A brief segment of the History International documentary, "The Rise of
Christianity" mentioned an Apostle's village started before 41 A.D. by Peter and
other Apostles.  It was described as a commune were everyone shared but used the
wealth of the community to send out evangelists.  I have never heard of this
village before.

It seems to me that this place and time would have been the primary source of
oral, and possibly written traditions.  Does anyone have a source for more
information about it?

Tom Saunders
Platter Flats, OK


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The enigmatic character of the "lion saying" can be tentatively reduced in
yet another way.

Textual critics have questioned the integrity of this portion of the
manuscript. "The phrase 'and the lion will become human' [Bethge
translation] could be a copyists error that may have even occurred already
in the underlying Greek Vorlage, and can possibly be deleted. Although
emendation to 'and the person will be the lion' produces a formal
parallelism, it is not unproblematic with regard to content" [_The Fifth
Gospel_, p 8].

If this suggestion is accepted, the saying becomes less opaque. It would
read as follows:

"Jesus says: 'Blessed is the lion that a person will eat [...] and anathema
is the person whom a lion will eat [...].'"

It then is not a whole lot different from a hunting guide's laconic
aphorism, "Some days you get a bear, other days a bear gets you."

But, admittedly, this reconstruction does not completely reduce the saying's
impenetrable character. There is very little question that it circulated in
the form in which it is now preserved in the Coptic mss. It must have had
some resonance for the transmitters. It's interesting to read some of the
suggestions that have been made in this regard.


Rick Hubbard
Humble Maine Woodsman

Tom Saunders asks,

>>A brief segment of the History International documentary,
"The Rise of Christianity" mentioned an Apostle's village
started before 41 A.D. by Peter and other Apostles.  It was
described as a commune were everyone shared but used the
wealth of the community to send out evangelists.  I have
never heard of this village before.

It seems to me that this place and time would have been the
primary source of oral, and possibly written traditions.
Does anyone have a source for more information about it?<<

This just sounds like a politically correct way to refer to
the situation described in Acts 2:44-47. Some commentators
used to say this was a "commune" (and it was) but that makes
it seem like the early Christians were some sort of
"Commies." "Village" preserves the communal angle but
doesn't sound bad. Still, what the heck is a village doing
smack dab in the middle of Jerusalem? <please, no smart alec
comments from the lurkers about Jerusalem being not much of
a town ... yeah, yeah, yeah>

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA

Meyer writes:

> Thanks for the e-mail message.  I'm about to publish a book with Trinity Press
> International, entitled Secret Gospels, with essays on Thomas and Secret Mark,
and
> the essays you mention are to be part of the collection.  Hence, I'm sure the
> publisher would not be pleased to have these essays republished on the web at
this
> time!  Maybe a little later, after the book appears, we could discuss the
matter
> again.

The essays mentioned were:

> > "Making Mary Male: The Categories 'Male' and 'Female' in the Gospel of
Thomas",
> > _New Testament Studies_ 31, 1985, 554-570.
> >
> > "The Beginning of the Gospel of Thomas", _Semeia_ 52, 1990, 161-73.

best,
Peter Kirby

A village in the middle of Jerusalem?  Healed at the Temple?  Receive the Holy
Spirit?  Where???????
(see below Acts 38-47, Letter of Peter to Philip)

Somebody please explain to me how the followers of Jesus suddenly became
eligible to do all these priestly things in the Jewish Temple.  Or are we
talking about the first Christian 'Temple" in the Apostle's village?  And I'm
thinking outskirts of Jerusalem.

  Acts 2-38,47
  38.  And Peter said unto them, Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in
the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins; and ye shall receive
the gift of the Holy Spirit.
  39.  For to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all that are afar
off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call unto him.
  40.  And with many other words he testified, and exhorted them, saying, Save
yourselves from this crooked generation.
  41.  They then that received his word were baptized: and there were added unto
them in that day about three thousand souls.
  42.  And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in
the breaking of bread and the prayers.
  43.  And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done
through the apostles.
  44.  And all that believed were together, and had all things common;
  45.  and they sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all,
according as any man had need.
  46.  And day by day, continuing stedfastly with one accord in the temple, and
breaking bread at home, they took their food with gladness and singleness of
heart,
  47.  praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to
them day by day those that were saved.

"Now you will fight against them (human leaders?) in this way, for the archons
are fighting against the inner man. And you are to fight against them in this
way: Come together and teach in the world." (Letter to Peter from Philip)

Then they went to Jerusalem and the Temple leaders of course welcomed them right
in to take over and to promote Christian followers?  NOT!  (This from Meyer,
notes of Letter to Pete....  According to the reports of James Robinson and
Stephen Emmel, another Coptic text of the Letter of Peter to Philip is to be
found in the codex, which at the present time, is neither published nor
available for study) Has anyone any knowledge of this other text?

Would not the Apostle's Village have standing, venue, and jurisdiction for the
first real Christian Church?

Tom Saunders
Platter Flats, OK


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Tom Saunders asks:

>>Somebody please explain to me how the followers of Jesus
suddenly became eligible to do all these priestly things in
the Jewish Temple.  Or are we talking about the first
Christian 'Temple" in the Apostle's village?  And I'm
thinking outskirts of Jerusalem.<<

I'm not sure what you are asking. What is so priestly about
continuing "steadfastly in the apostles' teaching and
fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers" with
the apostles doing "many wonders and signs," as they all
fellowshipped "together, and had all things common," selling
their possessions and goods" ... parceling the proceeds from
the sale "to all, according as any man had need" and
continued "steadfastly with one accord in the temple, and
breaking [their] bread at home, they took their food with
gladness and singleness of heart, praising God"?

I was being facetious in my earlier post about an "apostle's
village" in Jerusalem, suggesting the term makes one think
of something like Greenwich Village in NYC. First of all,
Jerusalem probably did not have anything resembling a
Greenwich Village. Acts simply says that they liquidated
their assets and pooled their resources in a communal manner
while living in Jerusalem and attending the temple much of
the time to pray and thank God.

Instead of imagining that they established some sort of new
temple outside of town, you would be better served asking
yourself what about the "apostles' teaching" made them sell
everything they had and spend every day "continuing
steadfastly with one accord in the temple" in an excited
fervor as they said special prayers. What were they praying
for? Sounds all so "ends of days-ish".

Kinda makes me think of the "Golden temple of Amritsar"
which became filled with militant Sikhs demanding an
independent Sikh state in Punjab in the early 80s. These
smuggled in hundreds of automatic weapons, rocket propelled
grenades and launchers, mortars and tens of thousands of
rounds of ammunition, and then held off the Indian army in a
running gun battle for some time when they tried to disarm
them in 1984.

But, of course, that is outrageous...

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA

David Hindley writes:

   I was being facetious in my earlier post about an "apostle's
   village" in Jerusalem, suggesting the term makes one think
   of something like Greenwich Village in NYC.

   My reasoning in bringing up the 'Apostle's Villiage' is that it makes no sense
that the Apostles actually practiced their new religion in the Jewish Temple. 
Scripture does not make it clear that the Apostles actually built a seperate
church within the villiage, but that could be the case. Unless, it was their
intention to build a church within men which would negate the need for an actual
designated structure.

   I think the records of Stephan and James being executed at "the Temple" and
other references to it has hidden the possibility that there was actually a
designated site in Jerusalem used exclusively by the early Christians. 
Regardless of an actual structure this would be 'ground zero' for the beginnings
of the first common Christian literature.

   Peter is reputed to have converted 3000 in one day.  As this is the only
numerical figure we have on that early Christian population, based on a literacy
rate of one half a percent .5, that leaves 15 people literate.  Am I off the
mark here?

   Tom Saunders
   Platter Flats, OK






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

>   Peter is reputed to have converted 3000 in one day.  As this is the
> only numerical figure we have on that early Christian population,
> based on a literacy rate of one half a percent .5, that leaves 15 people
> literate.  Am I off the mark here?

