{"id":23460,"date":"2013-12-31T17:44:59","date_gmt":"2014-01-01T00:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/?p=23460"},"modified":"2015-03-19T16:54:49","modified_gmt":"2015-03-19T23:54:49","slug":"icon-text-and-the-nomina-sacra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/2013\/12\/31\/icon-text-and-the-nomina-sacra\/","title":{"rendered":"Weird stuff I find interesting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today a question was posted on an article<\/a>\u00a0I wrote a couple of years ago. The query was an intriguing one and the investigation to find the answer\u00a0took some interesting turns, so I thought I’d write about it briefly. Here was the question that was asked:<\/p>\n

“My Aunt had an icon of the Theotokos of the Passion…[with] the words, \u0395\u039d \u0395KK\u039b\u0395\u03a5\u039b\u039f\u0393\u0395\u0399\u03a4\u0395 \u03a4\u039f\u039d \u0398\u0395\u039f\u039d. Can you tell me what this means?”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Now, I’m no Greek scholar. Not in the slightest. I’m reasonably familiar with the alphabet and I know how to use a lexicon. Apart from that, I just know a handful of Greek words so as to impress girls at bible studies.<\/p>\n

It’s (mostly familiar) Greek to me<\/h2>\n

Thankfully, three of the four words in the questioner’s text also appear in the the prologue<\/a> of John’s Gospel, with which I’m familiar. I therefore instantly knew what some of the words meant. The word “\u0395\u039d” <\/em><\/span>means “in”. “\u03a4\u039f\u039d”<\/em><\/span> is the article used with an accusative cased noun, in this case, “\u0398\u0395\u039f\u039d<\/span>“<\/em>, which means “God”<\/em>. So, the sentence read to my mind: “In …. the God”<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I didn’t know what the second word, “\u0395KK\u039b\u0395\u03a5\u039b\u039f\u0393\u0395\u0399\u03a4\u0395”<\/em><\/span>, meant and I couldn’t find it in a lexicon.\u00a0I “sounded out” the word and saw that it began with “ecc-lay-….”, which sounded an awful lot like “ekklesia”<\/em><\/span>, which I knew meant “church”<\/em> or assembly. A little bit of googling later, and found a phrase which looked very similar:<\/p>\n

\u0395\u039d \u0395\u039a\u039a\u039b\u0397\u03a3\u0399\u0391\u0399\u03a3 \u0395\u03a5\u039b\u039f\u0393\u0395\u0399\u03a4\u0395 \u03a4\u039f\u039d \u0398\u0395\u039f\u039d<\/em><\/span>
\nIn the assemblies\/churches praise God<\/p>\n

I contacted my friend Steve with this suggestion since he’s far more familiar with Greek. He confirmed my suspicion that the text given by the questioner was a corrupted form of this verse. If anyone else knows anything different, please leave a comment below.<\/p>\n

Ad Fontes!<\/h2>\n

As we were online discussing this verse, Steve sent me a link to the Greek text\u00a0Codex Sinaiticus<\/a>, the earliest copy we have of the complete<\/em> New Testament. Specifically, he sent me a link to\u00a0Psalm 67(68), verse 26<\/a>:
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Text\"<\/p>\n

As you can see, this isn’t the easiest thing in the world to read! Early texts like these are generally written all in capitals, with all the words joined together. IFIDIDITWOULDBERATHERDIFFICULTTOREAD!<\/p>\n

Nomina Sacra<\/h2>\n

In my earlier posts concerning icons of\u00a0Jesus<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Mary<\/a>\u00a0I mentioned that textual abbreviations are often used in icons. This is called in the Nomina Sacra<\/a>\u00a0(“Sacred Name”) and, if you look carefully at the manuscript from the codex, you can see that its use is present here:<\/p>\n

\"Text\"<\/p>\n

The word circled is\u00a0\u0398\u0395\u039f\u039d<\/em>, which means “God”, but you can see that not all the letters are present. Instead, only the first and last letters are used,\u00a0\u0398\u039d<\/em>, with a line drawn over the top.<\/p>\n

Am I weird that I find stuff like this interesting?<\/p>\n

On second thought, don’t answer that….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today a question was posted on an article\u00a0I wrote a couple of years ago. The query was an intriguing one and the investigation to find the answer\u00a0took some interesting turns, so I thought I’d write about it briefly. Here was the question that was asked: “My Aunt had an icon of the Theotokos of the Passion…[with] the words, \u0395\u039d \u0395KK\u039b\u0395\u03a5\u039b\u039f\u0393\u0395\u0399\u03a4\u0395<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[2969,74,182,2449],"class_list":["post-23460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","tag-featured","tag-greek","tag-icons","tag-nomina-sacra"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23460"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56769,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23460\/revisions\/56769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}