stephan huller

But how is Against Heresies "complete bullshit" if it represents the opinions of a Christian living c 200 CE? Adolf Hitler's writings are still indispensable material for understanding German political and social life in the first half of the twentieth century

mountainman

This is false. The evidence suggests that the Christians used a Greek LXX with "Christianised nomina sacra".

This LEGEND derives from the Aristeas Letter inserted into Josephus, and may be a false legend. In any case, the LXX used and preserved by the so-called early Christians contains "Christianised nomina sacra".


The Greek NT and the Greek LXX used by Christians both use "Christianised nomina sacra". How do you explain this?

Toto

Could you please stop adding this comment to every thread?

Lay out the evidence of exactly what you think needs to be explained. Were the copies of the LXX written by Christian scribes?

You can read this on JSTOR:
The Origin of the Nomina Sacra: A Proposal by L. W. Hurtado
Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 117, No. 4 (Winter, 1998), pp. 655-673

Hurtado suggests the the origin of nomina sacra lies in Jewish gematria.

See also this thread on b-Greek:

aa5874

You are confused. You have no idea what is true or false as soon as you admitted there was a forgery mill and have no actual dated manuscript from Aristeas.

You seem not to understand that there were Later editors of the LXX.

You must mean Jesus cult Christians manipulated or interpolated the Greek LXX just like the TF was inserted into the writings of Josephus.

There is no evidence whatsoever that the LXX was originally produced by Christians of the Jesus cult.

It is documented that the LXX originated during the time of Ptolemy.

And further, there is no actual corroborative evidence that the Jesus stories were part of the LXX in the 2nd century.

No Jesus cult writer of the 2nd century claimed the Jesus stories were part of the LXX.

Examine Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews 12. The LXX was produced by SEVENTY-TWO Jews in the time of Ptolemy at least 200 years before the Jesus cult and was a Greek version of Hebrew Scriptures or Laws.


The LXX has nothing whatsoever to do with the Jesus cult. The 4th century Church writers did not claim the Jesus story was started in the 2nd century BC so it completely unreasonable to assume that Aristeas Letter is a false legend.

We have Hebrew Scripture and we have the LXX and it can be easily seen that the LXX is fundamentally a Greek version.

Please show that the Greek LXX from the 2nd century BCE used "Christianised nomina sacra".

Please show that the nomina sacra in the Greek LXX originated with Jesus cult Christians.

It is not logical at all that ONLY Jesus cult Christians could have used the nomina sacra.

The nomina sacra for 'God' in Greek does not require a Jesus cult.

mountainman

Also from the above ....

The general modus operandi that seems to be followed by everyine is that when fragments of the LXX are examined, the presence of nomina sacra indicate a Christian presence (especially if the papyri is from a codex) OTHERWISE the presence is being assumed to be Jewish.

Septuagint As Christian Scripture by Martin Hengel

The presence of nomina sacra in the LXX denote a Christian presence.

This claim is echoed by many articles and books.

THEREFORE it stands to reason that whoever the earliest Christian scribes were who preserved the New Testament (using nomina sacra) these same scribes also preserved a version of the LXX (using nomina sacra).

Is this clear up to this point?


The next point is that if this is accepted, and the evidence from the papyri supports this contention, then we are left with a further two points:

(1) The Christians must of preserved their own LXX (with nomina sacra) as a distinct and novel step beyond the legendary Ptolemaic LXX from the 1st century (or 2nd century depending on your view of Christian origins).

(2) The use of the nomina sacra in the NT and the LXX by the orthodox, and the use of the nomina sacra by the heretics who authored the gnostic gospels then must have continued and persisted from the 1st (or 2nd) century for 300 (or 200) years until the manuscripts found their way to Constantine's imperial scriptoria where they were mass produced and widely distributed.

A problem arises with the logical consequence outlined above in point (2).

How was it possible that there was an almost universal standard use by both the orthodox and the heretics of the nomina sacra over this 200-300 year period.

This appears to require an explanation.

OVER

mountainman

You seem to forget that there are supposed to be extant early papyri fragments for
(1) the LXX
(2) the canonical NT
(3) the non canonical gnostic stuff.

All of these use nomina sacra and are palaeographically dated EARLY.


It is generally accepted by scholarship that this is the case.

See the above response to Toto and the links provided therein.

Clivedurdle

Umberto Eco Name of the Rose - I know it is fiction - has chunks set in a monastic library that is clearly very chaotic in its management!

There are allusions in this thread to a possible formal christian library where things are handed down, which is evidence of quite sophisticated institutional arrangements.

There must be other evidence of this type of structure.

Possible places to look - Vatican Library, Alexandria, Carthage, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Lyon...

A formal study of how xians managed books might be interesting.

aa5874

The use of Nomina Sacra is really unrelated to time the LXX was composed because it is documented and corroborated in the writings of Josephus and others of antiquity.

Fragments of the LXX have been found and DATED before the Jesus story and cult was claimed to have started.

The LXX is NOT a product of the Jesus cult of Christians and is confirmed by PALEOGRAPHIC dating.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septuagint_manuscripts

Toto

They wrote in the same language, Koine Greek, and they used the same shorthand/abbreviations. :huh:

Given that we don't understand exactly why these particular abbreviations were used, I don't see anything that requires some elaborate explanation. And if we did understand why, I'm not sure what other problem this would illuminate.

Duvduv

That's rather speculative and a stretch......in the case of modern Jews, Orthodox Jews do not write sacred terminology the same way this is done by non-Orthodox (Reform/Conservative) or secular Jews in Hebrew or in Yiddish.