I've often wondered if the ancient literacy rate might not have
been much higher than commonly supposed.  We English speakers
tend to think reading and writing is very hard because we try to
cram some 40 sounds, give or take, into 26 letters, then try to
spell each of those sounds a half dozen ways each, resulting in
a written language that virtually hieroglyphic in complexity.

Given a language with a smaller number of sounds, and only one
symbol per sound, how hard is it really to get to the point where
you can sound out a sentence, or write something another person
could read and understand?  I dare say most any intelligent person
could probably reach that point in a day or two of serious effort.
Now granted that person is not going to be reading or writing a
large number of words per minute, but ...

What if the preference for short sayings in the synoptic Gospels is
not entirely because Jesus always taught that way, as opposed to using
extended discourses, as the Jesus Seminar folk suppose, but because
the earliest church had large numbers of such marginally literate
persons, and so a short saying distilling Jesus' teaching was something
they could profitably read and understand?



      mailto:jeff@...        http://www.jeff-jackson.com

I'm curious what might be a good reference source that talks about literacy
rates in Jerusalem during the early first century.  I keep hearing that it
was very low, but I've yet to hear a lot of hard facts to support these
numbers.

Michael Mozina
Mt. Shasta, CA

----- Original Message -----
From: "Rick Hubbard" <rhubbard@...>
To: <gthomas@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, July 01, 2002 5:46 AM
Subject: RE: [GTh] The Lion Passage


Rick wrote:-> The enigmatic character of the "lion saying" can be
tentatively reduced in
> yet another way.
>
> Textual critics have questioned the integrity of this portion of the
> manuscript. "The phrase 'and the lion will become human' [Bethge
> translation] could be a copyists error ...., and can possibly be deleted.
>
> If this suggestion is accepted, the saying becomes less opaque. It would
> read as follows:
>
> "Jesus says: 'Blessed is the lion that a person will eat [...] and
anathema
> is the person whom a lion will eat [...].'"
>
> It then is not a whole lot different from a hunting guide's laconic
> aphorism, "Some days you get a bear, other days a bear gets you."

Or, from a non Main-Woodsman, or urban perspective, "Sometimes you are the
dog and sometimes you are the fire-hydrant?'

Seems a bit pointless, even if we abreviate it as suggested, unless Jesus
was trying to make a life-wisdom joke. Har Har- good one!

Seriously though, how is the lion either "blessed" or "lucky" in being
killed and eaten by a man? Somehow the animal flesh is "raised" in
significance and "sacramentalized" by being consumed by the superior human
and being made human flesh???? Lion flesh becomes human flesh and thus the
lion is sacramentaliszed and therefore lucky at being a human victim? Lucky
chickens, lucky fish, lucky cows, lucky turnips- they ultimately became
human, so they are Lucky or blessed retroactvely or postumously because they
served the needs of a "higher life-form"? Those whom man does not consume
are unlucy or accursed? What the hell is being said here? Human beings are
instruments of sacrilization by what they eat????????

  As far as what is normative, UNLUCKY is the lion which a man consumes and
the lion becomes man. It's dead. Likewise, the turnip.

What, on earth is confirmed upon our dead lion or dead turnip for having
served as fodder for living humans? What is their reward? In what sense are
they "Lucky " or "Blessed". How to they "survive" to reap this "blessing"? A
dead Lion is a dead lion. So with the turnip. Where is the "luck"?

What is disturbing about Thomas is that sayings that can be found that
suggest that we ourselves should permit ourselves to be "eaten".

Well screw that.

Ron McCann
Saskatoon, Canada

Jim Bauer:

Here was the only response I was able to get from the TC
list with regard to my inquiry about the Bruce Codex.

------------------------------------------------------------
----------

Subject: Re: The MSS of the Bruce Codex, some details
please...
From: John Lupia <jlupia2@...>
Date: Sun, 30 Jun 2002 15:35:55 -0700 (PDT)
X-Message-Number: 5

Dear David:

The best reference is an article written by Michael
Allen Williams, "Codex Brucianus," in The Anchor Bible
Dictionary, ed. D. N. Freedman (New York: Doubleday,
1992).  For additional information write to:

Bodleian Library
Broad Street
Oxford
OX1 3BG
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0) 1865 277152
Fax: +44 (0) 1865 277187
E-mail: western.manuscripts@...
http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/

------------------------------------------------------------
----------

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA

--- In gthomas@y..., "Ron McCann" <ronmccann1@s...> wrote:
> Somehow the animal flesh is "raised" in
> significance and "sacramentalized" by being consumed by the
superior human
> and being made human flesh???? Lion flesh becomes human flesh and
thus the
> lion is sacramentaliszed and therefore lucky at being a human
victim?
> ...
> What, on earth is confirmed upon our dead lion or dead turnip for
having
> served as fodder for living humans? What is their reward? In what
sense are
> they "Lucky " or "Blessed". How to they "survive" to reap
this "blessing"? A
> dead Lion is a dead lion. So with the turnip. Where is the "luck"?
>
> What is disturbing about Thomas is that sayings that can be found
that
> suggest that we ourselves should permit ourselves to be "eaten".
>
> Well screw that.
>
> Ron McCann
> Saskatoon, Canada

Ron,
The way I read it,
we are talking about two different lions.
One is a reference to any animal flesh consumed in "the circle of
life", especially by a higher order being (human) capable of
consciousness.(self-consciousness=God-consciousness)
The other lion is an evil archon/demon/Yaldabaoth who wants to live
within a human form.
There seems to have been a belief that some aspect of even animals
lived on and was transformed after being eaten by another species.
It would help to know more about 1st Century biological thinking.
Randall Wilson
Lebanon, Il
USA

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Mozina" <michael@...>
To: <gthomas@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 02, 2002 6:00 PM
Subject: [GTh] Literacy rates in Jerusalem during the first century.


> I'm curious what might be a good reference source that talks about
literacy
> rates in Jerusalem during the early first century.  I keep hearing that it
> was very low, but I've yet to hear a lot of hard facts to support these
> numbers.

a.. Baines, J., 'Literacy and Ancient Egyptian Society', Man (n.s.), 18
(1983), pp. 572-599.

a.. Baines, J., and C. J. Eyre, 'Four Notes on Literacy', Goettinger
Miszellen, 61 (1983), pp. 65-96.

a.. Baines, J., 'Literacy, social organization, and the archeological
record: the case of early Egypt', John Gledhill, Barbara Bender and Mogens
Trolle Larsen (eds.), State and Society: The Emergence and development of
social hierarchy and political centralization, London: Unwin Hyman, 1988,
pp. 192-214.

a.. Bar-Ilan, M., 'Illiteracy as reflected in the Halakhot concerning the
Reading of the Scroll of Esther and the Hallel', Proceedings of the American
Academy for Jewish Research, 54 (1987), pp. 1-12 (Hebrew).

a.. Bar-Ilan, M., 'From Scroll to Codex and its Effect on Reading the
Torah', Sinai, 107 (1991), pp. 242-254 (Hebrew).

a.. Bar-Ilan, M., 'Illiteracy in the Land of Israel in the First Centuries
C.E.', S. Fishbane, S. Schoenfeld and A. Goldschlaeger (eds.), Essays in the
Social Scientific Study of Judaism and Jewish Society, II, New York: Ktav,
1992, pp. 46-61. (Abstract).

a.. Bar-Ilan, M., 'The Literate Woman in Antiquity', a chapter in the book
by: idem. Some Jewish Women in Antiquity, Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press (Brown
Judaic Studies 317), 1998 (Abstract).

a.. Beard, M. (ed.), Literacy in the Roman World, Ann arbor, MI: Journal of
Roman Archaeology, 1991.

a.. Bowman Alan K., and Greg Woolf (eds.), Literacy and power in the ancient
world, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

a.. Bryan, Betsy M., 'Evidence for Female Literacy from Theban Tombs of the
New Kingdom', Bulletin of the Egyptological Seminar, 6 (1985), pp. 17-32.

