[B-Greek] Capital theta in John 1:18?
Bill Warren
wfwarren at aol.com
Wed Dec 16 12:07:25 EST 2009
John, the difference has to do with the segmentation decisions about the text. When a section, paragraph, or sub-paragraph is noted, it begins with a capital letter, whereas divisions of lesser importance use small first letters. The N-A text has for years treated the division between Jn. 1:17 and 1:18 as a sub-paragraph division (you'll see this, for example, in the N-A 25th which was prior to the joining together of the two texts via the UBS 3rd and NA 26th editions), thus the capital letter for the first Theta, whereas the USB text has treated this as a sentence only division and so uses a small Theta for the first word of 1:18. Both editions now follow the same rules on this, but the rules were applied with different results in the backgrounds of the two editions. If you look in the segmentation apparatus of the UBS GNT text at the end of 1:17, you'll see where they note that N-A has a different segmentation between verses 17 and 18 (note "o" with SP NA noted, which means "sub-paragraph division in the Nestle-Aland edition"). To push this back further, Westcott and Hort has this as a minor segmentation break and so with the small letter Theta to start v.18 whereas Tischendorf had a larger division with a capital Theta at the start of v.18, which of course pushes us back to the major editions that primarily influenced the UBS (Westcott and Hort's text) and NA (Tischendorf's text). To be fair, Nestle used a 2/3 rule for deciding his punctuation, with Tischendorf, Westcott and Hort, and Weymouth (later replaced by Weiss) being compared. In this case, he went with Tischendorf and Weiss/Weymouth against Westcott and Hort and so put what we would call a sub-paragraph division between verses 17 and 18. While a decision was made that the two modern editions (NA 26 onward and UBS GNT 3 onward) would have the same printed Greek text, the differences in such matters as segmentation decisions has not been totally standardized and may not be, which is quite good in my mind so that we can still see some of the differences in such decisions, but that is a different topic beyond your question and the B-Greek forum.
paz y gracia,
Bill Warren, Ph.D.
Director of the Center for New Testament Textual Studies
Landrum P. Leavell, II, Professor of New Testament and Greek
New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary
On Dec 16, 2009, at 7:45 AM, John Owlett wrote:
> Sorry about that. My mind was wandering last night. Let's try again.
>
> In NA27, the first letter of John 1:18 is a capital theta.
>
> IN UBS4, it is a lower case theta.
>
> Why the difference?
>
> John
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