medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Interesting problem, since it has also to do with transliteration from Greek to
Latin, and with "nomina sacra" abbreviations.
In Greek, the name is usually IHSOUS (the "H" is an eta, or long e sound), which
gets abbreviated to IH (sometimes) and IHS (and oblique forms; usually). Finding
early NT manuscripts in which the name is not abbreviated is difficult, but the
spelling is predictable. The name will occur in full in many other places
(treatises, etc.), of course.
In Latin, I suspect (without any precise knowledge) that NT MSS would also have
the name abbreviated. And I suspect (with vague recollections -- too vague to
document) that IESUS as well as IHESUS appears in early manuscripts. It might be
a question to ask the PAPY (papyrology) list.
Bob
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> Dear List,
> When and where did the modern spelling Jesus become common?
>
> Is it an Italian Franciscan phenomenon? (Thinking of the so-called Oratio sancti Bernardi, in a printed book from 1491 called "Oratio sancti Bernardini confessoris ordinis minorum": O bone iesu O dulcis iesu ... et hoc nomen tuum sanctissimum iesus ...etc.
> In all the manuscripts I have studied from 14.-15.cent. is Jesus written with an h, "ihesus" (as in the medieval Vulgata) - suddenly does the modern spelling appear with consequence in a (relatively small) number of books of hours printed c.1490-1510, one in 1503 in Paris (for Sarum use). The only exception is that the printer had to use h in contractions (ihu for Jesu), since no other solution was known to him. The emblematic monogram ihs has also retained the h to our time.
>
> I know such questions are difficult to answer, since ortographical conventions took a long time to gain supremacy, but some dated quotations would be of interest. In secondary litterature are names always normalised in one way or the other and thus of little use - Victor Leroquais has no entry in his index where "ihesus" is found, despite the fact that almost all his sources use the form. In other words: only a check of the original source is valid.
>
> Are there somebody on the List who already has an answer ready?
> Thanks
> Erik
>
>
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> Mag.art. Erik Drigsdahl CHD Center for Haandskriftstudier i Danmark
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Robert A. Kraft, Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania
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