a.. Cipolla, Carlo M., Literacy and Development in the West, Penguin Books,
Middlesex England 1969.

a.. Cole, Susan Guettel, 'Could Greek Woman Read and Write?', Helene P.
Foley (ed.), Reflections of Women in Antiquity, New York - London - Paris
1981, pp. 219-245.

a.. Demsky A., and M. Bar-Ilan, 'Writing in Ancient Israel and Early
Judaism', Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum, Section II, vol.
I, MIKRA, M. J. Mulder (ed.), van Gorcum, Assen / Maastricht & Fortress
Press, Philadelphia 1988, pp. 1-38.

a.. Gerhardson, B., Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and Written
Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity, Lund 1961.

a.. Gerhardson, B., Tradition and Transmission in Early Christianity,
Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksaard, 1964.

a.. Goody, J. (ed.), Literacy in Traditional Societies, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1968.

a.. Goody, J., The Domestication of the Savage Mind, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1977.

a.. Gosal, G. S., 'Literacy in India: An Interpretative Study', Rural
Sociology, 29 (1964), pp. 261-277.

a.. Graff, H., Literacy in History: An Interdisciplinary Research
Bibliography with adendum, Chicago: Newberry Library, 1976 (rep. 1979).

a.. Graff, H. (ed.), Literacy and Social Development, Cambridge 1981.

a.. Harris, W. V., Ancient Literacy, Cambridge, Massachusetts - London,
England, 1989.

a.. Harris, W. V., 'Greco-Roman Literacy and Comparative Method', The
History Teacher, 24/1 (1990), pp. 93-98.

a.. Harris, William V., 'Why Did the Codex Supplant the Book-Roll?', John
Monfasani and Ronald G. Musto (eds.), Renaissance Society and Culture,
Essays in Honor of Eugene F. Rice, Jr., Italica Press, New York, 1991, pp.
71-85.

a.. Harvey, F. D., 'Literacy in the Athenian Democracy', REG, 79 (1966), pp.
585-635.

a.. Havelock, Eric A., The Literate Revolution in Ancient Greece and Its
Cultural Consequences, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982.

a.. Hezser, Catherine, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine, Tuebingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2001.

a.. Jaffee, M. S., 'Writing and Rabbinic Oral Tradition: On Mishnaic
narrative, Lists and Mnemonics', The Journal of Jewish Thought and
Philosophy, 4 (1994), pp. 123-146.

a.. Keller-Cohen, Deborah (ed.), Literacy: Interdisciplinary Conversations,
Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press, 1994.

a.. Krishan G., and M. Shyam, 'Literacy Pattern of India Cities', Geoforum,
19 (1974), pp. 77-80.

a.. Krishan G., and M. Shyam, 'Regional Aspects of Urban-Rural Differential
in Literacy in India: 1971', The Journal of Developing Areas, 13 (1978), pp.
11-21.

a.. Larsen, M. T., 'Introduction: literacy

In a message dated 7/2/02 9:17:16 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
ronmccann1@... writes:


>
> What, on earth is confirmed upon our dead lion or dead turnip for having
> served as fodder for living humans? What is their reward? In what sense are
> they "Lucky " or "Blessed". How to they "survive" to reap this "blessing"?
> A
> dead Lion is a dead lion. So with the turnip. Where is the "luck"?
>
> What is disturbing about Thomas is that sayings that can be found that
> suggest that we ourselves should permit ourselves to be "eaten".
>
> Well screw that.
>
> Ron McCann
> Saskatoon, Canada
>
>

Support for this view can be found from an equally cryptic line from another
culture's milieu, the authorship of which has been attributed to the
marquee's nom de plume  though rumor has it that this line was actually
*spoken* by an actual person in an actual war, and thus the line's
authenticity as a *line* and its authorship can never be satisfactorily
verified from this far-removed vantage point, sigh. Yet perhaps it can shed
some light on the current rather more substantive scholarly conundrum
surrounding metaphoric proto-cannabilism. And it is, after all, one of my own
dearest cryptic epigrams in its own wright, one I live by daily in matters
domestic and foreign, btw, and borne out of the hollowed bowels I mean
hallowed halls of mgm itself ...

"Just remember, Sarge, they can kill us, but they can't eat us."

("From Here to Eternity")

Happy 4th to all...

Fraser Hubbard
:)


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Jim Bauer,

Here is another fine response to my query about the Bruce
Codex, forwarded with permission.

I am still unclear, though, how the Egyptian Sahadic dialect
could be represented in Greek letters, considering all the
sounds that are not available in the Greek alphabet.
Wouldn't these really be Coptic letters, and not "Greek"?

If it was the Egyptian Sahidic dialect represented by Greek
letters, and not "Coptic" letters, would this tend to
suggest that the Bruce Codex predates the NH texts, which
were almost all written in Coptic letters? What do we know
about the relative development or adaptation of fonts used
to represent the Egyptian Sahadic dialect?

Mike, what does Mcdermot have to say?

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA

-----Original Message-----
From: risa3@... [mailto:risa3@...]
Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 1:57 PM
To: dhindley@...
Subject: Re: Coptic MSS and Greek fonts


Hi, Dave,

Down to business.

    >On another list the topic of the Bruce Codex came up,
and we
    >determined that detailed descriptions of the contents
were a
    >bit sketchy and somewhat contradictory.
    >Would you be in a position to help us clear a few
matters
    >up?

Yes. Although I have not seen the Bruce Codex, I can answer
your questions.

    >What is the modern term for this "Upper Egyptian
dialect?"

Sahidic Coptic is a dead language, as are the majority of
the other
early Coptic dialects. What is used in the Coptic liturgy to
this day
is Boharic. Boharic replaced Sahidic for religious texts
very early,
by no later than the last quarter of the 5th to the first
quarter of
the 6th. If both MSS in the Bruce Codex are in Sahidic, then
that
places the two MSS to the 5th century.

    >The Bruce Codex contains two or more distinct papyrus
MSS
    >bound together with a certain number of the 78 leaves
being
    >out of correct order. G. R. S. Mead (_Fragments of a
Faith
    >Forgotten_, University Books, 1960 reprint of either the
    >1901, 1906, or 1931 edition - it doesn't say) says it
    >(presumably meaning both MSS) was written in the
"dialect of
    >Upper Egypt" using Greek cursive letters. The Untitled
MSS,
    >however, was written on better papyrus and had finer
    >handwriting.

    >On the other hand Violet Macdermot (_The Books of Jeu
and
    >the Untitled Text in the Bruce Codex_, Brill, 1978) says
    >that the Untitled MSS was written using Greek uncial
letters
    >and the other MSS (commonly called the Books of Ieu or
Ieou)
    >was in cursive.

From these descriptions, the titled MS is the earlier one;
the other on
"better papyrus" with a "finer handwriting" is the later.
Why? Because
we have one serious problem with evaluating Coptic MSS...

From the evidence of other Sahidic MSS, both on parchment
and on papyrus,
the Copts, being an underclass and held down by the policy
of selective
literacy operating under, in turn, the ruling Egyptian
houses of the Delta
region, then the Ptolemaic Greeks, and then the Romans,
wrote their earliest
works from observation not from training. In other words,
the Coptic Christ-
ians were forced to re-invent the wheel; they learned to
transfer their words
from the oral to the written -- learning how to write, read,
to layout pages,
and to make books, etc. -- by experiment.

While it is not the point you are looking for, the heroic
effort made by
these people to become literate is patent. Sahidic has no
case endings;
no neuter gender, and uses only the active voice (no
passives, no aorists,
no imperfects.) They did learn: Boharic does have these
missing features.

What is germane for you is this: the earlier the MS, the
more "amateur"
the work. This also means that while the distinction between
cursives
and Uncial are obvious, what is meant by "Uncial" or
"Semi-cursive" or
even "cursive" is a bit trickier when dealing with people
who are learning
from scratch. As they did not know the hierarchies of fonts,
much will depend
upon the knowledge or lack of knowledge on the part of the
scribe as well
as the time frame.

