them much, much later - and in that way the Greek would seem to predate the Latin here, if it weren't for the fact that the texts were likely written simultaneously or even by the same scribe (I have no idea, have never even glanced at it)
The number of line-ending Nu's should be indicative as well, in Bezae the Greek ones are twice as many as the Latin ones (top of my head)