29 December 2020

Attendite ad Abraham patrem vestrum ... but only for hellenists REVISED

Mike Sheil has triumphed gloriously!! See the thread. The inscription is a nice example of the collapse of Koine Greek in terms of spellings and verb forms. I expect there are people who could date it quite precisely from the philology. (I've always been thankful that Margaret Hubbard suggested I buy the Eighth Edition of Liddell and Scott because of the Byzantine material it retained.)

KARPOPHORIA, indeed!

 

Attendite ad Abraham patrem vestrum, et ad Saram, quae peperit vos: quia unum vocavi eum. Moved by this morning's first Lectio from Isaias, I offer a Christmastide puzzle for hellenists. The raw materrial ... a photograph ... is in the Mailonline for yesterday, Tuesday.

Recently excavated is a Byzantine church in Gethsemane. Within it is a Greek floor inscription which, we are told, has been translated 

For the memory and repose of the lovers of Christ + God who have received the sacrifice of Abraham accept the offerings of your servants and give them remission of sins + Amen

Sadly, I am not an epigrapher. The only sequence I have been able to discern securely (?!) in the Mailonline photograph, is:

 ... ho theos ho prosdexamenos ten thus{i}an tou Abraam ...

I presume we have here an allusion to the Sacrifice of Isaac, type of the Sacrifice of Christ, offered on the Hill identified with the Hill of Calvary, up which, presumably, pilgrims were about to climb from Gethsemane.

Texts and comments???.


 

 

6 comments:

Jhayes said...

The photographs are available here

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9078599/Archaeology-Ritual-bath-time-Jesus-Garden-Gethsemane-Jerusalem.html

Another article says that the church is from the 6Th century AD but the inscription has been dated to the 7th-8th century AD

tpfr2 said...

Do the two words immediately before read ΤΩΝ ΦΙΛΟΧΡΙΣΤΩΝ?

Mike Sheil said...

Dear Fr. Hunwicke,
There was a slightly less-cropped version of the photo in Haaretz which showed the first two lines.
The spelling mistakes are not entirely mine; I wrote it down as I could make it out.
Καρποφορία on the Mount of Olives is a nice touch, I think.

+ΥΠΕΡ ΜΝΗΜΙΣ

Κ’ΑΝΑΠΑΥΣΕΟΣ

ΤΩΝ ΦΙΛΟΧΡΙΣ-

ΤΩΝ + Ο ΘΣ Ο Π-

ΡΟΣΔΕΧΑΜΕΝΟ-

Σ ΤΗΝ ΘΥΣΑΝ ΤΟΥ

ΑΒΡΑΑ[Μ] ΠΡΟΣΔΕΧΕ ΤΗ[Ν]

ΚΑΡΠΟΦΟΡΙΑΝ ΤΟ[Ν ΔΟ-]

ΥΛΟΝ ΣΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΑΦ-

ΕΣΙΝ ΑΜΑΡΤΙ-

ΩΝ ΔΩΡΙΣΕ

[Α]ΥΤΟΙΣ ΑΜΗΝ +

Mike Sheil said...

Father, you flatter me. I am blushing.
I do need to point out two of my own typos which I'm sure you noticed:
ΠΡΟΣΔΕΞΑΜΕΝΟΣ and ΠΡΟΣΔΕΞΕ are what I meant to write.
Thank you so much!

MichelleMidwestDumVitaSpes said...

Dear Fr. Hunwicke,

A blessed and Happy New Year to you, belatedly!

Thank you very much for your splendid blog posts. I eagerly read them daily.

I am a poseur of a Hellenist. Some decent Greek Philosophy, a dabble in collegiate Koine Greek language, a good bit of practice as a calligrapher. My knowledge of Paleolography is superficial and entirely focused on Latin.

Nevertheless, I should like to contribute something to this project. I am also working on a project related to covid-19, and so I cannot devote much time to this fascinating Greek project.

My two bits.

I detected what I perceived as a curious glyph, which I then thought might be an instance of "lunate sigma". From Wiki, the following...