    >I am wondering if Mead was being too general with his
description
    >(in saying both MSS were "cursive") or Macdermot was
being
    >more discriminating in classifying the Untitled MSS as
    >"uncial" and the other as "cursive". Are there degrees
of
    >"cursiveness" and where does one draw the line?

Yes, there are degress of "cursiveness." Mead is being too
general and
McDermott definitely was more discriminating, but
nevertheless wrong in
claiming the font as "Uncial."

First of all, "uncial" is applicable *only* to formal Greek
Biblical
fonts; it does not apply to other Greek book fonts... and
there are
plenty of the latter. In fact, there are different grades of
book fonts
that depend upon the quality of the book one is willing to
pay for. There
are ranges of book fonts for first class books and ditto
second class;
cursives are used only in third class books.

Which class of book font did the writers of the two MSS get
their hands
on? Remember, it was difficult for the Copts to get their
hands on books.
Further the peoples of the upper nile who could afford
books, were unlikely
to order First Class books.

Even without seeing the MSS, we can safely say that the
writer of the
titled MS had a cursive model. The confusion displayed by
McDermott and
Mead tells us that we are looking at a second class
"semi-cursive" book
font used as a model for the later, more "professional"
untitled MS.

    >Also, I want to know what exactly is meant by "Greek
    >cursive" or "semi-cursive" as a font for Greek letters.
How
    >does it differ from "proper" uncial letters and with
    >miniscule letters?

There are major differences among them. Uncials are all
majuscule and
very formal fonts that incorporate many pen-lifts (e.g.,
when you pick
up your pen to go back and cross a 't', you have lifted your
pen) into
the design. Pen-lifts are intended to slow the scribes down
to protect
the written words. Uncials are static and have bi-linear
writing limits;
they fill the space between the writing limits. (As Eric
Turner puts it,
"essentially bi-linear" -- there are some graphs, e.f. Beta,
Upsilon, that
extend above or below the writing limits.) The earliest
Uncials are written
in "breathings," i.e., the number of words that can be said
in one breath,
what is erroneously referred to as being written "scriptum
continuum."
Uncials are handwritten, but are not "handwriting,"

Cursives, by definition, are "handwriting." There are many,
many different
cursives out there and which is used depends upon whether
the text is, for
instance, an archival copy (chancery hands), an informal
letter between
friends, a formal handwritten letter from a wife to a
husband or vice versa,
the everyday "business" cursive used in Alexandria, etc.
Which cursive someone
wrote for informal use depended upon where he or she learned
to write. Ditto
which cursive was used for a third class book.

The earliest Greek cursives used trilinear limits, where
"the letters seem
to be hung from an invisible top line." (Sound familiar??
<G>) By the time
these two MSS were written, cursives use quattrolinear
limits (this English
text uses quattrolinear limits). Cursives are minuscule,
that is, all lower
case. They are written by semantic units (words), not
breathings.. and meant
for rapid writing, use very few pen-lifts.

First class book fonts follow the strictures on "Uncials,"
but are neither
as formal nor as large, nor as "heavy." Second class book
fonts incorporate
cursive features such as writing by semantic unit, minuscule
forms, and
fewer pen-lifts.

    Are there images available online?

Yes, there are. If for a quick start you wish to compare two
Uncials, I have
just that in the on-line lecture for Davila's
pseudepigraphic course.
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_sd/Altman_html (I wouldn't
remember the
address, but I had to list it in a bib which just happens to
be sitting in
my message file...)

I know there are other MSS on-line, but I'll have to look
them up.
Still, I think the best bet would be to get a copy of
Metzger or Turner
and familiarize yourself with the different types of fonts.

    >Thanks!
You are very welcome,

Rochelle

PS: "Rochelle" is just fine... in fact, the only reason I
include "Dr." in
my sig is because of an obnoxious soul who kept "Ms-ing"
me... (someone
else pulled this on another list and was roundly and
publicly trounced by
a Phd list member... someone whom I don't even know.)
--
Dr. R.I.S. Altman, co-coordinator, IOUDAIOS-L
risa3@...

Dang!

My apologies to Prof. Altman.

I had indicated to her that I would remove the PS about how
to address her, but omitted to omit it. <Would that be
called an "omitaomitograph"?>

(<sigh> I ... must ... have ... more ... coffeeeeee ....
zzzzzzz)

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA

List,

I just realized that the link provided by Prof. Altman was not working.

The essay on "WRITING SYSTEMS AND MANUSCRIPTS" is found at:

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_sd/altman_writing.html

I am still searching for formal images of "semi-cursive" versus "cursive"
script. The image I had previously offered
http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/images/150dpi/9-at150.gif (mind that
wrapping of the text)
would appear to be a quite informal cursive script.

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA

Jesus, you ducked the question.
Either answer it, Randy, or get off the pot..
Others are waiting.

Ron McCann

----- Original Message -----
From: "docgroove1017" <docgroove1017@...>
To: <gthomas@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 02, 2002 10:16 PM
Subject: Re: [GTh] The Lion Passage

> --- In gthomas@y..., "Ron McCann" <ronmccann1@s...> wrote:
> Somehow the animal flesh is "raised" in significance and "sacramentalized"
> by being consumed by the superior human and being made human flesh????
> Lion flesh becomes human flesh and thus the lion is sacramentaliszed and
> therefore lucky at being a human victim?
> ...
> What, on earth is confirmed upon our dead lion or dead turnip for having
> served as fodder for living humans? What is their reward? In what sense are
> they "Lucky " or "Blessed". How to they "survive" to reap this "blessing"?
> A dead Lion is a dead lion. So with the turnip. Where is the "luck"?
> What is disturbing about Thomas is that sayings that can be found that
> suggest that we ourselves should permit ourselves to be "eaten".
> Well screw that.
> Ron McCann
> Saskatoon, Canada

> Ron,
> The way I read it,
> we are talking about two different lions.
> One is a reference to any animal flesh consumed in "the circle of
> life", especially by a higher order being (human) capable of
> consciousness.(self-consciousness=God-consciousness)
> The other lion is an evil archon/demon/Yaldabaoth who wants to live
> within a human form.
> There seems to have been a belief that some aspect of even animals
> lived on and was transformed after being eaten by another species.
> It would help to know more about 1st Century biological thinking.
> Randall Wilson
> Lebanon, Il
> USA

----- Original Message -----
From: "jd576" <lowens@...>
To: <gthomas@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Monday, June 24, 2002 4:18 AM
Subject: [GTh] GTh and Hermeneutics

(Lance Owens)
The Gospel of Thomas and the Hermeneutics of Vision

"These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which
Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down. And he said, 'Whoever finds the
interpretation of these sayings will not experience death.'"

The Gospel of Thomas offers in the first words of its existent
redaction a stunning hermeneutic challenge:  "whoever finds the
interpretation of these sayings and will not experience death."
Modern intellect comes to this incipit devoid of a hermeneutic
tradition - a technique of interpretive reading - that grants entry
into the mystery vouchsafed to the hermeneus who "understood".   In
response to the challenge of the text current academic studies fall
back upon "modern" tools of sociological analysis, conceptual
dissection of philosophical parallelisms, and intellectual
suppositions of obscuring stratifications.  Some readers, discontent
with finding any consistent hermeneutic method, simply deny the
organic function of this incipit relative to the remaining logion:
in sum, they have no coherent meaning.

The question I pose is this:  was there a tradition of
interpretation - a hermeneutic technique - implicit in early
transmissions of the Thomas tradition, and if so, is that hermeneutic
method accessible?  Can we meet the challenge of the Thomas incipit?

(Frank McCoy)
I think it most likely that, for the author of GTh and the members of the
GTh community, the sayings attributed to Jesus in GTh had a coherent
meaning.  So, if they appear incoherent in meaning to us, then this is most
likely because we are not interpreting them in the same fashion that they
did.

I also think it most likely that they had what you call a tradition of
interpretation.

