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Maybe this seems like a silly question, but was it a normal practice of some scribes to leave off the final "nu" when it occurred at the end of a line in the column (lines 4 τεκεῖν and 5 ἔτεκεν)? Also, there is no epsilon for the second occurrence of the final word of line 4 (τεκεῖν). I must admit that I am still learning the ropes of manuscript reading...but I thoroughly enjoy it.
Good question Rick.
It is not that scribes leave of the final NU, but that they represent that Nu by a horizontal line (which you can see in lines 4, 5, and 11).
On your other point it is very very frequent to have EI - I confusion in the manuscripts. When it occurs in this direction it is usually called itacism (from a term that originally referred more to pronunciation than to manuscript representation). Anyway this is so frequent as to be regularly ignored (dangerous obviously if you want to spell Pilate's name properly).
The practice of overlining the last vowel in a word ending in an otherwise unindicated nasal consonant (usually, but not always, 'n') persisted into the printing age and was featured in the first press run of the King James version of the Bible.
Thank you. I had noticed the superscripted line and figured it was there to indicate missing letters (or something similar). And I was wondering if the NU had to do with an auditory smoothing of sorts (and perhaps the EI-I). I really appreciate the clarification.
So you've skipped p4 and p70;).
I couldn't find a good picture of P4!
I couldn't find a good picture of P4!
Question for all: What's the most likely explanation for what occurred to create the space between the letters of EN?
http://chrles.multiply.com/photos/album/124/Bible_Papyrus_p4
An image of P4 can be found here, but it is not very good.
Jonathan, That is a good question. Hard to say for sure. The letter that was scrubbed out in that space appears to have been a nu or maybe a mu. Also looks like a "plus" sign was there. Is it possible that the original hand wrongly wrote two nus for the preposition here? However, if this was correct I would have expected him to scrub out the second nu at the end of the line so the gap would not be apparent. I would be interested in reading the suggestions other might have.
I didn't realize until now that one could click on that image on the main page to zoom in and get a closer look. It may have been an eta, which would be a strange lapse, to write EHN when you needed the preposition EN. But that would explain why a corrector would have scrubbed out the middle letter.
Jonathan,
Hard to say. Without spending much time investigationg this, my guess is that the copyist initially wrote "EPI." Then to correct the mistake, the "P" was struck-through (and, later, erased) and the "I" was used as the first stroke of "N."
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
James...that sounds very plausible. Makes me wonder though why the corrector wouldn't have simply scratched off the iota, and the top bar of the pi, and then drew in the angled crossbar for the nu.
For the record, Scrivener, Alford, Swanson, and IGNTP-Lk all cite the original hand of Sinaiticus as reading EPI, corrected to EN.
P4: Fragment Ar
http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Daguerre&O=22013367&E=JPEG&NavigationSimplifiee=ok&typeFonds=noir
Darrell,
Generally, these scribes didn't like to leave blank space at the end of lines except at the ends of sentences/paragraphs.
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
Bob, how did you access the image of p4 on BNF? I can find the index to all the mss, but no images. And my French is not too good. ;-)
Hi michael,
Go to the BNF.fr home page (www.bnf.fr) and select the english option at the top of the page.
Under "Collections and Services" there is a category "Reproductive services". Under that category, there is a link called "Picture Collection". Click on the Picture Collection Link.
In the search box type Grec 1120 and click the Rechercher button. Along with some other cruft, there is 8 images (4 fragments of p4, recto and verso).
The purpose of the site is allow you to get an idea of what you can order from the library reproductive services desk. The images are quite pricey, so you don't want to wind up with "Reliure à la grecque en maroquin noir aux armes de François Ier, avec encadrement intérieur de filets " when you wanted p4.
bob
Your help is much appreciated.
Thank you.
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