Amalar of Metz on nomina sacra/orthography

I was recently skimming through Amalar of Metz' On the Liturgy (specifically, volume 2) and came across an interesting couple of pages. Not only does Amalar write about the nomina sacra, he also gives a bit of precedent to questions about orthography reflected in the Tyndale House Greek New Testament.

Amalar wrote a letter "To his dearest father and most acute rhetorician, the prophet Jeremiah in our Jerusalem." The reference to Jerusalem threw me because at first, I was looking for a ninth-Jeremiah in Jerusalem, unsuccessfully. Eric Knibbs' notes on the text at the back of the volume identify this person as "Archbishop Jeremy of Sens (818–827)."

Amalar writes (Knibbs' translation, pp. 267–269):

Our countrymen write the name of our savior Jesus with the letter "H," and I am puzzled about the reason. I know that, if there is a reason that an "H" in Jesus's name is placed after the "I," it is not unknown to you. If you know, tell your son. If you do know, I am certain that it will be in the storeroom of your mind to pass the reason on to me. ... Now the Greeks write that name with the letters "I" and "C," and they read "Isus." Thus it seems to me—if it does not seem otherwise to you—that what we read as "Iesus" should be written with an "I" and an "H" and a "C" or an "S." I ask that you tell me with which letters I should write the stated name.

Jeremy of Sens responded and explained to Amalar that the letter was [and I am using lower-case here for clarity] not actually 'h' but 'η,' though they are written the same.

To be honest, I have wondered this too—why do we see IHS in the Latin tradition, which we still see today? I remember as a kid somebody in my rural southern church culture explained to me that he thought it meant "In His Service." I guess Jeremy's answer still doesn't really explain why we see the Greek eta in the Latin tradition, only that the 'H' is an eta. Has anyone come across any patristic/medieval discussions of why the Greek eta was used? If any of you, our readers, does know, I am certain that it will be in the storeroom of your mind to pass the reason on to me.

‘You will call his name Jesus’ (Matt 1.21 in Codex Vaticanus)

In a recent publication on the nomina sacra in Mark in Vaticanus (see here) Peter Malik notices that there are only five places in the New Testament portion of Codex Vaticanus where Ἰησοῦς is not contracted. Two of these are the interesting (emphatic?) vocatives of Mark 1.24 and 5.7 (although not in the Lukan parallels or vocatives generally); two others are references to other people: Jesus son of Eliezer (Luke 3.29) and Jesus Justus (Col 4.11) (which is very sensible and careful); and the other one is Matt 1.21: τέξεται δὲ υἱόν, καὶ καλέσεις τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦν· αὐτὸς γὰρ σώσει τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν. (NA from BW9).

Malik is inclined to explain this anomaly on practical lines related to word division at the end of the line. Clearly this is a very important subject, but I didn’t see its particular relevance in this instance. When the contraction is the default, then exceptions might be signally something different, something important, especially when read at this time of the year.

The climax of Matthew’s (exceedingly brief) birth narrative involves the juxtaposition of the two names that he will be given: Jesus (v. 21) - the name given by Joseph in his act of accepting Jesus into the Davidic line; and Emmanuel (2.23) - the name given by his people. Both of these are of central importance for Matthew, and for all his people (especially, but not only, at Christmas time): he will ‘save his people from their sins’ and he will be ‘God with us’.

Wishing all our readers are very happy Christmas holiday season.

Recent Journal Articles on Textual Criticism

While looking at the new journals shelf last week I noticed a number of text critical articles have come out recently.

Novum Testamentum  57.5

Ronald H. van der Bergh, “Old Testament Awareness” and the Textual Tradition of the Explicit Quotations of Isaiah in Codex Bezae’s Acts, pp. 360–378

This article investigates the textual history of the explicit quotations of Isaiah in the Acts of the Apostles of Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis (Acts 7:49–50; 13:34; 13:47) by introducing the concept of “Old Testament awareness.” This concept can be defined as the degree to which a NT tradition, at any stage of its transmission history, is aware of a quotation stemming from the OT. OT awareness can be identified in the layout of Codex Bezae (e.g., the indentation of text in the manuscript to indicate OT quotations), the text of quotations (e.g., readings that can be shown to be a subsequent change towards an OT tradition) and the context of the quoted text (e.g., the quotations’ introductory formulae). Through assessing the OT awareness of Codex Bezae’s explicit quotations of Isaiah, different stages in the transmission history of the text of these quotations in Codex Bezae’s Acts can be identified.

