stephan huller

I apologize in advance for starting this thread with a question (apparently the point of this forum is to argue with other people). That's not my style. Here's my observation. I don't know everything but I couldn't help notice that the inscription at Deir Ali from 318 CE the reference to Jesus the words appear in a shortened form:

which represents:

Now I know that ancient inscriptions necessarily shortened names and references. But were these 'short forms' an established convention? The reason I ask this is because Clement already represents the name Jesus as being represented by the first two letters (Ιη) in the Stromata:

I must have read this passage forty times but somewhere in the back of my head I had this reservation. Doesn't Clement's taking of only the first two letters of Ἰησοῦς seem kind of forced? Who would be convinced by this? It would be like a critic of mine saying - 'you see, that Stephan really is an idiot because the first two letters of his name are the same as word stupid ...'

My point is that could the inscription at Deir Ali demonstrate a shared convention among the Marcionites and Alexandrians? Already I notice that such a nomen sacrum does seem to exist from the manuscript evidence:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomina_sacra

Notice also that the nomen sacrum for Israel is IHL. Is there a connection?

More significantly it is said that P18 has a nomen sacrum of IH for Jesus and is of the Alexandrian text type http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_18 and is dated to the second century:

I think this is a major discovery. You read it here first (unless I am proved to be an idiot then it was David Hinley's idea).

andrewcriddle

Clement is dependent here on the epistle of barnabas Andrew Criddle

stephan huller

Yes, that's true. But do you think it became a convention among the Alexandrians and Marcionites to represent 'Jesus in the two letters'?

andrewcriddle

It may have originally been wider than Alexandrians and Marcionites.

Larry Hurtado in The Earliest Christian Artefacts (or via: amazon.co.uk) suggests that representing Jesus as IH is the earliest of all Nomina Sacra possibly having an origin in gematria. (eighteen corresponds to life.)

Andrew Criddle

DCHindley

Whether inscriptions may have abbreviated differently than nomina sacra, you might want to check out some place that has a list of Christian inscriptions (I'm sure they start to turn up around the middle of the 4th century). Offhand I could not find anything in Diessman's Light from the Ancient East, but I bet there is something in one of the revised volumes of Schürer's Jewish people.

As Andrew has already indicated, this is from the Epistle of Barnabas, Chapter 9:

Learn then, my children, concerning all things richly, that Abraham, the first who enjoined circumcision, looking forward in spirit to Jesus, practised that rite, having received the mysteries of the three letters.

For [the Scripture] saith, "And Abraham circumcised ten, and eight, and three hundred men of his household."* What, then, was the knowledge given to him in this?

Learn the eighteen first, and then the three hundred. The ten and the eight are thus denoted--Ten by I, and Eight by H. You have [the initials of the, name of] Jesus.

And because the cross was to express the grace [of our redemption] by the letter T he says also, "Three Hundred."

He [that is, Moses, the supposed writer of genesis] signifies, therefore, Jesus by two letters, and the cross by one. He knows this, who has put within us the engrafted gift of His doctrine.

*Not found in Scripture: but comp. Gen. 17:26-27, Gen. 14:14. [ANF vol 1, Donaldson & Roberts]

You know, of course, that the nomina sacra were not exactly uniform in use. Sometimes a sacred word was abbreviated by using the first two or three letters, sometimes by the first and last letters of either the inflected form or the base form of the word, and other combinations as well. Sometimes words are abbreviated in one part and not in another, and sometimes different forms of the nomina sacra are used interchangeably.

There is a chart of "standard" nomina sacra here:



and here:



Huphan,

Oh, I wouldn't call you an "idiot" :innocent2: but you can go off on really loooong OCD fueled tangents at times that make no sense whatever to us mere mortals. Whether the first two letters of your actual name represent you as "stoopid," remember what Forrest Gump said: "Stupid is what stupid does, sir!"

FWIW, I use that variant spelling "stoopid" because in the family represented in the comic page cartoon "For Better or Worse" (set in the Great White North), that was the favorite phrase of the son Michael Patterson as a teenager, perhaps signifying a strange Manitobaite pronunciation. That reminds me of your Seattle saying "oot anna boot," which I havent heard since I visited Ann Marie & Vicky Collins as a 13 yr old with my family around 1969). Of course, I say what I say with only love in my heart for you. ><

DCH

[Genuine ersatz edit by Mods: The views taken by Mr Hinley are the opinions of Mr Hinley and do not necessarily represent the opinions of FRDB or its Mods. If you agree with his opinions, then they are great opinions that members can endorse by adding cred points to him. If you do not like his opinions, they are evil and bad and of the worse kind and the Mods have placed David on super secret double probation.]

stephan huller

Here's my latest tangent. If Clement's tradition has learned to drop the “three hundred” in order to separate the “eighteen” which is Jesus notice that in the Hebrew if you take the acronym of the number “318” you get the letters which form the name “Esau” (shin-ayin-vav = ayin-shin-vav). Coincidence?

stephan huller

three hundred ten eight
שְׁמֹנָה עָשָׂר וּשְׁלֹשׁ מֵאוֹת [Genesis 14:14]
= עֵשָׂו
Esau

stephan huller

It is really late but I noticed that Hurtado mentions somewhere graffiti (or 'graffito') with the Hebrew letters yod and he joined together in a special way. I wonder if this is somehow related to the ΙΗ nomen sacrum. The Latin H is derived from the Greek eta. The yod-he combination is of course the sacred divine name of the Hebrews. It is still so sacred that you often see religious text jump from yod-dalet to tet-vav to signify fifteen. Indeed I have always had a pet theory that the fifteenth chapters of all the books of the Pentateuch might be especially significant. Genesis chapter 15 is the sign of the resurrection (or the sign of yonah). Exodus chapter 15 is the Song of the Sea (the crossing of the Red Sea). I think my theory breaks down in Leviticus 15. I think this is the chapter where they give the oldest known recipe for gefilte fish. No, it's an especially disgusting chapter on bodily discharges.

I don't know. I think you can still make a case for skimming through or summarizing the Pentateuch by reading successive chapter 15s of each book. Numbers 15 is about animal sacrifices to (re)gain the favor of God and Deuteronomy 15 is about redemption during Sabbatical years. Could make an interesting thesis (or something totally irrelevant)

Sheshbazzar

There seems to be some confusion or misunderstanding within the Greek text(s) regarding the numerical value of the Hebrew letter ה 'hey', with the numerical value of ח 'cheth' (8) supplanting that of ה 'hey' (5)
The numbers 15 and 315 are more consistent with Hebrew numerical patterns.