Haran

Cool. Thanks.

It's great that pictures of manuscripts are making it onto the web. I wish libraries would allow more of their collections to make it onto the internet, especially the Bodmer and Beatty papyri collections.

It would be interesting to do a letter study based on these pictures. Oh for more time...

andrewcriddle

There are apparently relevant articles

Schuyler Brown 'Concerning the Origin of the Nomina Sacra'
SPap9 1970 7-19

LW Hurtado The Origin of the Nomina Sacra A Proposal
JBL 117 1998 655-73

but I haven't been able to currently access them

Andrew Criddle

Bede

Andrew,

I understood that Egerton 2 was one of the earliest papyrus fragments we had and it does have a very full set of nomina sacra. Which of the early papyri contain only the 'core four'? I also note that PATER and PNEUMA were supposedly both additional nomina sacra (from a review of ARHE Paap in Classical Review 1960) added very shorty afterward the core four. Given the paucity of early papyri, the whole argument still looks circular to me. We must use the palaeography to date documents before we can say anything else. Only then might some anomallies become apparent.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Edited to add:

New Testament Studies 47 and 48 (2001 and 2002) both contain articles on Nomina Sacra and P52.

Haran

I was somewhat surprised to note that Metzger, in his Manuscripts of the Greek Bible, does not appear to mention Nomina Sacra (from my quick glance) in his "How to date of a greek manuscript" section. E. Maunde Thompson, in An Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaeography, also has little to say about them with respect to dating manuscripts.

Bede, where did you come across reference of that article in ARHE Paap?

Does anyone else know of any other information on the development of the 15 Nomina Sacra?

In case they weren't mentioned before, I believe the 'core four' Nomina Sacra would be: Θεος, ΚυÏ?ιος, Ιησους, and ΧÏ?ιστος (with Θεος and ΚυÏ?ιος probably coming first to represent the contraction of the name of God, YHWH, by the Jews).

Bede

It was a review of "Nomina Sacra in the Greek Papyri in the First Five Centuries" (Leiden 1959) in the Classical Review 1960.

I was surprised by how little I could find on this subject in the journals from usual academic searches.

B

Vorkosigan

Here's the Gold:

�52 (P. RYLANDS GK. 457) AND THE NOMINA SACRA: METHOD AND PROBABILITY L.W. Hurtado

http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/retrieve...TB_article.pdf

Might be something useful here:

Robert Kraft
The 'Textual Mechanics' of Early Jewish LXX/OG Papyri and Fragments

Haran

Ah...thanks. Metzger does mention the 1959 article. Sounds like an interesting article. I'm going to have to see if the libraries around me have that journal.

Haran

Thanks. Interesting read.

This has been a very informative thread so far. Much more so than others in the past, IMHO.

andrewcriddle

Hi Bede

It looks as if Papyrus Egerton is substantially later than used to be thought.

In 1987 a papyrus fragment (P Koln 608) was identified as being part of the Egerton manuscript. The handwriting on this fragment has apparently an example of a late feature which makes a date before 200 CE unlikely.

(There is more about this at the Egerton site which you referenced above).

As to which examples exist of manuscripts with only the early nomina sacra I believe that the articles I referenced discuss this but as I said I haven't been able to read them yet.

Andrew Criddle

Vivisector

You are indeed correct; thank you. I should have noted that the extant P46 does not include 2 Thess, but that the missing leaves would have provided sufficient space for its inclusion.

Cheers,

V.