‘Cross’ and ‘crucify’ as nomina
sacra
The oldest explicit testimony to
the use of nomina sacra that we know if it found in the epistle of Barnabas,
written around AD 70-135. In Barn. 9:7-9 the author presents an
allegorical reading of the circumcision of Abraham’s household by elaborating
on the number 318—in the source rendered by the Greek letters ΤΙΗ, which is instanced also in some other contemporary Christian
manuscripts. This seems to indicate that the author of Barnabas had a
Christian copy before him of Gen. 14:14:
For Abraham, the first to perform circumcision,
was looking ahead in the Spirit to Jesus when he circumcised. For he received
the firm teachings of the three letters [λαβων τριων γραμμα των δογματα]. For it says, ‘Abraham
circumcised eighteen and three hundred men from his household.’ What knowledge,
then, was given to him? Notice that first he mentions the eighteen and then,
after a pause, the three hundred. The number eighteen [in Greek] consists of an
Iota [Ι], 10, and an Eta [Η], 8. There you have Jesus. And because the cross was about to have
grace in the letter Tau [Τ]
[οτι δε ο σταυρος εν τω ταυ ημελλεν εχειν την χαριν], he next gives the three
hundred. Tau. And so he shows the name Jesus by the first two letters, and the
cross by the other. For the one who has placed the implanted gift of his
covenant in us knew these things. No one has learned a more reliable lesson
from me. But I know that you are worthy. (Barn. 9.7-9, trans. Ehrman, The
Apostolic Fathers, vol. 2, 45-47)
Here, the nomen sacra for Jesus,
represented by ΙΗ (=18) meets for the first time in
our sources together with the symbol of the cross, the Greek letter Τ (=300).
The specific meaning of the three letters may already be known by the readers.
It is associated with certain ‘firm teachings’ (δογματα). The symbol of the cross is said
to express grace—a theme further developed in Barn. 11 and 12, in
connection with the Christian baptism and typological interpretation of the
serpent raised by Moses in the desert.
Extant Christian OT manuscripts
that contain the short form ΤΙΗ
for the Greek number 318, referred to by Barnabas, included the
fourth-century Chester Beatty Papyrus IV and most probably also the early
second- to third-century P. Yale 1. That the symbolic interpretation of the
number 318 was well known in Christian circles is further confirmed by Clement
of Alexandria in his reading of Gen 14:14. However, for him such isopsephy seems to be more
of a tradition than part of his own immediate exegesis (however, cf. note 45 [RB:
reproduced below]) Clement comments: ‘For it is said [φυσιν] that the character of 300 is by
its shape a symbol [τυπος]
of the cross of the Lord [το κυριακον σημειον]’ Strom. VI, 11). (Thomas
Bokedal, The Formation and Significance of the Christian Biblical Canon: A
Study in Text, Ritual and Interpretation [London: Bloomsbury Academic,
2014], 106-7)
For Clement of Alexandria the
attribution of 18 to the numerical value of Ιη seems to be regarded as an old and perhaps no longer current
tradition (Strom. VI, 11; ANF 2:499): ‘As then in astronomy we have
Abraham as an instance, so also in arithmetic we have the same Abraham. “For hearing
that Lot was taken captive, and having numbered his own servants, born in his
house, 308 (ΤΙΗ),” he defeats a very great number
of the enemy. They say, then, that the character representing 300 is, as to
shape, the type of the Lord’s sign, and that the Iota and the Eta indicate
the Savior’s name; that it was indicated, accordingly, that Abraham’s domestics
were in salvation, who having fled to the Sign and the Name become lords of the
captives, and of the very many unbelieving nations that followed them. Now the
number 300 is 3 by 100. Ten is allowed to be the perfect number. And 8 is the
first cube, which is equality in all the dimensions—length breadth, depth.’ (Ibid.,
95 n. 45)