"4. The letter sigma ⟨Σ⟩ has two different lowercase forms in its standard variant, ⟨σ⟩ and ⟨ς⟩, with ⟨ς⟩ being used in word-final position and ⟨σ⟩ elsewhere.[15][18][19] In some 19th-century typesetting, ⟨ς⟩ was also used word-medially at the end of a compound morpheme, e.g. "δυςκατανοήτων", marking the morpheme boundary between "δυς-κατανοήτων" ("difficult to understand"); modern standard practice is to spell "δυσκατανοήτων" with a non-final sigma.[19] The letter sigma also has an alternative variant, the 👉lunate sigma (uppercase Ϲ, lowercase ϲ), which is used in all positions.[15][18][20] This form of the letter developed during the Hellenistic period (323–31 BC) as a simplification of the older Σ σ/ς variant.[20] Thus, the word stasis can either be written στάσις or ϲτάϲιϲ.[21] In modern, edited Greek texts, the lunate sigma typically appears primarily in older typesetting.[18]"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet

I also found reference indicating that the likely identity of the glyph that seemed to stand for an "Alpha" in what I take as "Abraam" is very probably a medieval Byzantine instance of "Alpha".

I had never seen an "Alpha" like this in my Koine Greek classes.

Now, there is a significantly close though not perfect correspondence between the 'Abraam Alpha' and an "Alpha" glyph that appears within a chart documenting "Letter Forms in Literary Papyri (to the 8th Century)", Figure 3., Col 2. Said chart appears on Fordham University's Greek Paleology site.

The "Greek Letter Forms" is Fordham's label attached to an image file taken of a Paleography chart that was published in "Short Manual of Greek Paleolography" by Bernhard Abraham van Groningen (Leiden, 1940).

https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ikon/greeklet.asp

I also find some support in a superb chart by F.S. Weller labelled "Derivation of the Greek and Latin Alphabets from the Egyptian".

https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ikon/thomabet.gif

God bless you and the Family Hunwicke in the New Year!

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Midwest Michelle Dum Vita Spes

MichelleMidwestDumVitaSpes said...

Dear Fr. Hunwicke,

A blessed and Happy New Year to you, belatedly!

Thank you very much for your splendid blog posts. I eagerly read them daily.

I am a poseur of a Hellenist. Some decent Greek Philosophy, a dabble in collegiate Koine Greek language, a good bit of practice as a calligrapher. My knowledge of Paleolography is superficial and entirely focused on Latin.

Nevertheless, I should like to contribute something to this project. I am also working on a project related to covid-19, and so I cannot devote much time to this fascinating Greek project.

My two bits.

I detected what I perceived as a curious glyph, which I then thought might be an instance of "lunate sigma". From Wiki, the following...

"4. The letter sigma ⟨Σ⟩ has two different lowercase forms in its standard variant, ⟨σ⟩ and ⟨ς⟩, with ⟨ς⟩ being used in word-final position and ⟨σ⟩ elsewhere.[15][18][19] In some 19th-century typesetting, ⟨ς⟩ was also used word-medially at the end of a compound morpheme, e.g. "δυςκατανοήτων", marking the morpheme boundary between "δυς-κατανοήτων" ("difficult to understand"); modern standard practice is to spell "δυσκατανοήτων" with a non-final sigma.[19] The letter sigma also has an alternative variant, the 👉lunate sigma (uppercase Ϲ, lowercase ϲ), which is used in all positions.[15][18][20] This form of the letter developed during the Hellenistic period (323–31 BC) as a simplification of the older Σ σ/ς variant.[20] Thus, the word stasis can either be written στάσις or ϲτάϲιϲ.[21] In modern, edited Greek texts, the lunate sigma typically appears primarily in older typesetting.[18]"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet

I also found reference indicating that the likely identity of the glyph that seemed to stand for an "Alpha" in what I take as "Abraam" is very probably a medieval Byzantine instance of "Alpha".

I had never seen an "Alpha" like this in my Koine Greek classes.

Now, there is a significantly close though not perfect correspondence between the 'Abraam Alpha' and an "Alpha" glyph that appears within a chart documenting "Letter Forms in Literary Papyri (to the 8th Century)", Figure 3., Col 2. Said chart appears on Fordham University's Greek Paleology site.

The "Greek Letter Forms" is Fordham's label attached to an image file taken of a Paleography chart that was published in "Short Manual of Greek Paleolography" by Bernhard Abraham van Groningen (Leiden, 1940).

https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ikon/greeklet.asp

I also find some support in a superb chart by F.S. Weller labelled "Derivation of the Greek and Latin Alphabets from the Egyptian".

https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ikon/thomabet.gif

God bless you and the Family Hunwicke in the New Year!

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Midwest Michelle Dum Vita Spes