uncials

minuscules

roman capitals

Can’t seem to get the most basic lettering, roman capitals, right. On the other hand, my uncials and minuscules are finally passable. Well, practice makes perfect. I’ll be fixing my gothics next time.

Meanwhile, I’m reading again. I’ve actually finished Damned already.

reads for the Holy Week — how appropriate

Greek had been the lingua franca in the Roman world in the time of Jesus. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament translated during the years ±250-132 B.C. had been in common use in the Christian Churches and contributed to the use of Greek as the common language of the first Churches. After the crucifixion of Christ and the resurrection, Jesus sent out the apostles into all the world to proclaim the Gospel. Because of the prosecution of the Christians by the Sanhedrin and the Scribes as well as the Pharisees and Sadducees alike, the followers of Jesus quickly spread outside the borders of Judea, especially into the Greek world. Paul played no small role in the spreading of the Gospel and the establishing of churches in the Greek speaking world. Except for the letter to the Romans, also a Greek speaking church, all the other letters were written to churches within the Greek world. Everything points to all the original autographs of the New Testament being written in Greek. Therefore the Greek manuscripts are paramount in the quest to establish the original words of the New Testament documents.

The Greek witnesses of the New Testament are divided into four categories, viz. Papyri, Uncials, Minuscules and Lectionaries. Initially Greek documents were written in uncials, a large letter type akin to our capital letters.

Papyrus 46, second century, Wikipedia

*Papyri.

The oldest of New Testament documents were written on papyrus. Of some of these manuscripts only parts or even fragments have survived. Yet their value as oldest documents by which later more complete documents can be compared, cannot be under estimated. They are nearest to the original autographs. No less than 127 papyri are available, 116 of them dating between the second and sixth centuries, ten in the seventh and one in the eighth century.

Codex Alexandrinus, fifth century, Wikipedia

*Uncials.

The second group of documents is known as the uncials written on parchment or vellum. About 318 uncials dating from the fourth to the ninth centuries have survived. After the papiri the uncials, mostly written in neat letters are the most important witnesses of the New Testament. They usually having complete books or volumes of books, bound in codices.

Palipsest under Ultra violet lighting. Wikipedia.

*Palimpsests.

Part of this group of uncials is called the palimpsests. As was mentioned earlier, these documents are uncials of which the original parchment had been washed and reused for another document. Some were also used in the binding of codices. Though with strain, the original can be deciphered under ultra violet light. At present 52 palimpsests are known, being part of the group of uncials.

Beginning of Matthew, Minuscule 485, 12th century. Wikipedia.

*Minuscules.

At the beginning of the ninth century a new cursive letter type, called minuscules came into use. The letters are much smaller, needing less parchment for the same document. It was also easier to write and much quicker. About 2907 minuscules are known, dating from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries.

*Lectionaries.

From about the tenth to the fifteenth centuries lectionaries, also known as lectio librorum came into use. These contained specific parts of the New Testament written in one volume to assist the church in the east, using Greek and not Latin, with the orderly reading of the prescribed pericopes of Scripture on Sundays and Holy days. Although they contain only part of Scripture, the text usually dates from much earlier than the time they were actually written. This adds to their value to help discern the original autographs. About 2403 lectionaries are available.

With about 5894 Greek witnesses of the New Testament to our avail, it is obvious that the original autograph of every book of the New Testament can be discerned with great certainty.

God bless!

Herman.

It was such a privilege to be there with a teacher who knew Greek so well. Although we didn’t get onto much I hadn’t already looked at it was great to reinforce things in my mind. I thought I already knew the alphabet as it turned out I didn’t. It was good therefore to go over it again plus learn the capital letters which were new to me.

The teacher pronounced Greek with a Greek accent as he had been taught by a Greek lady so it was a little tricky converting to that form the Erasmaian pronunciation that I have begun learning.

Here are some of my notes from the two days:

1) The development of the language:

Ancient Greek : Mycenaean Greek 14th – 12th Century BC, Archaic (Clasical) Greek 8th – 4th BC

Hellenistic Greek or Koine (= common) Greek : 4th Century BC to 4th century AD. Became prominent due Alexander the Great’s empire of. It absorbed local dialects and became the common standard language of the times. The Septuagint was written in Koine Greek.

Byzantine Greek : 5th-15th  Century AD. Official language of the Byzantine empire.

