mountainman

This depends on how you want to define "biblical scholars". Jean Hardouin (1646-1729) perhaps coined the term 'the impious crew', or 'maudite cabale'. Edwin Johnson refers to "a mass of forgeries labelled Eusebius". Hermann Detering postulates a 2nd century "Redaction Team". Joseph Atwill claims the gospels are texts deliberately created to trick Messianic Jews into worshipping the Roman Emperor 'in disguise'. Francesco Carotta claims Jesus was Julius Caesar, who was elevated to the status of Imperial God, Divus Julius, after his violent death, and that the cult that surrounded him dissolved as Christianity surfaced. The opening chapter of Jay Raskin's book is entitled "Eusebius the Master Forger" may not discuss conspiratorial cabals but it certainly sets the groundwork for one.


And who perhaps also systematically implemented the nomina sacra in the Greek texts.

mountainman

There is a dispute about this claim. This source lists a number of points under the subject "The early use of "nomina sacra" indicates a canon was recognized". These things were obviously INVENTED by one of the earliest Greek literate christians. The scribes certainly followed the convention, but the real question is who invented it, and why was it more or less universally followed by all christian scribes from that time thereafter.

Here are the first two issues raised:

The reason why I continue to mention these is that there is no generally accepted theory for their creation, but most people who have studied them invariably use the term single redactor . The evidence is that this early redaction has taken place in not just the texts, but in the invention and implementation of these nomina sacra.

The two questions naturally arise:
who was this single redactor and
what sort of absolute power did this person have over the transmission of the text of the new testament?

Answer the above questions then.

Toto

NO THERE IS NOT. The nomina sacra were just abbreviations. Your source confirms this.

So you found a Christian source that is trying to argue for an early canon. Why is this noteworthy?

So Christian scribes followed the leader. In other news, the sun rises in the east.

Why is this an issue? It appears that there was a Christian scribe who penned the first canon, and everyone else copied from him. This could have been a slave working in a sweatshop run by some bishop in Rome in the second century.

And how many sources have you read besides bible.ca?

stephan huller

I think mountainman is just a spoiled child begging for attention every chance he gets. Every conversation has to get turned around to his stupid way of thinking. Why not just go on a date or something?

avi

I should acknowledge having read no sources, not even the bible.

My submission on this issue to the forum, should therefore be ignored. Well, ok, not just on this issue, then....

a. The origin and purpose of nomina sacra is neither clear cut, nor universally accepted.
b. According to this 1909 article in Classical Quarterly, devoted to a review of the German text of von Ludwig Traube (1907), avi

mountainman

Because it is a unique characteristic Greek convention that is exhibited almost universally across all the earliest Greek manuscripts and papyri, and the question about the evidence itself deserves a careful explanation.

That's a novel off-the-cuff idea but does it stand up? By what transmission and authority was this convention then universally used throughout the entire ROman Empire, not only by the orthodox, but also by the Gnostic heretics? And why didn't Eusebius menion this small issue and name the scribe who invented the system? Do you think Eusebius knew who invented these unique and characteristic scribal conventions?

Questions immediately arise as to whether any earlier manuscripts did not exhibit any such abbreviations, and were written in long hand. Indeed, are you saying whether there were any earlier manuscripts? If there were, noone has yet found any manuscript that does not use these abbreviations.



Quite a few. Some scholars conjecture this single redactor was Paul. The consensus, from what I have seen, leave it an open question to be answered. As far as my opinion goes, this single redactor was very late, and he had a lot of power behind him.

mountainman

Why trivialize this aspect of the evidence? Someone had to have invented the shorthand. You state that a later editor is conjectured for the material in Luke and Acts. I point out that the conjectured editor for nomina sacra purposes appears to have been early. So maybe these people are unrelated, and we have two separate editors?

Obviously you see that the analysis of the origin of these nomina scara is a trivial question. Anyone can trivialise. Ask stephan.

Maybe Jesus taught the apostles how to write in Greek, and personally invented the novel series of Greek abbreviations to be used in all official and unofficial Greek early Christian literature. This is not an easy job with illiterate Galilaean fishermen. This also explains Jay's observation that according to Acts, Jesus taught the apostles nothing. They were too tired from their Greek classes.

When did the sun first rise on the christian nomina sacra is not a trivial question.

No its not. Greek was around in the 1st century BCE and although the Hebrew bible was around as the DSS indicate, there is no real evidence that the Greek LXX was around at that time, unless you are willing to believe that the letter of Aristeas preserved in Josephus by Eusebius is not just another forgery.

More specifically however, the evidence of the earliest versions of the Greek LXX that we are familiar with, the one's which are utterly proliferated with these Christian-Used abbreviations (the Hebrew language original may use one such code, not a dozen or more), does not appear until the christian scribes arrive on the scene. The nomina sacra (in the NT and the LXX) were an invention of very early christians (or very late ones depending on your chronology).

I disagree. I think Eusebius was a gifted rhetorician , a professional researcher, and a master forger.
He knew and he cared, and so did his continuators, and their preservers, and their patrons.
These were the sorts of people who were tenured and were paid well to know and to care and to say the appropriate things.

Toto

The last thread on Nomina Sacra is here:

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=286286

This topic is joining others that are overdone. Please do not post repetitive mentions of Nomina Sacra unless there is new information.