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Greek Numerals

Posted: April 23rd, 2012, 9:26 am
by Jonathan Robie
My 1904 Patriarchal Edition uses Greek letters for chapter numbers. I hadn't really used these before, and was confused when three consecutive chapters were numbered εʹ, στʹ, ζʹ. Why does στʹ come between εʹ and ζʹ?

A sticker in English gives the equivalent Arabic numbers, and says that στ stands for the obsolete stigma.

I was able to find an explanation of the system here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_numerals

Which references this paper:

http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/unicode/numerals.html

Not too confusing once you understand the system, except for remembering where obsolete letters are inserted in the alphabetical sequence. Fortunately, the digamma comes right between the two mnemonic sentences "all bigots get diarrhea eventually" and "zorro ate the ice cap". They used up all the letters for single digits, then took the next one for 10 (ι), the one after that for 20 (κ), etc.

The Wikipedia article explains why obsolete letters were used:
This requires 27 letters, so the 24-letter Greek alphabet was extended by using three obsolete letters: digamma ϝ for 6, qoppa ϟ for 90, and sampi ϡ for 900. Digamma is today most often written in its modern form ϛ, which is also called stigma; in Greece it is often replaced by the letter combination στ/ΣΤ.
If a modern set of letters ΣΤ is used for ϝ, is there no modern letter equivalent for ϟ and ϡ?

Re: Greek Numerals

Posted: April 23rd, 2012, 4:25 pm
by Jonathan Robie
Incidentally, the talk page indicates that several aspects of the Wikipedia article on Greek numbers are disputed. So if any experts want to jump in there and help ...

Re: Greek Numerals

Posted: April 25th, 2012, 12:56 am
by Nikolaos Adamou
Jonathan
I grew up using the Greek numerals indicating the chapter numbers in the New and Old Testament. Similarly indicating dates in official documents, particular ecclesiastical. Using also Roman numerals to indicate the date of publication of books. This is the way that the old world operated. It is still a normal practice in the East.
At the same time, scientists in the Eastern Roman Empire utilized also the Arabic numerals, that some even attribute to Indians.
The letters of the Greek alphabet are not only used as numbers, but also as musical notes, as πΑ, Βου, Γα, Δι, κΕ, Ζω, νΗ.
There is a long and detailed discussion on these matters by Dr. Constantinus Siamakis in his more than thousand pages publication about the Greek Alphabet, published in Greek, in Thessaloni, Greece.
Here I do not feel that there is time or space for any argumentation of the matter. I just to provide my testimony, that this is the practice we had in the east.
If you see the codex Sinaiticus that is available in the web, you will see these notations next to the text.
For me also, the verses that I see inserted in the text were not familiar. As you can see the patriarchal edition of the 1904, which is available in Google Books, does not have the verses within the text, but on the margin. These verses many time do not make sense, since they split a sentence, and when you want to read a unit, you need a sentence, and not a verse.
It is a matter of how one grew up and is used to. The same way that for you the Arabic numbers and verses are normal, for me the Greek numerals and the absence of verse numbers are normal.
Regards