Modern (Demotic Greek). Two versions of Greek were in use up until 1976. The Katharevousa version was used in the army, law, medicine, schools, newspapers etc was dropped in favour of Demotic Greek; the langue used for creative literature and everyday speech.

2) Characters

Uncials = capital letters

Miniscules or cursive script = lower case letters. These began to be used in 10th Century AD. They were easier to write and left more space for the accents and other bits and bobs  that where beginning to be used.

3) Punctuation

A comma and full stop in Greek mean the same as they do in English. A colon in Greek is a raised full stop and a semi colon in Greek means a question mark.

4) Quote

To his amazement [Jude] learnt for the first time there was no law of transmutation, as in his innocence he had supposed, but that every word of the Latin and Greek was to be individually committed to memory at the cost of years of plodding. Thomas Hardy Jude the Obscure – Macmillan 1974 p50

I hope that Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek speeds up the plodding as he claims to have discovered some short cuts.

5) Tense

Here is a very helpful table for remembering tenses. Notice that the present tense, though mainly meaning present, can also mean an undefined time. Future tense could be anything by the look of it. Note also that the Aorist tense does not necessarily refer to an event that took place at a particular point in time. It could be ongoing. Wenham would say it is a point in time ie punctilliar but it is not. Luke 9:23 “take up your cross daily” is aorist, as is “Rev 20:4 “they reigned with Christ”.

6) Textual families

The Alexandrian (Neutral or Egyptian) Text ie Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus : Originated in Egypt. Some of the oldest existing manuscripts are from this family and are  dated to 4th Century AD. They are also the most reliable copies as the scribes didn’t tend to change much.

The Western Text ie Codex Bezae : These originated in the East and are the least trustworthy due to copying changes (to be honest it was a bit slap dash!). They tended to put more emphasis on the Latin copies and the famous Latin Vulgate comes from these texts. They were used a lot in Roman world.

The Byzantine Text ie Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Ephraemi of 5th Century AD. These were used throughout the Greek speaking Byzantine Empire. As they spoke Greek there were a large number of Greek copies made and used epically after miniscule script was invented in the 9th Century. A few errors crept in over time. It became the standard texts for church of the middle ages and the basis for Erasmus’ version. The majority text is based on a lot of late Byzantine texts. (The ending of the Lord prayer was added in in one of these versions I think).

The received Text or the Textus Receptus

“In 1502 work on a bible called the Complutensian Polyglot was begun containing 4 columns; Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin. In an attempt to beat this bible to market, a Swiss printer called Froben approached the Dutch Scholar Desiderius Erasmus in 1515 who agreed to collate and produce a Greek NT” (from Adrian Birks’ 2010 notes).

This was printed and published earlier than the Complutensian Polyglot and cost less so it became much more widely used.  Erasmus did the best job he could but in places where he had no Greek text he translated back from Latin versions. In 1565 after a few revisions it formed the basis of the Textus Receptus. The translators of the KJV worked from this whose textual basis was

“essentially a handful of late and haphazardly collected miniscule manuscripts, and in a dozen passages its reading is supported by no known Greek witness” The Text of the New Testament, Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, by Bruce. M. Metzger

7) Books

He recommended Novum Testamentum Graece Nestle-Aland (NA) currently 27th Edition which has a more complicated textual aparatus and a better font.

He also gave details of The NIV English-Greek New Testament A Reverse Interlinear Zondervan by W D Mounce. (he’s the guy that wrote the books I am getting for Christmas). A reverse interlinear has the Greek in the order of the English words. I guess that gives more meaning to the English words as their order determines their meaning while in the Greek word order means much less. I hope I am getting an ESV reverse interlinear for Christmas by John Schwandt.

He mentions “Greek for the rest of us” by W. Mounce. Amazon.com says it’s a “revolutionary crash-course on ‘baby Greek’”. I think it’s more geared towards those who want to use Greek tools and resources rather than those of us with the bottle to learn the language.

Teach yourself NT Greek by Ian McNair is used in most collages now. Originally it was Nun, then Wenham updated that work and now McNair is used

The new Analytical Greek Lexicon Wesley J Perschbacher is good but I think my computer tools give me the same information.

Good web site http://biblos.com/

8) Other notes:

8.1) Pronunciation

αι = “eh” (elephant) in Greek pronunciation rather than “eye” in the Erasmian or academic pronunciation.

ε = short e (same as αι in Greek pronunciation?)

η = long e (as in “eal”.  In the Erasmian pronunciation its more ay as in “ate”).