Laurent Pinchard, Des traces vétérotestamentaires dans deux variantes du Codex de Bèze (Mt 26,55 et 28,8) jugées harmonisantes, pp. 418–430

Codex Bezae is traditionally famous for its harmonising tendency compared to other early majuscule manuscripts of the Gospels. In this article we suggest that, based on two examples drawn from Matthew, some of its variant readings have striking lexical correspondence with passages from the Old Testament. As a result, it is more likely that they probably transmit an original reading as opposed to being the result of a less capable scribe, who would have corrected an earlier text to make it closer to the parallel passages from the Synoptics. The passages examined are Jesus’ arrest on the Mount of Olives (Mt 26.55) and the women’s encounter at the tomb on Easter day (Mt 28.8).

Also in NovT, Simon Crisp and J. K. Elliott review vols. 1–2 of the New Cambridge History of the Bible  and Hugh Houghton reviews Die Vetus Latina-Fragmente aus dem Kloster St. Gallen.

New Testament Studies 61.4

Joel D. Estes, Reading for the Spirit of the Text: nomina sacra and πνεῦμα Language in P46, pp. 566–594

This study examines every reference to πνεῦμα in NT Papyrus 46 (P. Chester Beatty ii / P. Mich. Inv. 6238) and whether or not it is contracted as a nomen sacrum. Against expectations, the scribe does not always use nomina sacra to designate the divine Spirit, nor are other kinds of spirits always written out in full. This discovery destabilises the assumption that we can access the scribe’s understanding of πνεῦμα simply by identifying where nomina sacra do and do not occur. At the same time, such scribal irregularity itself may illustrate wider theological ambiguities among some early Christian communities concerning the status and role of the Holy Spirit.

Peter Malik, The Corrections of Codex Sinaiticus and the Textual Transmission of Revelation: Josef Schmid Revisited, pp. 595–614

The role of manuscript corrections in studying textual transmission of the New Testament has been long recognised by textual critics. And yet, the actual witness of corrections may at times be difficult to interpret. A case in point is Josef Schmid’s seminal work on the text of Revelation. Following Wilhelm Bousset, Schmid argued that a particular group of corrections in Codex Sinaiticus reflected a Vorlage with a text akin to that of the Andreas text-type. By dating these corrections – unlike Bousset – to the scriptorium, Schmid utilised their witness to trace the text of Andreas back to the fourth century. Recently, Juan Hernández has shown that the corrections cited by Schmid were significantly later, hence calling his fourth-century dating of Andreas (among other things) into question. Through an analysis of the corrections cited by Schmid, supplemented by a fuller data-set of Sinaiticus’ corrections in Revelation, this study seeks to reappraise Schmid’s claims concerning the textual relations of these corrections, and identify their role in the later transmission of the text of Revelation.

Tyndale Bulletin 66.1

Lincoln Blumell, A New LXX Fragment Containing Job 7:3–4 and 7:9, pp. 95–101

This article presents an edition of a papyrus fragment from LXX Job that is housed in the Hatcher Graduate Library at the University of Michigan. The fragment likely dates to the sixth century A.D. and comes from a codex. On the recto the fragment contains Job 7:3–4 and on the verso Job 7:9. [Includes two black and white photos.]

Text Critical Papers at BNTC 2015

The Annual Meeting of the British New Testament Society (BNTC) is being held this year at the University of Edinburgh from 3–5 September and there are a number of text critical papers on offer. There are enough, in fact, to make you wonder why there isn’t a dedicated textual criticism section.

Edinburgh always looks like this, right? (photo credit)

I’ve heard that BNTC is much more personable than the circus that can be SBL, so I’m looking forward to attending this year. Perhaps I’ll report on some of these paper if I get a chance. Here’s what’s on offer:

Theological Orthography, Numerical Symbolism, and “Numeri Sacri” in Early New Testament Manuscripts

Zachary Cole (University of Edinburgh)

