[B-Greek] Stigma and Digamma
Arie Dirkzwager
dirkzwager at pandora.be
Thu Jul 8 13:33:11 EDT 2004
Concerning digamma or wau/waw:
For those who are familiar with the Hebrew alphabet the letter waw is no
problem. It came after he and before zayin. The Greeks borrowed their
alphabet from the Phoenicians who used the same alphabet as the Jews.
For the Greeks he became e (or e psilon) and zayin became zeta. In the Greek
dialects that had the w the waw was borrowed; in the dialects without a w
the waw was not used.
As the (cultural) majority of the Greek dialects did not use the w, we do
not learn the waw in our Greek alphabet.
Concerning stigma:
Stigma is a "ligature", a combination of sigma and tau, as used in
(minuscle) manuscripts and early printed editions of Greek texts, even until
the 19th century.
There is little difference between the stigma and the sigma we use at the
end of Greek words. That sigma is round at the top, whereas the stigma has a
little hook at the right end.
As numbers.
The Greeks used their letters with an accent or with a stroke above them to
write numbers. The number 6 was written with an E without the horizontal
middle stroke (so Brandenstein, Griechische Sprachwissenschaft I, Berlin
1954, p. 33), probably a variant of the digamma (F).
In p 115 (Rev 13: 18) that sign is round and resembles a C. See the picture
I mentioned in a previous message.
In Byzantine times the letter was named stigma, after the ligature for ST.
In minuscles it was written as the stigma or the end-sigma.
As the signs for the numbers include waw (6), qoppa (90) and sampi (900),
you can conclude that the Greeks began to use the system before those
letters became obsolete and that is very early.
As far as I know the first known examples of this numbering system are dated
to the 4th century B.C.
Arie
Dr. A. Dirkzwager
Hoeselt, Belgium
e-mail dirkzwager at pandora.be
----- Oorspronkelijk bericht -----
Van: "James Ernest" <jdemail at charter.net>
Aan: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Verzonden: donderdag 8 juli 2004 16:02
Onderwerp: RE: [B-Greek] Stigma and Digamma
> See the following, esp. the first, which mentions the Rev. text that
started
> this discussion.
>
> http://ptolemy.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/unicode/numerals.html#stigma
>
> http://www.odeion.org/gematria/digamma.html
>
> http://ptolemy.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/unicode/nonattic.html
>
> ... and Google will lead you to other discussions, if you want to wade
> through them. I'm not sure any of these answer all three of your
questions.
>
> I believe I have seen stigma (or as one of these sites would have it, stau
> or stauros) used as a sigma-tau ligature in early printed editions of the
> Greek NT, but I don't remember exactly where. I'm thinking it was an early
> TR.
>
> James
>
> --------------------------------
> James D. Ernest, Ph.D., Editor
> Baker Academic
> jernest at BakerAcademic.com
> http://www.BakerAcademic.com
> --------------------------------
>
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
> > [mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Dan
> > and/or Nancy Storm
> > Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2004 12:31 AM
> > To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> > Subject: [B-Greek] Stigma and Digamma
> >
> >
> > I checked LSJ9, BDAG, and Smythe, and found that Greek
> > digamma and stigma are either the same letter, or came to
> > stand for the same sound. Until now, I had always thought
> > that they were different letters. At any rate, I know that
> > digamma is double-gamma, and corresponds to the Hebrew waw.
> >
> > My questions are:
> > 1) Are the differences diachronic or regional? That is, was
> > the stigma used in one region while digamma was used in
> > another. Or again, did one replace the other?
> > 2) Was the sound of stigma the same as digamma, i.e. w?
> > 3) Does the letter stigma have any connection to the Greek
> > word STIGMA?
> >
> > D. Anthony Storm
> > danstorm at comcast.net
> > ---
> > B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
> > B-Greek mailing list
> > B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek
> >
>
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
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