What I find most significant in this regard is that there is no indication,
in GTh, that Jesus ever imparted to his disciples the information they
needed to interpret his sayings.

Even Thomas doesn't seem to have been given this information.  He informs us
that those who do understand these sayings will not taste death.  He is
uniquely given the knowledge of three mysteries.  But he is *not* given the
information needed to properly understand the sayings of Jesus to be found
in GTh.

According to the members of the GTh community, then, who was/were the
person/ people to whom was/were revealed the information needed to properly
understand the sayings of Jesus to be found in GTh?

(Lance Owens)
.I. The Mysterious James

12. The disciples said to Jesus, "We know that you are going to leave
us. Who will be our leader?"  Jesus said to them, "No matter where
you are you are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and
earth came into being."

Logion 12 offers an entry point to my thesis.  This reference to
James among the Gospel of Thomas sayings stands out as strange or
incongruous.  If the text underwent the many strata of redaction so
often suggested, and if those redactions had intent of conforming the
text to theological and sociological views of a period following the
first century, then why is this reference to James retained?   One
correspondent recently suggested it be taken as "ironic".  Though
this seems unlikely, the comment well reflects the logical
disjunctions we must meet in understanding logion 12.

(Frank McCoy)
*Why* are they to go to James the Just after Jesus ceases his earthly
existence?

My suggestion is that they are to go to James the Just because it is he to
whom will be revealed the knowledge needed to properly interpret the sayings
of Jesus.

That is to say, I suggest, the GTh community understood, James the Just was
the originator of the tradition of interpretation they used in interpreting
the sayings attributed to Jesus in GTh.

Compare the Second Apocalypse of James (55), where Jesus tells James:

For you are an illuminator and a redeemer
of those who are mine,
and now of those who (are) yours.
You shall reveal (to them),
you shall bring good among them all.

You [they shall] admire
because of every powerful (deed).
You are he whom the heavens blessed.

As can be seen, according to the author of this Nag Hammadi text, James was
a revealer for the first followers of Jesus: with what he revealed to them
enabling them to be redeemed, i.e., enabling them to have immortality.

Further, this gave him a unique status as "he whom the heavens blessed."
(Compare GTh 12, where a similarly unique status is accorded to James).

What, though, did he reveal that enabled the first followers of Jesus to
have immortality?

Here, I think the introduction to GTh gives the vital clue--for, it states,
he who understands the sayings of Jesus will not taste death, i.e., will
have immortality..  So, I think, the understanding of the author of the  2nd
Apoc. was that James revealed to the first followers of Jesus the
information they needed to properly understand the sayings of Jesus and, so,
to not taste death.

(snip)

(Lance)
II. Jewish Apocalyptics

Regardless of where one puts Jesus of Nazareth in an historical
context,  he became the nidus around whom a new religion
crystallized.  Jesus came at a moment ripe for renewal:  he appeared
at the kairos, the auspicious moment - he was anointed Christos by
this kairos of his apparition.  The first century was a "super-
saturated" solution - a cauldron replete of spiritual longings,
dissolutions, and illusions - awaiting the nidus that would initiate
new formation.  It was an apocalyptic age - a time of new visions and
myths - into which Jesus walked. Mythopoetic vision was,  I must
emphasize,  not the idiosyncratic provenance solely of a
later  "Gnosticism".  The development over the prior centuries of
the Enoch tradition provides one evidence among many of this
visionary, mythopoetic trend in Jewish culture. The corpus of
writings found at Qumran collectively reveals the burgeoning
religious creativity of the age.

As every reader of this forum should understand, the spiritual and
social landscape of early first century Palestine is far too complex
to be characterized by simplistic categorical "pigeon-holes" of
ideology.  Nonetheless, it appears very likely that Jesus' proclaimed
initiator - John the Baptist - and several of his first disciples had
links to a broad milieu of Jewish apocalyptic traditions represented
by groups such as the Essenes.  (Eisenman even suggests in a very
argument that the early Jesus movement was essentially contiguous
with the Essene tradition.)  Individuals in this milieu of spiritual
formation were not just fomenting political renovation of the Jewish
state.  They were awaiting a vision of the divine hand touching
earth, and of the human rising up to touch the throne of God.  This
event was to be mediated through a Teacher of Righteousness, a
Zaddik. As the Thanksgiving Hymn (from the Dead Sea Scroll
collection) reads,  "But Thou, O my God, hast put into my mouth as
showers of early rain for all who thirst and a spring of living
waters.. Suddenly they shall gush forth from the secret hiding
places."  (Logion 108 vaguely echoes this same image,  "Whoever
drinks from my mouth will become like me; I myself shall become that
person, and the hidden things will be revealed to him.")  Through the
touch of God upon man, living waters would come to those in thirst.
In this broad cultural setting there was a spiritual longing that
sought after the living water of a human-divine communication.  It
sought after - and claimed reception of - revelation, vision, and
prophecy.  From experience of the visions vouchsafed these seekers
there came new myths.

Documents found at Qumran evidence the production in Judaism of a
diverse a new corpus of sacred text, much of which was clearly
apocalyptic in nature. Theodor Gaster implies in his The Dead Sea
Scriptures in English Translation that experiences spoken of in the
Scroll of Hymns are genuine mystical experiences.  To call these
traditions "mystical", however, is perhaps too ambiguous. I suggest
the word "visionary" as more appropriate:  These were apocalyptic
traditions.

(Frank)
In "Oral and Written Sources in Mark 4:1-34" (New Test. Stud., vol. 36,
1990), Philip Sellew refers (p. 255) to what he calls "the apocalyptic
tradition of dream and vision interpretation."

Lance, you might find the schema of development he proposes for this
tradtion useful in pursuing studies along the lines of thought you give
above.

He sees this tradition first arising in ancient Jewish literature.  He
states (p. 255), "H.-J. Klauck has argued....that Mark 4. 14-20 fits within
an established convention of ancient Jewish literature, which, following the
work of A. L. Oppenheim, he terms 'the prophetic-apocalyptic schema of dream
(or vision) interpretation'.  This ancient Near Eastern pattern is found n
Israelite texts as early as the stories of Joseph as a wise interpreter of
Pahraoh's dreams (Genesis 37).  It appears more frequently in prophetic
works like Jeremiah, Amos, or Ezekiel to interpret the prophet's visions,
and especially in apocalyptic literature such as I Enoc and the Book of
Daniel."

He sees a second stage of development in which the explanation of the dream
or prophetic vision is normally given by a heavenly revealer.  So, he (p.
256) states, "From the period of Ezekiel 40-48 the explanation is
customarily fiven by an *angelus interpres*, and by the time the 'heavenly
tour' of the seer becomes an established convention in apocalyptic, the
pattern of didactic dialogue is formulaic: the visionary sees (or hears)
something, asks about its meaning, and has it interpreted by the revelatory
agent."

He sees (p. 257) a third stage of development at Qumran in which the mystery
item is frequently a scriptural passage (or, even, a single word in a
scriptural passage) and in which the explanations are given by people like
the Teacher of Righteousness.

In this stage of development, those who give the interpretations learn of
them
through revelation.  So, in 1QpHab (VII), it is said, "And God told Habakkuk
to write down that which would happen to the final generation, but He did
not make known to him when time would come to an end.  And as for that which
He said, 'That he who reads may read it speedily': interpreted this concerns
the Teacher of Righteousness, to whom God made known all the mysteries of
the words of His sevants the Prophets."

What I propose is that, in the GTh community, we have a fourth stage in the
development of  the apocalyptic tradition of dream and vision
interpretation.

In this fourth stage, one modificaion is made to the third stage.  That is,
the mystery item is changed from a scriptural passage to a saying of Jesus.

As a result, for the GTh community, the sayings of Jesus became mysteries.
Further, just as the Teacher of Righteousness was, in the eyes of the
members of the Qumran community, the primary revealer of the knowledge
needed to understand the scriptures, so James the Just/Righteous became, in
the eyes of the members of the GTh community,  the primary revealer of the
knowledge needed to understand the sayings of Jesus.