Abstract: Although much scholarly attention has focused on the Christian scribal practice of the nomina sacra, the reverential abbreviation of divine names, this study explores an analogous phenomenon within early NT manuscripts with respect to theologically significant numbers. In the same way that sacred names could be distinguished by abbreviation, Greek numbers could be and were written in two distinct forms (as longhand words or alphabetic numerals). The aim of this study is to identify patterns and/or examples that suggest numerical symbols ever served a theological, devotional, or mystical function comparable to the nomina sacra. For instance, were alphabetic numerals ever reserved by copyists for special referents? Do any numerical symbols bear a special visual significance over against the longhand words? Recent studies have shown that numerals were indeed used in such ways in Christian documentary papyri from Egypt, especially in private correspondence between churches (such as the cryptic use of 99 to be mean “amen”), but no similar investigation of Christian literary texts has been conducted.
Several examples of possible “numeri sacri” in manuscripts such as P45, P75, and Codex Sinaiticus are examined with support from external testimony of numerological exegesis (patristic and documentary), suggesting that the term “numeri sacri” might be a helpful category. While a handful of numbers might qualify as such, it will be shown that they were never developed into a coherent scribal system in the way that the divine names were. This allows a remarkable comparison between early Christian conceptions of divine names/titles and theologically significant numbers, at least as they were represented in early scribal conventions.

Using the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) to Detect Scribal Habits in the Book of James

Peter Gurry (University of Cambridge)

Abstract: The proper consideration of the types of errors scribes make has been a longstanding aspect of New Testament textual criticism. Designated “transcriptional evidence” by F. J. A. Hort, such evidence is generally taught as a key part of internal evidence. Since the pioneering work of E. C. Colwell and followed recently by James R. Royse and others, the study of such scribal habits has been steadily advanced by careful attention to so-called “singular readings,” that is, readings unique to a single manuscript. One of the conclusions of such study has been a proposed reversal of the principle lectio brevior potior (prefer the shorter reading) since such singular readings show that early scribes tended to omit text more often than they added it. But the use of singular readings has not gone without criticism. In particular, questions have been raised about how representative singular readings are of a scribe’s work and, more importantly, of the tendencies of the textual tradition at large. More recently, the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) has been suggested as an appropriate corrective to the use of singular readings for understanding scribal practices because it identifies possible ancestors for each textual witness. But no concerted effort to apply the CBGM in this way has yet appeared. After offering a short summary of prior research, this study will apply the CBGM to the book of James using the data from the Editio Critica Maior to see what it reveals about the habits of scribes during the first millennium of transmission. The results will be compared with previous conclusions gained from the study of singular readings. In conclusion, I offer some thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses of each method and their implications for the canons of internal criticism.

The Greek Text of Revelation and the Editio Critica Maior

Garrick V. Allen (University of St Andrews)
Darius Müller (Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal/Bethel)

Abstract: The Institut für Septuaginta und biblische Textforschung at the Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal/Bethel is currently in the process of constructing a new Greek critical edition of the book of Revelation, with the hope that the edition will be available in 2023. The main text of the new edition and a condensed version of its apparatus will eventually become the text printed in the Nestle-Aland edition. This paper serves as a progress report, describing the various stages of the project, demystifying the process of editing an edition, and presenting an overview of the manuscript tradition of Revelation and its various text types. Additionally, we highlight the importance of this long-term project for numerous areas of critical concern in Apocalypse studies, including textual history, exegesis and interpretation, reception history, Byzantine art history, and scribal practices. The Editio Critica Maior project is an almost exclusively German enterprise and we hope to raise awareness of continental Apocalypse research in the Anglophone world.

The Chester Beatty Papyrus of Revelation and its Egyptian Friend: Preliminary Remarks on the Affinities of P47 and the Sahidic

Peter Malik (University of Cambridge)

Abstract: In his seminal work on the textual history of Revelation, Josef Schmid focused primarily on the Greek witnesses, amongst which he identified four distinct textual groupings: A C, P47 ℵ, Andreas and Koine. Versional support was cited only sporadically, and only to the extent it appeared in then available critical editions. Even so, Schmid remarked that, among other witnesses, the P47 ℵ group is followed by both Coptic versions. This relationship, however, has never been analysed or even confirmed. Recent research into P47 has identified various peculiar agreements with the Sahidic version, agreements which necessitated further investigation. The present paper aims to outline basic methodological issues as well as preliminary results of such investigation.

Thomas Kraus on Luke 14.5 and What We Need in Our Critical Editions

The March issue of Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses has an article from Thomas Kraus exploring what text critics need in their critical editions with an interesting example from Luke 14.5. The article is “Kritische Ausgaben des Neuen Testaments und Textkritik: Anmerkungen anhand von Lk 14,5 als Testfall?” ETL 91.1 (2015): 111-130.

