From: John Albu (albu@intercom.com)
Date: Thu Jan 08 1998 - 11:36:46 EST
On January 7, 1998 Carl Conrad wrote:
> The iota subscript was neither pronounced nor written in Greek texts
> of the period of the NT; in fact, it was invented as a subscript to
> show where a following iota once had been part of a long-vowel
> diphthong. I think its primary value is to assist in distinguishing
> some forms like dative singulars of the first and second declensions
> and subjunctive 3rd sg (it would appear that in the NT era -EI
> and -H(i) were pronounced identically. So far as I know, the iota
> that is conventionally written as a subscript under A, H, and W has
> in recent decades by some editors been printed as an "adscript" in
> 5th century and earlier texts with the intent that these long-vowel
> diphthongs should actually be read as such. This is the case, for
> instance with Denys Page's Oxford Classical Text of Aeschylus.
> But I know of no conventional pronunciation of Biblical Greek that
> sounds an iota subscript."
Actually iota adscript was used in the first century B.C.E.
and the first century C.E. In MSS of LXX it occurs in Papyrus
Ryl. 458 (second century B.C.E.), Papyrus Fouad 266 and
4Q LXX Numbers (both from first century B.C.E.), and
4Q LXX Lev a (first century C.E.). The editors printed the
iota as an adscript. As for the NT, iota adscipt is found in
Papyrus Chester Beatty I (P45, of the third century C.E.),
which contains fragments of the Gospels and Acts.
The use of iota adscript in datable incriptions of the first
century C.E. is the following:
Emperor Present Absent
Augustus 3 2
Tiberius 3 0
Gaius 1 0
Claudius 2 1
Nero 0 1
Titus 2 0
Domitian 0 1
It is evident, therfore, that iota adscript was used in the MSS of
the NT in the first century C.E. How it was pronounced is another
matter.
John Albu
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