Too, note that in the passage above from a Dead Sea scroll, God tells
Habbakuk what to write down, but doesn't reveal to Habakkuk the meaning of
what he is to write down: this revelation, rather, being given later to the
Teacher of Righteousness.  Similarly, I suggest, the understanding of the
GTh community is that Jesus directed Thomas to write down his sayings, but
did not reveal their meaning to Thomas: this revelation, rather, being given
later to James the Just/Righteous.

(snip)

(Lance)
III.  The Sophianic Tradition

I have been most appreciative of Frank McCoy's wonderful expositions
of Philo and the Wisdom tradition in relation to Thomas.  (My file
of "posts to keep" is dominated by Frank's comments.)

(Frank)
Thank you!

(Lance)
To bring
Thomas properly into the context of the Sophianic (Wisdom) tradition
requires, however, a consideration of the mythic domain of Sophia as
she was developing in the age of Jesus:  She was - for the first
century - emphatically not just a  philosophical concept, but a
divine hypostasis of implied feminine gender with whom the seeker
sought union.

(Frank)
This is true, but I think it important to note that, in first century CE
Judaism, she is also sometimes a body of knowledge and also sometimes a
spiritual realm.  In GTh, I think that the Spirit is Wisdom as a divine
hypostasis and that the Kingdom is Wisdom as a spiritual realm.

Lance, my response to your very important post is already getting very long,
so I'm not going to respond to the rest ot.it.

In closing, I think you are absolutely "right on" in emphasising the
importance of us trying to uncover the tradition of interpretation used by
the GTh community.

I think it is much more difficult to "excavate" GTh to uncover early layers
of tradition if we fail to, first of all, understand it as it was understood
by the GTh community.

Also, I think, in understanding the evolution of early Christian thought,
especially in the branch(es) of Christianity that led to Gnosticism, an
understanding of GTh as it was understood by the GTh community would be of
great benefit to us.

Frank McCoy
1809 N. English Apt. 17
Maplewood, MN USA 55109

(Frank McCoy)
   *Why* are they to go to James the Just after Jesus ceases his earthly
   existence?

   I have never heard the consideration brought forth that this could be not just
James as the go to, but James at the Apostle's villiage.  Pardon me if I'm stuck
on this fascination of the 8 year window of opportunity that early Christians
had for development here, but it seems so logical. After the meeting on the Mt.
Olive(s) referred to in Acts 38-47, the Apostle's, had from the start of the
Villiage to 41 CE(?) to form their first followings. Some had left the original
villiage and started followings in places like Damascas.

   The meeting in 41 was to decide on the Pauline rifts we have talked about.  It
was decided that Gentiles did not need to conform to Jewish laws.

   Probability math suggests that the first thousand people recruited into the
villiage system multiplied by whatever literacy rate you can come up with points
to written works being produced within these groups. Gospels are the primary
tool of evangelism which makes it seem likely that they started here.

   Would it be out of line to claim the roots of Thomas started at the Apostle's
villiage, circa 41 CE? After all James was leading the Villiage after Peter
left.  I am seeing it as ground zero for Christian traditions but I could be
romanticizing its importance. If not this place and time seems a very likely
place to claim the beginning of Gospels.

   Tom Saunders
   Platter Flats, OK





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

In a message dated 6/30/02 10:12:56 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
dhindley@... writes:


>
> >>My interpretaion is based on the "Gnostic" assumption that
> the lion is Yaldabaoth. I also propose that Yaldabaoth was
> reinterpreted as "the devil" in 1Peter 5:8 "The devil, as a
> roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour."
>
> Does anyone else on this list think the author of this
> saying intended a connection between Yaldabaoth and the
> lion? If so, who do you think the author was? A historical
> Jesus? or a later "Gnostic" author?<<
>
> My opinion would be the association went the other way.
> "Satan" (or the devil, if you will) in Jewish tradition was
> likened to a lion, maybe because it consumes anything it
> wants. When some Jews became gnostics in the late 1st
> century, they adorned the redemption myth they adopted with
> imagery from Judaism. While in their view the traditional
> concept of the Jewish God was transformed into the arrogant
> war-oriented Yaldabaoth, who destroys and punishes nations
> at his whim and will. He is, essentially, now no different
> than the old notion of Satan, and as a result takes on
> Satan's associations - the lion.
>
> Respectfully,
>
> Dave Hindley
> Cleveland, Ohio, USA
>
>
>

Interesting idea, but I personally can't get past the astrotheological
associations of the Lion with Christ....my mind just won't go to the Lion as
Satan too.....that's not to say that some symbols haven't crossed over..Venus
the Morning Star sure did....

anna


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

(7)
Jesus said,
"Blessed is the lion
which becomes man
when consumed by man;
and cursed is the man
whom the lion consumes,
and the lion becomes man."

(60)
"You too, look for a place for yourselves within repose,
lest you become a corpse and be eaten."

"Authoritative Teaching
"The adversary spies on us, lying in wait ...wishing to seize us,
rejoicing that he might swallow us. ... She gave her body to those
who had given it to her, and ... the dealers in bodies sat down and
wept because they were not able to do any business with that body…
They did not realize that she has an invisible spiritual body"

Ron,
There seems to have been an underlying concept that the "life-force"
of the creature being eaten was somehow transferred to the carnivore
that ate them. If the carnivore is  "Adam" and we can assume here
that he is on the side of "good", then the creature eaten has given
his "life-force" to aid the side of "good". If, however, a person has
not yet "found a place within repose", he is in danger of being
"eaten" by the evil archons and thus aiding "the dark side". Still
confused?  Watch Star Wars and may the Force be with you!
Once the "two are made into one", there is no longer a concern
for "good" and "evil" and the state of "rest" is achieved. Once
there, you no longer have to worry about being "eaten".

Randy Wilson
Lebanon, IL
USA
--- In gthomas@y..., "Ron McCann" <ronmccann1@s...> wrote:
> Jesus, you ducked the question.
> Either answer it, Randy, or get off the pot..
> Others are waiting.
>
> Ron McCann
> > --- In gthomas@y..., "Ron McCann" <ronmccann1@s...> wrote:
> > Somehow the animal flesh is "raised" in significance
and "sacramentalized"
> > by being consumed by the superior human and being made human
flesh????
> > Lion flesh becomes human flesh and thus the lion is
sacramentaliszed and
> > therefore lucky at being a human victim?
> > ...
> > What, on earth is confirmed upon our dead lion or dead turnip for
having
> > served as fodder for living humans? What is their reward? In what
sense are
> > they "Lucky " or "Blessed". How to they "survive" to reap
this "blessing"?
> > A dead Lion is a dead lion. So with the turnip. Where is
the "luck"?
> > What is disturbing about Thomas is that sayings that can be found
that
> > suggest that we ourselves should permit ourselves to be "eaten".
> > Well screw that.
> > Ron McCann
> > Saskatoon, Canada
>
> > Ron,
> > The way I read it,
> > we are talking about two different lions.
> > One is a reference to any animal flesh consumed in "the circle of
> > life", especially by a higher order being (human) capable of
> > consciousness.(self-consciousness=God-consciousness)
> > The other lion is an evil archon/demon/Yaldabaoth who wants to
live
> > within a human form.
> > There seems to have been a belief that some aspect of even animals
> > lived on and was transformed after being eaten by another species.
> > It would help to know more about 1st Century biological thinking.
> > Randall Wilson
> > Lebanon, Il
> > USA

The lion is considered akin to Satan in the book of Sirach, regarded as
cannonical only by the Roman Catholic church. eg



SIRACH 21:2 Flee from sin as from a serpent that will bite you if you go
near it. Its teeth are lion's teeth, destroying the souls of men.



There are other examples. It is clear that Jesus was familiar with this book
as he quotes from it.



SIRACH 18:33 Become not a glutton and a winebibber with nothing in your
purse.



Sorry to intrude on you fine scholars, however you may not be familiar with
this.



