Today we are moving into our second group of New Testament manuscripts–the uncials. However, before describing them, we’ll need to focus on how Christian scribes went about their work. As it turns out the situation is quite different than the Jewish scribes who preserved the Hebrew Bible. Then we’ll follow the exciting career of Bible hunter Constantine Tischendorf as he brought to light two huge discoveries. Lastly, we’ll take a brief survey of the five most famous uncial New Testament manuscripts: Codex Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, Ephraemi Rescriptus, and Bezae.
2 thoughts on “336 Bible 7 – Greek New Testament Uncials”
It has always been my understanding that the oldest Greek texts were always written in majuscule (capital) letters. But I have read in a few places that this is not true. Can you give me your input? This question has importance due to arguments related to writing the word “God” with a capital G, versus “god” with a lower case G. Some people use this as their basis of argumentation regarding the definition of God.
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_case, there were miniscule (lower case) letters as far back as 79 CE, but this was in Latin. Here is the wiki paragraph about this claim:
“In Latin, papyri from Herculaneum dating before 79 CE (when it was destroyed) have been found that have been written in old Roman cursive, where the early forms of minuscule letters “d”, “h” and “r”, for example, can already be recognised. According to papyrologist Knut Kleve, “The theory, then, that the lower-case letters have been developed from the fifth century uncials and the ninth century Carolingian minuscules seems to be wrong.” Both majuscule and minuscule letters existed, but the difference between the two variants was initially stylistic rather than orthographic and the writing system was still basically unicameral: a given handwritten document could use either one style or the other but these were not mixed. European languages, except for Ancient Greek and Latin, did not make the case distinction before about 1300.”
The same article states, “The lower-case script for the Greek alphabet has its origins in the 7th century and acquired its quadrilinear form (that is, characterized by ascenders and descenders) in the 8th century. Over time, uncial letter forms were increasingly mixed into the script. The earliest dated Greek lower-case text is the Uspenski Gospels (MS 461) in the year 835.”
This would tell me that capital letters in any Greek manuscript are scribal-based, and not genuine textual-based.
So far as I have read, George, our earliest Greek manuscripts are in all upper case letters, with no punctuation system, and no spaces between the words. Presumably, the original New Testament texts had the same format.
It has always been my understanding that the oldest Greek texts were always written in majuscule (capital) letters. But I have read in a few places that this is not true. Can you give me your input? This question has importance due to arguments related to writing the word “God” with a capital G, versus “god” with a lower case G. Some people use this as their basis of argumentation regarding the definition of God.
According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_case, there were miniscule (lower case) letters as far back as 79 CE, but this was in Latin. Here is the wiki paragraph about this claim:
“In Latin, papyri from Herculaneum dating before 79 CE (when it was destroyed) have been found that have been written in old Roman cursive, where the early forms of minuscule letters “d”, “h” and “r”, for example, can already be recognised. According to papyrologist Knut Kleve, “The theory, then, that the lower-case letters have been developed from the fifth century uncials and the ninth century Carolingian minuscules seems to be wrong.” Both majuscule and minuscule letters existed, but the difference between the two variants was initially stylistic rather than orthographic and the writing system was still basically unicameral: a given handwritten document could use either one style or the other but these were not mixed. European languages, except for Ancient Greek and Latin, did not make the case distinction before about 1300.”
The same article states, “The lower-case script for the Greek alphabet has its origins in the 7th century and acquired its quadrilinear form (that is, characterized by ascenders and descenders) in the 8th century. Over time, uncial letter forms were increasingly mixed into the script. The earliest dated Greek lower-case text is the Uspenski Gospels (MS 461) in the year 835.”
This would tell me that capital letters in any Greek manuscript are scribal-based, and not genuine textual-based.
Your research feedback would be appreciated.
So far as I have read, George, our earliest Greek manuscripts are in all upper case letters, with no punctuation system, and no spaces between the words. Presumably, the original New Testament texts had the same format.