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The Use of Abbreviations by the Early Christian Scribes
1,950 years ago according to most biblical scholars, an anonymous Greek scribe sat down on this day in 70 CE and pondered for a few minutes—checking the information material before he took pen to paper. The first words he wrote were “Beginning of the gospel of ιυ χυ (upper case ΙY XY).” The Gospel of Who? Were these words Chineses or whatever? Not forgetting every written word was done by hand until 1440 CE, and no two hands write the same.
(So much for the written word of the early Greek Gentile-Christians, they not only copied and plagiarised the Jewish scriptures they adopted the Jews style of using abbreviations. However, they did not stop at one or two abbreviations they went crazy and went overboard with the usage. Whereas the Jews used the Tetragrammaton (four-letter word for God—YHWH for their abbreviation of their God in their scriptures or writings. The Christian scholars Metzger (see Metzger’s Picture file above) found 15 early Christian abbreviations, called by the Latin Church “Nomina Sacra” or “Sacred Names” in 3rd-century or earlier manuscripts. Was ΙY XY a Tetragrammaton to do with the ten (X) lost tribes of Yahisrael or what? As many sceptical scholars, as well as mythicist, have had a field day over the so-called sacred names. Which spilt over from textual to mosaics with surprising results.
Those clever amongst you will state I am making too much out of it, perhaps I am, but then we find on a mosaic floor ΘΩ ΙΥ ΧΩ? Are they spelling mistakes, can one misspell a 2 letter word or is the deity someone different from the God of Abraham or the man Jesus—did the Greek scribes mean Zeus or his Roman alias Jupiter perhaps?)
This anonymous Greek writer who took pen to paper started in c. 70 CE to write the first of what we call today’s canonical gospels. 200 or more years later Christians started to call this work of this Greek scribe—the Gospel of Mark. Which was classified as the 2nd canonical after the Gospel of Matthew, but before that of the Gospel of Luke being the 3rd and final of the Synoptic Gospels? The names of the other three canonical gospels including that of the last and 4th canonical Gospels of John were all renamed around the time that Mark was named in the late 2nd or 3rd century? Also, just like the Gospel of Mark, the other three gospels were written by anonymous Greek scribes.
The English term Jesus Christ or even the original Greek term Ιησούς Χριστός/Iisoús Christós were never written down in early Greek biblical manuscripts (MSS)! As I aforesaid above early Greek Christians used abbreviations for naming deity (which almost everything came under that umbrella) within their scripture which was termed “Nomina Sacra” or “Sacred Names.”
However, the Old Latin (“Vetus Latina”) such as Codex Vercellensis Evangeliorum dated late 4th-century CE but is not a complete Bible. Jerome’s Vulgate written in Vulgar (common) Latin edition (vulgata editio) dated c. 4o5 CE. However, Nomina Sacra are absent from Latin text. Nevertheless, not without confusion as Codex “E” aka Codex Laudianus c. 550 CE, which is a bi-lingual codex of Greek/Latin using both full names and abbreviation, which has caused no end of problems. With some scholars stating that they have to go back to the beginning and check if the Nomina Sacra translations are what they are if not authentic.
The Greek scribe’s words written down: αρχη του ευαγγελιου ιυ χυ (Mark 1:1 Sinai) translated from Codex Sinaiticus the oldest source of Mark, which means—“Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
So the book of Mark is the “Gospel of Jesus Christ.” However, we are not going to see the name Mark changed anytime soon to the Gospel of Jesus or whatever!
Addition made at a Later Date Added to the Scriptures!
As I stated Codex Sinaiticus is the oldest source for Mark, and now we find another anomaly beside the Nomina Sacra, we have the problem of insertions or addition. This anomaly we find is endemic within the New Testament (NT), that is, words that have been added to a verse within the scriptures that are not in the earliest recorded manuscripts. I will stay with Mark 1:1 just to highlight the problem.
1 αρχη του ευαγγελιου ιυ χυ—“Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”(Mark 1:1 Sinaiticus)
1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; (Mark 1:1 KJV) or
1 This is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. (Mark 1:1 ISV)
As you can see, the oldest Mark version uses Nomina Sacra and not Jesus Christ in full, but there is also an added “Son of God” and “Messiah” so where did they come from? Not from the scribe that wrote what we know today as the Gospel of Mark. That addition could not have been written before 381 CE, more than three centuries after the anonymous Greek scribe first wrote down his first sentence of his Gospel.
Are Nomina Sacra or sacred names authentic abbreviations of what we are led to believe they are, even when some of the abbreviations are not amongst the classified?
What do you say on inserts or additions to verses added at a later date and still in used in today’s Bible translations?
Take care!
Cofion
Jero Jones
Article URL : https://breakingnewsandreligion.online/discuss/