Vernon,
I do not understand your argument. All Greek MSS until about the 9th
cent. were uncial. Then the cursive hand began to be used, with the
uncial forms used strictly as capitals. Thus IHC (approximately) was an
abbreviation of "Jesus." The later full form would capitalize the iota
and use l.c. for the rest of the word, which might be abbreviated. So
something that looked like X with a superscript p was the abbreviation
for christos. It might also have the case ending in the superscript.
The gospels fall into the period when there were no capital letters (it
was later when uncial forms were used for capitals), and when the
improper diphthongs were not necessarily written. "Corrected" Greek
(modern version) inserted iota subscripts where very ancient Greeks would
have written a following letter. But this does not establish that John
would have written the iota in his uncial version. The only evidence I
have is that it was not written in two places in a verse from Esther in a
4th cent MS. I do not know whether it was the same scribe who transcribed
the gospels and parts of the Old Testament. As I understand your
argument, because it was written before 100 B.C. and after A.D. 1200, and
might have been written during the intervening period, it should be
counted. Should I insist that final sigma must be counted as 6 rather
than 200, I'd be as reasonable.
Dave
On Mon, 09 Jul 2001 20:34:35 +0100 Vernon Jenkins
<vernon.jenkins@virgin.net> writes:
> David,
>
> Concerning your question re the 'iota subscript', I have today
> contacted
> a friend and former Professor of Classics who informs me as follows:
>
> Before c100BC, the iota (involved with alpha, eta or omega as second
> vowel of a dipthong) was invariably written on the line. However,
> around
> this time the articulation of this letter began to disappear;
> consequently, over the succeeding centuries it was frequently
> omitted
> from written Greek texts.
>
> This situation continued until c1200AD when, with the revival of
> scholarship, it was thought appropriate and grammatically correct to
> restore the missing iota - but now as a subscript to the first vowel
> of
> the dipthong. The one exception to this rule was that capitalised
> words
> (the so-caled 'uncial' script) would have the iota on the line.
>
> Clearly, while we will never know John's precise rendering of the
> written Greek, we do know from our understanding of classical Greek
> grammar that the dipthong concerned has iota as its second element.
>
> These facts, taken with the other evidences to which Iain has
> recently
> alluded, surely confirm the legitimacy of our reading of John 1:1.
>
> Regards,
>
> Vernon
>
> http://www.otherbiblecode.com
>
>
> D. F. Siemens, Jr. wrote:
> >
> > Peter,
> > I have to question the counting of iota. In the _Westminster
> > Dictionary of the Bible_ (1944), p. 622, there is a reproduction
> of
> > Esther 2:6-8 of the LXX from the Codex Sinaiticus (4th cent.).
> The
> > modern text has subscript iotas on TOUTO and AUTE (v. 7). The
> ancient
> > text does not have iotas. I do not know when datives were
> modified
> > with the iota subscript, but they are not part of the original
> sacred
> > text. Is not using a modernized text to make things come out right
> > illegitimate?
> > Dave
> >
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Jul 09 2001 - 16:48:59 EDT