[B-Greek] New Testament Greek "urban legends"?
Randall Buth
randallbuth at gmail.com
Mon Apr 24 11:51:41 EDT 2006
Gene egrapsen
> Chrestotatoi
Chrestianou
Chresto
Chrestus
Here is an excerpt of what was stated:
They called them "Chrestians/Chrestianou," either mocking them, or
just trying to sensibly designate them — thinking they were followers
of some "Chrestos," a common slave name.
"In all three NT passages the uncorrected Codex Aleph reads
'Chrestian.' We know from many sources that this variant was widely
current in the 2d century.">
I found some references to writings of the early church fathers, but
could not find any valid discussion of these words being present in
any Biblical Greek texts, so I now defer my question to the experts.>
On NT texts, Acts 11:26 is the place to start looking. and Yes, Aleph reads
XRHSTIANOUS, though it was corrected to XRISTIANOUS. You need to
remember that in the fourth century, the time when Aleph was written,
Hta and Iota were being prounounced the same. It was a common scribal
slip.
On the other hand, B and D read XREISTIANOUS, which does not even need
to be read as a mistake. In the first century XREISTIANO'S was an
alternative way of writing XRISTIANO'S and they were pronounced the
same. For example, a little earlier in that passage, Act 11:17
manuscripts D and p74 read HMEIN "for us" instead of the more usual
HMIN. We now write a regularized HMIN but in the first century the EI
symbol was sometimes used by some writers to help carry an accent or
any kind of perceived dominance.
ERRWSO
Randall Buth
--
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
randallbuth at gmail.com
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