ο = short o

ω = long o

μ = mu or “mee”

π = “pie” or “pea”, in fact you can pronounce other letters ending in “i” like that ie “phi” as “phee”, “psi” as “psee” etc.

τ= “tow” as in “cow”

β is more “v” in Greek pronunciation

αυ is more “av” in Greek pronunciation

8.2) White as snow

It was suggested that “though your sins are as scarlet they shall be white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18) was not necessarily referring to a good thing. White skin was not good thing a Mediterranean climate and white as snow could be like a leper.

Therefore the leprosy of Naaman shall cling to you and to your descendants forever.” So he went out from his presence a leper, like snow. (ESV) 2 Kings 5:27

However it could be positive:

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Psalm 51:7

I think in the context it looks like a positive thing. v16 says “wash yourselves and make yourselves clean”.

8.3) Temples of the holy Spirit?

Another point that came up was whether we are individually thought of as temples of the Holy Spirit in the bible. We are corporately the temple ie:

1 Cor 3:16-17   Do you not know that you (plural) are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in (plural)? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you (plural) are that temple. (ESV)

^BGT 1 Corinthians 3:16 Οὐκ οἴδατε ὅτι ναὸς θεοῦ ἐστε καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦ θεοῦ οἰκεῖ ἐν ὑμῖν; ¹⁷ εἴ τις τὸν ναὸν τοῦ θεοῦ φθείρει, φθερεῖ τοῦτον ὁ θεός· ὁ γὰρ ναὸς τοῦ θεοῦ ἅγιός ἐστιν, οἵτινές ἐστε ὑμεῖς.

All the “yous” (I could only see two in the Greek) are plural.

2 Cor 6:16   …For we are the temple of the living God…

(se also 1 Peter 2:5, Eph 2:21-22)

But are we individually a temple of the holy Spirit? Are there millions of little temples walking around or just one big unified one?

1 Cor 6:18-20 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (ESV)

Is your plural or singular? They are all plural. Does that mean he is talking about a cooperate body? Mmmm not sure. What would the Greek be if he was talking to several people about their individual bodies? Would it be your plural or singular? Actually if the English is anything to go by it would be “glorify God in your (plural) bodies (plural)” but in the Greek body is singular. I’ll get a commentary…”The Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament” says its talking individually but does not engage with the Greek or prove it in any way. I have no other more detailed commentaries. I need more commentaries!

I found this on the internet:

In writing to the Corinthians, Paul said, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit..?” (1 Cor. 6:19) http://www.urbana.org/ephesians/we-are-gods-temple-ephesians-2-21-22

but in the Greek “body” is singular. So why does everyone say it’s each individual body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? I am sure they are right and my little knowledge of Greek is already causing me to make dangerous mistakes. Anyone know?

5th Jan 2010 – Yes, someone did.  Look at Matthew 6:21 “Where your (plural) treasure is, there your (plural) heart (singular) will be also.” You can say “you” plural in the Greek with a singular object X and mean each individual’s X. ie “heart” can be singular but it’s talking about each persons heart not one communal heart. In the context on 1 Cor 6:19 is “body” singular ie “”he who sins sexually sins against his own body” (1 Cor 6:18) ie his individual body. It would seem strange then to move to body meaning “body of all of you”.

8.4 Some early English translations

John Wycliffe was the first to translate the bible into English. Then William Tyndale had a go. His bible has the quaint translation “The Lord was with Joseph and he was a lucky fellow.” of Genesis 39:2. Next Miles Coverdal (1488-1569) wrote a version and then Thomas Mathews, (a pseudonym for John Rogers who was a friend of Tyndale) made the terrible error of translating 1 Peter 3:7 as “He that dwelleth with his wife according to knowledge, taketh her as a necessary helper, and not as a bond servant or a bond slave. And if she be not obedient and helpful to him, endeavoreth to beat the fear of God into her head, that thereby she may be compelled to learn her duty and do it”. His version is sometimes called the wife beaters bible because of this. I have no idea how he came up with this as it’s almost the direct opposite of what the bible actually says:

^NIV 1 Peter 3:7 Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.

Note τιμὴν  ie the honour, reverence and respect, the equality “heirs with you“, and the negative consequences of not treating your wife well.

The least said about the KJV’s translation of 1 Sam 25:22 as “pisseth against the wall” the better. Language moves on and so will I!