Brian Turner

Te Horo by the Sea

Dave Hindley wrote:
> I am still unclear, though, how the Egyptian Sahadic dialect
> could be represented in Greek letters, considering all the
> sounds that are not available in the Greek alphabet.
> Wouldn't these really be Coptic letters, and not "Greek"?

This question confuses me, Dave. Of course no Coptic dialect could be
represented by the Greek alphabet _alone_. So if by "Coptic letters" you
mean the normal Coptic alphabet - comprised of the entire Greek alphabet,
plus a half-dozen strictly Coptic letters, then, yes, every Coptic text of
any dialect was written using that alphabet.

> If it was the Egyptian Sahidic dialect represented by Greek
> letters, and not "Coptic" letters, would this tend to
> suggest that the Bruce Codex predates the NH texts, which
> were almost all written in Coptic letters? What do we know
> about the relative development or adaptation of fonts used
> to represent the Egyptian Sahadic dialect?

From Dr. Altman's reply to you, it seems that a lot of work has been done in
this area. Unfortunately, I haven't done any reading in that area. The one
thing that struck me, however, is that I've been using 'uncial' where the
correct word is evidently 'majuscule' (capitals), and 'cursive' where the
correct word is evidently 'minuscule'. As I now understand it, "uncial" is a
type of majuscule and "cursive" is a type of minuscule. Based on what Altman
wrote, Macdermot may have made the same mistake.

> Mike, what does Mcdermot have to say?

"Each of the two main texts is written in a different hand, and the two
manuscripts bear no obvious relation to one another. The first [Books of
Jeu] is written in a cursive hand on papyrus of a pale colour. The second
[Untitled Text] is in an uncial script on a darker and more reddish
papyrus." (Macdermott, p.xi)

Nothing about dating, except that I assume that majuscules (without spacing)
are considered earlier than minuscules (with spacing) - which would make
_this copy of_ the Untitled Text earlier than _this copy of_ the Books of
Jeu. However, the first Book of Jeu bears signs of having had a Christian
introductory segment appended to it, so it may be a recopying (with a
revisionist reframing) of a majuscule text in minuscule. So evidently we
cannot consider the scribal style as determinative of the relative dating of
the original exemplars of these texts.

One other possible misunderstanding I'd like to again try to clear up - the
two manuscripts were _not_ bound together in antiquity. Only after the loose
leaves reached the museum were they "bound" together.

"When acquired, the codex consisted of loose leaves, the original order of
which had been lost." (p.x)

As indicated earlier, I myself would put the word 'codex' in quotes, as the
two manuscripts were most definitely not part of a single codex in
antiquity. They do, however, seem intimately related in content.

Regards,
Mike Grondin
The Coptic Gospel of Thomas, saying-by-saying
http://www.geocities.com/mwgrondin/sayings.htm

Mike (Grondin),

>>This question confuses me, Dave. Of course no Coptic dialect could be
represented by the Greek alphabet _alone_. So if by "Coptic letters" you
mean the normal Coptic alphabet - comprised of the entire Greek alphabet,
plus a half-dozen strictly Coptic letters, then, yes, every Coptic text of
any dialect was written using that alphabet.<<

Confused me too. There may be a certain degree of imprecision inherent in
relying upon studies conducted in the earliest decades after the initial
publication of the manuscripts. I have to agree, there is no way to
represent Egyptian dialects with the Greek alphabet alone, unless perhaps
they used non-standard combinations of Greek letters to represent some
sounds and then wrote phonetically.

Here is a link to images that were included in a translation of the 1st Book
of Ieou:
http://www.gnosis.org/library/1ieo.htm
These certainly look like Coptic letters, but the style does not really
appear to be "cursive" if that means they are drawn in a way that the
letters connect to one another more often than not. There is also the
possibility that the images are typeset and thus not exact representations
of the letters as drawn.

>>The one thing that struck me, however, is that I've been using 'uncial'
where the correct word is evidently 'majuscule' (capitals), and 'cursive'
where the correct word is evidently 'minuscule'. As I now understand it,
"uncial" is a type of majuscule and "cursive" is a type of minuscule.<<

Dr. Altman appears to be using the terms in their technical sense. Uncial is
the common way to designate "capital" letters. "Miniscule" is also often
used to mean the letter forms used in the lectionaries and other mss from
the 9th century on, which were indeed "lower case". However, Metzger says
that the miniscule letter forms (of the lectionaries, I assume) were
adaptations of cursive forms of the uncial fonts (pages 9-13). Cursive forms
of Uncial fonts are known from examples of everyday literature and papyri,
and while no literary examples exist now there are some spelling
abnormalities in some biblical mss that seem to require the existence of
cursive mss of these books in antiquity (on pages 188-189 he cites
authorities with regard to cursive forms of uncial letters, including some
examples from the 1st century CE).

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA

> There is also the possibility that the images are typeset and thus
> not exact representations of the letters as drawn.

That is the case - and probably the source of the confusion. The online
images you refer to are facsimiles of the Macdermot book - not of the
original mss. The font in the Macdermot book is kind of a Germanic Coptic.

[Mike]:
> As I now understand it,
> "uncial" is a type of majuscule and "cursive" is a type of minuscule.<<
[Dave]:
> Dr. Altman appears to be using the terms in their technical sense. Uncial
is
> the common way to designate "capital" letters.

In other words, Dr. Altman is being overly-picky when she says:

> ... "uncial" is applicable *only* to formal Greek Biblical fonts ...

... and other scholars simply don't follow this overly-specialized
distinction? OK by me. So then Macdermot is evidently right (in the
generally-accepted sense) to say that the Untitled Text is written in "an
uncial script", whereas Altman is being a bit of an academic prig to deny
that that is so?

> "Miniscule" is also often
> used to mean the letter forms used in the lectionaries and other mss from
> the 9th century on, which were indeed "lower case".

Well, wait a minute. Either 'minuscule' means roughly the same as "lower
case" or it doesn't. You're confusing things by talking about specific
referents of the word, rather than the meaning of the word. If I write in
printed (i.e., non-cursive) "small letters", is my writing "minuscule" (not
"miniscule") or not? BTW, some of the Nag Hammadi texts were written in
minuscule, non-cursive characters, and they were pre-9th century, so your
"from the 9th century on" seems wrong.

> Cursive forms
> of Uncial fonts are known from examples of everyday literature and papyri,
> and while no literary examples exist now ...

"known from examples", but "no ... examples exist now"? There must be a way
to put this to avoid the contradiction. But anyway, we evidently have the
same four-fold classification of writing styles in antiquity as today:
non-cursive minuscule, NON-CURSIVE MAJUSCULE (evidently earliest), cursive
minuscule (which I can't reproduce here), and cursive majuscule (as rare
then as now). You agree?

Regards,
Mike Grondin

Mike Grondin says:

>>Well, wait a minute. Either 'minuscule' means roughly the same as "lower
case" or it doesn't. You're confusing things by talking about specific
referents of the word, rather than the meaning of the word. If I write in
printed (i.e., non-cursive) "small letters", is my writing "minuscule" (not
"miniscule") or not? BTW, some of the Nag Hammadi texts were written in
minuscule, non-cursive characters, and they were pre-9th century, so your
"from the 9th century on" seems wrong.<<

I'm not sure how I lost you. According to Metzger:
"In antiquity two styles of *Greek* handwriting were in general use. The
cursive or 'running' hand, which could be written rapidly, was employed for
non-literary, everyday documents, such as letters, accounts, receipts,
petitions, deeds, and the like. [...] Literary works, on the other hand,
were written in a more formal style of handwriting, called uncials. This
'book-hand' was characterized by more deliberate and carefully executed
letters, each one separated from the others, somewhat like our capital
letters. [...] In the course of time, however, the style of the book-hand
began to deteriorate [...] Then about the beginning of the ninth century, a
reform in handwriting was initiated, and a script of smaller letters in a
running hand, called miniscules, was created for the production of books."

