Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Dave Washburn <davidlwashburn AT gmail.com>]

On Sat, Jun 8, 2013 at 10:35 PM, Rolf <rolf.furuli AT sf-nett.no> wrote:

Dear Stephen,

[snip]

2) If the nomina sacra represent a change in the text (something is deleted and a new reading is introduced), will that not mean that we have a corrupt text (=words that were not in the original text)?

If the scribes had replaced the word with something else, that would constitute corruption. But merely abbreviating some words is simply a writing style. It is not "something is deleted and a new reading is introduced." The reading is the same word, it's just written slightly differently to save space. There is no basis whatsoever for calling use of the nomina sacra corruption; this could be considered an abuse of the term. If an American is copying a British text and replaces "honour" with "honor" is that a corruption? I think not. It's a spelling variation, nothing more. It does no damage at all to the meaning of the text because readers still know what the word is. It's the same with the NS, and claiming that their use corrupted the text is a case of creating an "issue" where none exists.

-- 
Dave Washburn

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