Archaic Christianity

I received an email this morning from someone whom I do not know who was asking for help with a claim she heard about the number of the beast and Greek manuscripts. Most of us who are familiar with New Testament textual criticism are familiar with the rather famous textual problem in Rev 13:18. But then I was a little surprised when her question went another way. I have spent time with Muslims before and though sometimes they are quite sane, sometimes they come up with the oddest historical perspectives, which is a nice way of saying that they are frequently distorting the facts. This is definitely one of those instances.

Continuing on in our discussion of a uncatalogued lectionary fragment (which I am calling ULF, though not to be confused with the friendly alien), today we'll chat about the lection covering John 6:48-54. There are several noteworthy things with this one.

Continuing on the perpetual series on Greek Handwriting, where I chat about scribal practices and whatnot (I need to rename the series to that, I think), let's look at another portion of ULF (see the links to the previous posts on this manuscript below). Today we will limit ourselves to the Lection covering John 6:40-44.

For the last few posts in my series on Greek handwriting and manuscripts I've been looking at a manuscript I'm calling ULF, short for uncatalogued lectionary fragment. Two correctors have been identified, and in this post we're going to try to figure out if one of them came first and if the first one was the original scribe.

There's more to say about the corrector of ULF. Or should I say correctors?

As I said just the other day, there is a new manuscript posted on the CSNTM website. This manuscript is uncatalogued, so we don't have a nice Gregory-Aland number to refer to. So, I'm going to call it ULF for "Uncatalogued Lectionary Fragment".

Just in case you have the desire to do some reading in the Greek New Testament manuscript labeled GA 676, I have a few tips for you. You can find the images on the CSNTM website. All snippets below with one exception are found on image 234.

Here are Archaic Christianity it is και ligature day. Yes, this is a holiday practiced by scribes throughout all of time. This holiday post is dedicated to Brett. Here, Brett, are more examples of funky και ligatures.

This is part n of my never-ending series on Greek handwriting. Here is another ligature:

Here's another ligature, comin' at ya fast! This one is from Codex Hierosolymitanus. Here are ye ligatures of the day.

Nick, I would say this is a tip for Nathan as well, but his looks pretty good. Oh, by the way, since you both posted the same thing at the same time, doesn't that mean one of you needs to say "jynx"?

So I found out that the scribe for codex Hierosolymitanus actually has a name. This is nice because I can get rid of the name I gave him, TSWAMEMBPOULLACP. It was a good name, obfuscatory as the scribe himself. This post is going to focus on Leo and his writing of the letter κ, "kappa". Can you make out these words? All of them are found in the first chapter of 2 Clement.

Yes, I'm sure you've missed the series. I have as well. How about starting out with a small word?

The letters in and alphabet are not always easy to distinguish. Take the u and v in English. A "u" with an only slightly rounded bottom can look quite a bit like a "v" with a slightly rounded bottom. And when you get into cursive, it can become even harder.

In Greek writing there are certain letter patterns that lend themselves to confusion like this. In uncial handwriting a commonly confusing couple of letters are α and λ. For example, look at this image from Alexandrinus:

So here is another bit about scribal practices in Greek manuscripts. Here is the snippet. As always, click to view a larger version.

I know you have missed it. It has been a while since Greek Handwriting 3, so here is our next exciting installment!

When you are collating (the process of comparing and annotating differences between a manuscript and a base text) handwritten manuscripts, one thing you have to have a plan for is how to deal with ligatures. In the world of Greek manuscripts this is especially true for minuscules, though even uncials like Sinaiticus can have ligatures.

Along with the nomina sacra, there are a number of other shorthand marks in Greek manuscripts. One very common one is the nu bar. Here it is in Sinaiticus:

Following up on a previous post, I am going to write briefly here about the issue of the destination of Paul's epistle to the Ephesians. Hopefully this will be a decent introduction to those of you who are not familiar with the issue. For those who have access to commentaries and academic books, I found the discussions in the commentaries of Best, Foulkes, and Lincoln to all be pretty good. Bruce's discussion was not as good. Also the discussion in Metzger's Textual Commentary was sufficient for its point, but not as full as the commentaries' discussion. The NET Bible's study note on this is concise but very good. But for those who do not have these things, or for those who do and like looking at pictures, here you go...

Our second installment on Greek handwriting is a good follow-up for the first.

These "Greek Handwriting" posts are about letter forms and ligatures found in Greek manuscripts.