Nomina sacra
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Nomina sacra (singular: nomen sacrum) means "sacred names" in Latin, and can be used to refer to traditions of abbreviated writing of several frequently occurring divine names or titles in early Greek language Holy Scripture. The Bruce Metzger's book Manuscripts of the Greek Bible lists 15 such expressions from Greek papyri: the Greek counterparts of God, Lord, Jesus, Christ, Son, Spirit, David, cross, Mother, Father, Israel, Savior, Man, Jerusalem, and Heaven. It should be noted, however, that the Nomina Sacra for mother did not appear until the 4th century CE.¹ All other Nomina Sacra have been found in Greek manuscripts from the 1st - 3rd Centuries CE. The contractions were written with overlines.

There has been a dispute about the nature of Nomina sacra, whether they represent a mere shorthand or these overlined words indeed bear a sacred meaning.²

IHS or JHS Christogram of western Christianity

Starting in the third century the nomina sacra were sometimes shortened by contraction in Christian inscriptions, resulting in sequences of Greek letters such as IH (iota-eta), IC (iota-sigma), or IHC (iota-eta-sigma) for Jesus (Greek Iēsous), and XC (chi-sigma), XP (chi-ro) and XPC (chi-rho-sigma) for Christ (Greek Christos). Here "C" represents the medieval "lunate" form of Greek sigma; sigma could also be transcribed into the Latin alphabet by sound, giving IHS and XPS. See Christology#Abbreviations for more information.

This tradition is also transferred into Cyrillic manuscripts. See titlo.

List of Greek Nomina Sacra

List of New Testament Greek Manuscripts Containing Nomina Sacra From the First Three Centuries ³

References

1. ^ Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek manuscripts - Philip Comfort and David Barett (1999) pp.34-35
2. ^ Institute for Religious Research: The Tetragrammaton and the Christian Greek Scriptures, Appendix K: Nomina SacraPDF (28.1 KiB)
3. ^ All Nomina Sacra and dates of manuscripts taken from Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek manuscripts - Philip Comfort and David Barett (1999)

Further reading

• Bruce Metzger. Manuscripts of the Greek Bible (1981).
• Philip Comfort and David Barett. Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek manuscripts (1999).
• A.H.R.E. Paap, Nomina Sacra in the Greek Papyri of the First Five Centuries, Papyrologica Lugduno-Batava VIII (Leiden 1959).
• Ph. Comfort, Encountering the Manuscripts: An Introduction to New Testament Paleography and Textual Criticism, Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2005, pp. 199-253.
• L.W. Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins, Cambridge 2006, pp. 95-134.

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Monograms of the name of Jesus Christ