[sword-devel] clean bible or bad phantasy?

Patrick Narkinsky sword-devel@crosswire.org
Thu, 05 Dec 2002 14:06:55 -0500


Thus spake "porton@narod.ru"> :

>> Thus spake "Daniel Russell"> :
>> 
>> unlikely to volunteer to work on one.  I do feel "an itch" for an aspirated
>> Westcott-Hort with UBS4 variants (contrary to popular belief, Paleographers
>> think that the earliest Greek texts WERE aspirated, just not accented), so I
> 
> Thank you for info Patrick, this is important. Was thin and thick aspirations
> different 2000 years ago? I guess that no as (in modern typography variant)
> one needs good enough eyes to differenciate these, do I guess rightly?
> 
> OK, I for aspiration. Is it enough, Patrick, a "generalized aspiration" (with
> no difference between thin and thick)?


Only "thick aspirants" (in English we usually call them rough breathing
marks) were marked. Since the smooth breathings are soundless, they were not
marked.  If you take a close look at a picture of P52 (a fragment of John
from ca. 125) you can actually see an aspiration, IIRC over the article.
Pictures are available at various places on the net. At that time, they were
using two dots (i.e. an umlaut) above the vowel.

> What was position of subscript iota in the most ancient texts (none,
> subscript, or normal?) Well, seemingly I already asked it somewhere some
> months ago, but my memory...
>                  
> Well, accordingly to your info (devil worked much to make infos on such
> question from different sources different) was in the most ancient manuscripts
> proper names capitalized?

There were no iota subscripts, and all letters were capitalized.  I'm not
aware of any first century exceptions to that, but I'm not a paleographer,
so could be wrong.

Patrick

--
Patrick Narkinsky - Apprentice Pastor, Hope Community Church - 757-652-9540

"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons
exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." - Chesterton