8.5 Baptism

The teacher stressed that the Greek word for baptism does not necessarily mean immerse. It has a wider range of meanings.

8.6 Punctuation

There was no punctuation in the original manuscripts but the Greek has grammatical markers in the language to tell you when a new sentence starts.

8.7 James

The Greek name for the Book of James is Ιακωβου so the question is where did the English “James” come from? The French call it the book of “Jack”. Tindayle’s version predates King James so it is not in honour of him.

8.8 John 1:1

Be careful of making too much of a grammatical point but Paul does make much of a word ending “seed” Gal 3:16.

Colwell’s rule that “definite predicate nouns which precede the verb usually lack the article” opens up the possibility for “and the word was the God” but it could still be translated “and the word as a God”. The context must be taken into account in deciding between them. We still need to decide if “God” is “definite” ie requiring the definite article “the” before it. All the rule seems to say is it could be “the God” as well as “a god”.

8.9 Participles

Participles share characteristics with both verbs and nouns. ie “Sitting quietly he dozed off”.

All in all time well spent and inspiring to be around someone who knew and loved the language.

PS. I was inspired after the two days to spend more time memorising the verb endings (conjugations?) for λυος and the declensions for λογς. If I can remember that “the” is “τ” and that apart frοm the singular nominative it’s endings are the same as for λογος then great.

PPS I am really looking forward to getting my Greek book’s for Christmas. Just found this site by their author and watched to a sample lesson. Looks really good. That may have to be my next buy. http://www.learnbiblicalgreek.com/product/basics-biblical-greek-video-lectures-dvd

Page from the 19th-century photo-facsimile of Vaticanus

I am currently engaged in the first semester of a year-long Master of Theology, ‘Theology in History’ at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Divinity (hereafter known as ‘New College’).  In the year 2000, New College purchased a facsimile of Codex Vaticanus.  Vaticanus may well be the oldest manuscript of the Greek Bible we have (from the 300s).  If it isn’t, Codex Sinaiticus is.

I had the opportunity of sitting in a glass room at New College’s library (well within sight of the librarians, I can assure you) and perusing this 6000-dollar volume.

It is a beautiful book.  The pages are heavyweight paper with an exact image of what Vaticanus itself, off in the Vatican looks like (not on vellum — 365 goats for the original are enough, thank you very much).  The pages are all funny sizes and shapes.  They have the holes in the pages where the real codex has its holes.  The decorations are reproduced in full colour.  The rubber stamps from the Vatican Library are clearly visible on the opening pages.

It is a thing of beauty.

Most of Vaticanus is written in uncials — big, block letters that are fairly square in shape and quite easy to read.  You can take a look at the late 19th-century photo-facsimile here (it is much less awesome than the new facsimile).  The first bit and last bit of this old book went missing at some point, so in the fifteenth century someone recopied the missing bits.  Those bits are harder to read, written out in minuscules — tiny, flowy script that runs together and is beautiful yet illegible to the untrained eye.  I deciphered ‘In the beginning, made’ from Genesis 1 before giving up.  No doubt the next word was ‘theos‘.

The beginning of each book has a non-iconic decoration at the top of the column and the first letter written large and in colour.  This makes reading easier, since both uncials and minuscules leave no breaks between words and lack serious punctuation.  The result is large, rectangular columns of text.  Very geometric.

Of course, the Psalms are verse.  Rather than three columns of uncials, you get two.  And they have indentations and uneven lines.  I liked the look of the Psalms in Vaticanus.

Scattered throughout this massive book are scholia, marginal writings by scribes.  They are mostly in minuscule, and there is a page in Proverbs where the margins are entirely filled with text, including the gap between the columns.  I didn’t notice this fact during my own perusal but only later when our professor brought the facsimile to class.  I wonder if that page is Proverbs 8 …

One scholion was comprised of several brief lines of uncial text that got gradually smaller until coming to a point, sort of like the blade of a dagger.

People tend to use these beautiful old books as sources for disembodied texts such as the New Testament, the Septuagint, the ancient classics.  Yet a look at Vaticanus makes you realise that these manuscripts are pieces of material culture.  They are remnants of an age long-past, held together sometimes by sheer force of will (in the case of the sixth-century Codex Alexandrinus in the British Library, divided into four parts, so not even sheer force of will kept that one together).

They are lovely.  They are pieces of art.  They exhibit very fine craftsmanship.

