Nomina Sacra: Sacred Names
In many Greek manuscripts a series of abbreviations are used called nomina sacra or sacred names. These abbreviations are used for various words and names associated with God, such as “God” θεός, “Jesus” Ἰησοῦς, “Christ” Χριστός and “Spirit” πνεῦμα.
The nomina sacra consist or the first letter and last letter of the word, sometimes with a third letter from the middle of the word, with a bar drawn over the top.
The origin of this system is not well understood, but it seems to have been used with the very earliest of manuscripts. The following image is from a manuscript often dated within 100 years of the originals.
It seems to have been conducted out of a sense of reverence for the persons referred to by the word rather than a space saving device.
Below we give some examples so that the reader can understand how they are used.
This image is taken from the manuscript called 𝔓75, or the Bodmer Papyrus which contains a large portion of Luke and John. It is an extremely early manuscript, some estimating its age as the mid second century.
You can see these abbreviations in the images, highlighted in yellow (note we added the yellow highlight, it is not in the original manuscript.)The abbreviation consists of two and sometimes three letters, the first and last letter of the word with a line drawn over the top. In the first image you see the first letter Θ and last latter Ν. This stands for θεόν or “God”. The first letter indicates the word the last letter tells us the function of the word in the sentence, in this case that it is the object of a preposition (or to use the correct Greek grammatical terminology, that the word is “accusative”.)
You can see the next word is also God θεός, “God”, but this time it uses the same first letter Θ but the last letter is now a Σ. This is a little hard to see in the image both because it is blurred and because at this time in Greek orthography a capital sigma was written more like an English capital C. But you can see the difference. Here the word is θεός with the last letter telling us it is the subject of a verb (or as we call it in Greek grammar, the “nominative”.)
This excerpt is from Chester Beatty’s papyrus 𝔓46, a page from Romans 15:29 and following. Here we see many nomina sacra (again highlighted in yellow):
- ΧΡΥ – Χριστοῦ “Christ’s”, here the final letter indicates the “genitive” case. Notice that here we have three letters.
- KΥ – κυρίου “Lord’s” here the final letter indicates the “genitive” case.
- ΙΗΥ – Ἰησοῦ “Jesus'” in the “genitive”. Again, here they use three letters.
- ΧΡΥ – Χριστοῦ “Christ’s”, also in the “genitive”. Notice that here we have three letters.
- ΠΝΣ – πνεύματος “spirit”, again in the “genitive”.