"Uppercase" and "lowercase" are modern descriptions of letter types. It may
well be that there were various sized *Greek* uncial scripts, and
who-knows-what sizes and kinds of *Coptic* scripts in use. The terms
"cursive" and "semi-cursive" also seem to mean different things to different
scholars. Perhaps one of these terms is used from time to time to describe a
small form of a Greek uncial letter.

>>"known from examples", but "no ... examples exist now"? There must be a
way to put this to avoid the contradiction. <<

The cursive script is known from papyri documents like letters, deeds,
receipts, and various business documents. Copies of scripture all make use
of an uncial script. This is what I meant by known examples (of cursive
script, all in business documents and personal letters) and no examples (of
cursive scriptural manuscripts). Critics are apparently undecided about
whether NT books were ever written in cursive script. There is a
contradiction, true, but it is in the explanation offered by some as for why
we do not have any surviving copies of a cursive NT manuscript. On page 188
Metzger relates that "Wilkenhauser, following Roller, argues that it is
unlikely that the original texts of the New Testament books were written in
cursive script, because the rough surface of papyrus made it difficult to
use that form of writing." Yet, papyrus was exactly the writing material in
which we find most examples of cursive script!

>>But anyway, we evidently have the same four-fold classification of writing
styles in antiquity as today: non-cursive minuscule, NON-CURSIVE MAJUSCULE
(evidently earliest), cursive minuscule (which I can't reproduce here), and
cursive majuscule (as rare then as now). You agree?<<

>>So then Macdermot is evidently right (in the generally-accepted sense) to
say that the Untitled Text is written in "an uncial script", whereas Altman
is being a bit of an academic prig to deny that that is so?<<

I wouldn't say that at all. <g> I think we can say that there were formal
and informal Greek scripts, and NT books were copied in the formal hand
almost always. Non-NT documents may be written formally or informally. What
Dr. Altman was saying, was that if the untitled mss was written in uncials,
then she would place it later in time than the cursive mss. She reasoned
that the native Egyptians were developing a means to write their spoken
language, with virtually no help from the Greek speaking classes (they were,
in fact, disenfranchised and cut off from any sort of proper Greek education
sometime in the first half of the 1st century), and would naturally start
with informal (cursive) hands and move on in time to formal (uncial) hands
in imitation of the Greek elite. I don't think she said that the untitled
mss was not a uncial. I do not think she really addressed my suggestion that
it was a less formal uncial script, and this could have been called
"cursive" by Schmidt but not Mcdermott. Schmidt, incidentally, is one of the
authorities cited by Metzger on the subject of possible cursive mss of NT
books (although indirectly as the evidence was that there may have been some
cursive copies of the Lxx in circulation).

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA

Dave-
This discussion just keeps getting worse and worse as far as I'm concerned.
It doesn't help me to understand what you're saying that you don't answer my
questions directly. Among other things, I asked whether the categories
cursive versus non-cursive and majuscule versus minuscule were sufficient to
understand the subject ("uncials", for example, being defined as non-cursive
majuscules). Since you didn't answer that question, I'm going to plunge
ahead and try to parse the Metzger passage using that classification scheme:

> "In antiquity two styles of *Greek* handwriting were in general use. The
> cursive or 'running' hand, which could be written rapidly, was employed
for
> non-literary, everyday documents, such as letters, accounts, receipts,
> petitions, deeds, and the like.

Metzger says the this "everyday" lettering was cursive, but he doesn't say
whether it was majuscule or minuscule (i.e., lit., "large letters" or "small
letters"). However, given what he is going to say below, the implication
seems to be that they were majuscule. The problem, however, is that we
evidently have no existing examplars of a cursive majuscule script. So if
this is what he means, how is it that this "everyday" script has never been
found? One would think that an "everyday" script would be found all over the
place. But since the evidence for such a script is indirect, it may be that
the symbols involved were _not_ the same as the symbol-set for his next
category, the existence of which is indisputable:

> [...] Literary works, on the other hand,
> were written in a more formal style of handwriting, called uncials. This
> 'book-hand' was characterized by more deliberate and carefully executed
> letters, each one separated from the others, somewhat like our capital
> letters.

Here, he evidently equates "uncials" with non-cursive majuscules. That's OK
by me, cuz that was my original understanding.

> [...] In the course of time, however, the style of the book-hand
> began to deteriorate [...] Then about the beginning of the ninth century,
a
> reform in handwriting was initiated, and a script of smaller letters in a
> running hand, called miniscules, was created for the production of books."

Did he misspell 'minuscules' or did you miscopy? In any case, the above runs
contrary to the neat little classification scheme I've suggested, for in my
scheme - and in the dictionary definition of the word as well - "minuscule"
simply means "small letter". It does _not_ specify whether those letters are
joined (cursive style), or not. In other words, to my understanding,
minuscules can be either cursive or non-cursive. Now Metzger may be right,
but I can't see where in his account there's a place for a _non-cursive_
minuscule. Is that because there was no such thing up until modern times? So
of the four styles logically possible, Metzger admits to only three being
actually used  - and to extant exemplars of only two of those three?

If I'm looking at this wrongly, I'd appreciate it if you would bend your
efforts to explaining why my suggested four-fold classification scheme is
inadequate.  (BTW, I take back my assertion that some NH texts were in
minuscules - my recollection was faulty; I should have rechecked.)

Regards,
Mike Grondin

Mike Grondin says:

>>Metzger says the this "everyday" lettering was cursive, but he doesn't say
whether it was majuscule or minuscule (i.e., lit., "large letters" or "small
letters"). However, given what he is going to say below, the implication
seems to be that they were majuscule. The problem, however, is that we
evidently have no existing examplars of a cursive majuscule script. So if
this is what he means, how is it that this "everyday" script has never been
found? One would think that an "everyday" script would be found all over the
place. But since the evidence for such a script is indirect, it may be that
the symbols involved were _not_ the same as the symbol-set for his next
category, the existence of which is indisputable<<

You may be reading too much into what Metzger (and I) say. There ARE
examples of this everyday cursive script. I provided a link to an example in
two of my earlier massages. All the formal sources I have found to date use
the terms Uncial, Cursive (sometimes also semi-cursive) and Minuscule (and
yes, I seem to have misspelled it and then kept telling my spell checker to
accept the misspelling when it objected), almost always without
qualification. Rochelle added the information that Majuscule and Minuscule
refer to relative size of letters. She and Metzger also add that Uncial was
used as a formal book-hand, and Metzger says that cursive was popularly used
to quickly write common everyday documents.

Maybe change the table to:

			 Majuscule Minuscule
Formal  common uncommon
Informal  uncommon common

"Cursive" is apparently associated with both the Informal and Minuscule axis
of the chart, but the additional detail about whether they are majuscule or
minuscule letter forms is left out of discussions centering on NT mss. Maybe
this is because there are no surviving Formal Minuscules of NT books.

You had:  Majuscule Minuscule
Non-cursive  earliest
Cursive  rare

My examination of images of common everyday papyri available on the web
tells me that most were in some form of uncial (distinct large letters) but
a sizable minority were true cursive, and many mixed uncial and cursive
styles.

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA

Mike,

>>On page 188 Metzger relates that "Wilkenhauser, following Roller, argues
that it is unlikely that the original texts of the New Testament books were
written in cursive script, because the rough surface of papyrus made it
difficult to use that form of writing." Yet, papyrus was exactly the writing
material in which we find most examples of cursive script!<<

I think I figured out why Wilkenhauser and Roller say what they did. The
codex form used both the recto and verso sides of the papyrus sheet. One of
these being vertical in orientation, it would indeed be hard to write on
using a cursive script. If there were any cursive biblical mss, these would
likely to have been on a roll.

Presuming the current consensus is correct that Christians copied both the
Jewish scriptures and all their own preserved literature in codex format,
then only copies of the Lxx made by Jews would be in the roll format.
Incidentally, the evidence for possible existence of cursive forms of formal
texts comes from (probably Christian) copies of Jewish scripture.

Respectfully,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA