Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 22:36:59 -0500
To: ekrentz@lstcc.edu
From: "Carl W. Conrad" <
Subject: Re: Orthography rather than scripture
Maurice sent this query to me yesterday regarding how numeral 7 was
represented in uncial MSS. I've brought fewer reference resources with
me
to Carolina this summer and can't find the answer in net resources
thus
far, so I am doing as Maurice suggested, posting it on to the list;
the
query is more interesting than my response, I'm sorry to say.
At 4:02 PM +0100 5/23/99, Maurice A. O'Sullivan wrote:
>Carl:
>My query arises from Ac 19:14 but has more to do with orthography, so
I beg
>your indulgence..
>
>In the second edition of his " To Advance the Gospel", Joseph
Fitzmyers has
>an article ti8tled:
>"A Certain Sceva, a Jew, a Chief Priest ( Ac. 16:14 )."
>
>In his preliminary remarks, Fitzmyers raises the issue of how many
sons
>Sceva had.
>Was it seven as in the RSV -- following the Alexandrian text --:
>" Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva ......."?
>Or was the number not specified, as in all but one of the "Western
text" mss?
>The latter, he surmises is " almost certainly because of AMFOTERWN in
>19:16", --- a word which normally means 'both' but has been
translated
>'all' in the RSV due to an editorial comment by Metzger about it
having
>this meaning in sub-standard Greek.
>
>Then, in a footnote, Fitzmyer notes:
>"In the first century Greek 'Beta' { here the reader sees a Greek
font
>lower case 'beta' [= 2 ] looked very much like { here the reader sees
what
>looks very like a Greek font 'final sigma' } [= 7 ] ".
>
>It was only when I checked with Smyth ( s. 347, 348 ) that I realized
that
>the "alphabetic" system of representing numbers had come early enough
for
>the Digamma to be taken = 7 -- thus abiding by Phoenician
alphabetical order.
>
>According to Smyth, the alphabetical/numeral system " apparently
invented
>in the fifth B.C, became dominant in the Hellenistic period, and has
lasted
>till now". He notes also that later Digamma was replaced by that sign
very
>similar to 'final sigma' because it was an abbreviation of 'sigma-tau'
=
>STIGMA
I checked this in Edward Maunde Thompson, An Introdution to
Greek and Latin Palaeography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912)
91-92.
He notes that there were two systems to express numbers in Greek
Uncial MSS: (1) The older system used the initial letters of the names
of some numbers to express them, e.g. PIO for 5, D for 10, M for
10,000, etc.
(2) The system that Maurice described was in full use by the III
century BC. It used "the first nine letters of the alphabet for the
units and the rest for the tens and hundreds, disused letters being
still retained for numeration, vis. digamma for 6, which in its early
form appears as [to look like a final sigma, later develops into a
reverse q (stigma, a combination of sigma and tau); koppa for 90, and
"a symbol derived from the old letter san, which
appears in papyri as [T" or another symbol and in later periods as
sampi. Numerals usually had a horizontal stroke above them. Arabic
numerals first appear in the tenth century, but do not come into
general use until the fourteenth.
The same information is given in his A Handbook of Greek and
Latin Palaeography (1893)104-106. (ISBN 0-89005-094-5). It's
been reprinted by Ares Publishers Inc.
7020 N. Western Ave.
Chicago, IL 60645
>
>So that is what underlies Fitzmyer's note about confusing 'Beta' and
'stigma'.
>
>Now, for my question: as long as mss were in majuscule there was no
need
>for a 'final sigma' form -- but once minuscule and cursive scripts
because
>common, with the 'final sigma' form appearing, how did they manage to
>maintain 'stigma' = 7 "until now"?
>
>P.S If you think this query -- and your answer, of course < --
warrants
>posting to the list, please feel free to do so.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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Edgar Krentz
Professor Emeritus of New Testament
Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
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Chicago, IL 60615
Telephone: (773) 256-0752; Dean's Office:
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Office: ekrentz@lstc.edu [preferred for anything professional]
Home: emkrentz@mcs.com [Tel: 773-947-8105]
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Edgar Krentz
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