These days, palaeography and textual criticism are starting to look a bit more attractive to me …

by Ibn Anwar

Many Christian apologists argue that the Qur’an and hadith are historically unreliable. It is claimed that this is due to the scarcity of early manuscript evidence for either Qur’an or hadith. The latter is claimed to be far more unreliable because the earliest compilations date back to only Bukhari about 200 years after the fact. The following quotation is taken from a Christian paper on the subject captures the essence of such arguments raised against Islam by Christian missionaries :

“Documentary evidence for the Qur’an has always been difficult, due to the paucity of primary documents at our disposal (as was mentioned in the previous section). The oldest Muslim documents available are the Muslim Traditions, which were initially compiled as late as 765 A.D. (i.e. The Sira of Ibn Ishaq). Yet the earliest documents which we can refer to today are those compiled by Ibn Hisham (the Sira of the prophet), and the large Hadith compilations of al-Bukhari, Muslim and others, all written in the ninth century, and thus 200 to 250 years after the fact. They are much too late to be useful for our study here. Therefore we must go back to the seventh century itself and ascertain what documents are available with which we can corroborate the reliability of the Qur’an.” [1]

There are several erroneous claims made in the above quotation. The oldest surviving Muslim documents are not the ‘Muslim Traditions’, but rather the Qur’an itself. The so called “Qur’an of Uthman” at the Topkapi museum date to the late first century or early second century(hijri). Another so called “Qur’an of Uthman” which is kept at the Turk ve islam Eserleri muzesi is also dated to the late first century or early second century(hijri). Two other “Qur’an of Uthman” are found in Egypt (Masjid Al-Hussain, Cairo and Darul Kutub al-Misriyya) with similar dates. Then there are the first and late first century or early first century San’a manuscripts and codices. All of these and many more predate the the biographical works of Ibn Ishaq and Ibn Hisham and also the hadith compilations of Bukhari and Muslim. The quotation also erroneously claim that all the hadith compilations date to the ninth century(200-250 after the fact). This is also false. The earliest documentation of hadith that has been discovered predate the Sihah Sittah(six authentic compilations e.g. Bukhari and Muslim) and it is the Sahifa of Hammam bin Munabbih written in the mid-first century(hijri). This has been noted by the hadith scholar Dr. M. Hamidullah in Sahifa Hammam bin Munabbih: The Earliest Extant Work On The Hadith. The compilations of hadith by the four great imams are also readily accessible today. All of them and others predate the compilations of Bukhari and the rest of the sihah sittah. The Christian missionary in the quotation claims that “They are much too late to be useful for our study here”. However, it has just been illustrated that this is an extremely inaccurate assertion. Nevertheless, the Christian author has made the judgment that anything that exceeds 200 years is too late to be of any use. Let us employ this criterion that he has used against Islam on his Holy Bible and see how it fairs. In order to do this I will produce scanned pages from Kurt and Barbara Aland’s The text of the New Testament [2] which was translated from their original Der text des Neuen Testaments in German. Both husband and wife(especially Kurt Aland) are notable textual critics and have worked with other prominent textual critics like Bruce Metzger. Kurt Aland was the head of the Institute for New Testament Textual Research in Germany and editor of the Nestle-Aland edition of Novum Testamentum Graece (Greek New Testament). Kurt and Barbara Aland list all the papyri, uncials and minuscules from the earliest to the latest. In the table one can easily ascertain that there are only two documents that can be definitely said to belong to the second century C.E. namely, p52 and p90. The other earliest papyri are p32, p46, p64+67, p66 and p77. They are dated to either the late second century or early/mid third century. Note that no single surviving document dates back to the first century in the table! The overwhelming majority of all the Greek texts date from the 3rd to as late as the 17th century! The following is the table from pages 159 to 162 of The text of the New Testament listing all the Greek texts and manuscripts.

Based on the criterion that the Christian writer and many other Christian apologists also use shall we now discount the whole New Testament as useless since it is not grounded upon any surviving written material from the first century? But what about those very very few papyri from the second century e.g. p52? They do not even account for one percent of the New Testament! If the Christian writer and those like him/her are honest and consistent with the method of assessment utilised then the New Testament must be chucked into the recycling bin as useless.

Reference:

[1] http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/bib-qur/qurdoc.htm

[2] Kurt & Barbara Aland. The test of the New Testament : an introduction to the critical editions and to the theory and practice of modern textual criticism(1989). The Netherlands: Eerdmans & E.J. Brill. p. 159-162