In the first part of the article, Kraus raises the following four questions which are then explored by way of Luke 14.5.

1. What kind of data and how much do we need in our critical editions? Here he mentions the Internet Greek NT Project which “intends to collate and transcribe all extant manuscripts of the New Testament”—an ambitious goal to be sure!
2. Must someone working on the text have all available variant readings? What about nonsense readings and how should such be determined?
3. What role does the plausibility of the origin and development of a reading play in relation to the quantity and quality of witnesses that attest it? 
4. Will the many possibilities of the internet make these first three questions obsolete? (I’m not sure I grasped how this relates to #3.)

Luke 14.5 is a good choice because Kraus discusses the possibility, suggested by Martin and Kasser in the editio princeps of P75, that the majority reading υἱὸς ἢ βοῦς (“a son or an ox”) was originally ὗς ἢ βοῦς (“a pig or an ox”). Martin and Kasser suggested that the original reading could have been corrupted by way of the supralinear line such that υϲ became the nomen sacrum υ̅ϲ̅. The problem with the reading, as Kraus acknowledges, is that none of our witnesses attest υϲ without the supralinear line.

Luke 14.5 in P75

Ba(si)leia as nomen sacrum?

Perhaps lots of other people have, but I haven't seen basileia written as a nomen sacrum. (I mentioned this to Larry Hurtado and he hadn't either.) I think there is one in POxy 5072. Richard Goode has discussed the Egerton Papyrus's use of basileus as a nomen sacrum (in the 2007 Birmingham conference volume), and I looked at the nice photo in Bell and Skeat, and interestingly the supralinear stroke starts in almost exactly the same place there as it does in POxy 5072 - at the very end of the beta, almost at the beginning of the alpha. The abbreviation is - mutatis mutandis - in the same form as well (BALEUSI in P.Eg. and BALEIA in the text below).

Check out line 9 of POxy 5072:

http://www.ox.ac.uk/images/hi_res/12836_Papyrus_lost_gospel.jpg

(It's one of the images posted by oxy.ac when they publicised the open access of the papyri images. It'll be the first in the next POxy vol.)

Simon

Searching for Nomina Sacra with Accordance

Over at the Accordance Blog, Rick Bennett has posted on "The Search for ‘Sacred Names’." In this post Rick summarizes the paper he presented at the SBL in Rome (which I blogged about here).

In his excellent SBL paper, Rick demonstrated how Accordance with the GNT-Pap module - a digitized version of Comfort and Barrett, now extended with some new papyri, 𝔓118-121, and 𝔓123, can be used to search for and analyze the distribution and form of nomina sacra.

I have just been using this module myself when I searched for some nomina sacra, although I used the first version which has been updated since then. Of course I compared the results with the printed edition (and images and other sources). I did spot some errors and limitations along the way, that I have reported to Accordance.

Errors is to be understood here as deviances from the printed version of Comfort and Barrett (2d edition), not as de facto errors (which unfortunately occur too). I found three errors relating to P45: Luke 11:11 (wrong brackets); Acts 11:8 (wrong brackets); Acts 16:18, Comfort and Barrett abbreviates IH XP in the printed version, but the digital version has IH XY. I think these errors occur both in GNTPAP-C and -M. I suspect that the wrong bracket formatting, [ ... [ or ] ... ], occur at several places in the module, not just in the transcription of P45, and I assume that these could be searched for rather easily by folks like Rick Bennett who knows practically everything there is to know about search strings (needless to say that he has helped me a lot with those).

One limitation that still remains in the latest version is the possibility to exclude hits that occur within conjectural text set in square brackets. Rick tells me that the developers will do something about that in a future version. For now one has to sort that out manually. Some other limitations that were included in an earlier version of this post have now been dealt with in the current version of the module (which I don't have for the moment).

In sum, the software is very useful for this kind of research. The fact that one gets hits in the reconstructed passages is a limitation, but in the end, the most important thing is that all the factual hits are there, and it is clearly better to get more hits and exclude irrelevant ones, than to miss some cases.

Update: the above post has been edited since some of the limitations that I brought up are not relevant for the latest version of the module. Thanks to Rick Bennett for updating me :-)

Hurtado on the Staurogram

While writing a review for New Testament Manuscripts: Their Texts and Their World, I discovered that Prof. Larry Hurtado has made his chapter available online, with permission from the publisher, here. The chapter is a reworking of a chapter in The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins. Old ETC posts on this book are here and here.