Nomina Sacra

Contents: Introduction * Chart of Nomina Sacra * Footnotes

Introduction

Ancient manuscripts were, of course, written by hand, often in large uncial scripts, on papyrus (moderately expensive) or parchment (even more expensive). The expense of writing materials and the time needed to copy a manuscript meant that every attempt had to be made to save space.

One way to conserve materials was abbreviations. A number of strategies were adopted at one time or another -- e.g. a superscript sigma at the end of a word, a bar representing a terminal nu, or a special symbol such as an elaborate script kappa for KAI.

The Christians went a step further by creating the nomina sacra ("sacred names"). These were abbreviations formed by taking the first one or two letters of certain words, plus the final letter(s) (to determine the inflection), omitting the intervening letters, and drawing a line over the whole.

The reason for the development of the nomina sacra is disputed and will not be covered here.^[1]

The use of nomina sacra became standard at a very early date.^[*2] By the third century their presence or absence can be used to tell a Christian from a Jewish codex of the Old Testament. The use of the abbreviations at this time was slightly haphazard (e.g. one or two scribes might use the abbreviation IS for Joshua; in later use it would have been reserved exclusively for Jesus; similarly, should swthr be abbreviated if not used for Jesus?). One or two marginal abbreviations fluctuated in their use (e.g. the Egerton Gospel abbreviates profhtas). But by Byzantine times a list of fifteen nomina sacra had been generally adopted. They were as follows:

Chart of the Standard Nomina Sacra

Footnotes

1. A good brief summary of ideas on the matter can be found in Bruce M. Metzger, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: An Introduction to Paleography (1981), pp.36-37. [back]

2. There are no nomina sacra visible in P⁵²; the line length perhaps implies the use of the abbreviation IN, but this is not certain (see discussion in the entry on P⁵²). The substantial early papyri use the abbreviations at least intermittently.
According to Scrivener, the Old Uncials use the following abbreviations:

• Vaticanus (B) abbreviates Qeos Kurios Ihsous Cristos pneuma (generally only these, although the Old Testament sometimes abbreviates anqrwpos as well as Israhl Ierousalhm)
• Bezae (D) abbreviates only Qeos Ihsous Kurios Cristos (D F G of Paul also follow this usage, but rather inconsistently)
• Z "seldom abridges."
• S abbreviates Pathr as PTHR
• Codex 700 abbreviates eqnwn as EQN.
• The Bodleian Genesis has an odd abbreviation (PARNOS with a theta above the line) for parqenos.