Saturday, March 12, 2022

Thomas Bokedal on the Oldest Explicit Testimony to the Use of Nomina Sacra in the Epistle of Barnabas

  

‘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)