The origin and development of the nomina sacra (sacred names written in an abbreviated form) found in early Christian texts is much debated in scholarly circles and no agreement has been reached. However the use of the nomina sacra in P.Lond.Lit. 207 may help to resolve some of the questions that surround the puzzle of their origin. P.Lond.Lit. 207 is a portion of papyrus that has broken off from a roll (24.5 X 25.7 cm), covering Psalms 11(12):7 to 14(15):4. The scribe of P.Lond.Lit. 207 has consistently written Kurios in an abbreviated form (nomen sacrum), giving only the first and last letters, and a supralinear bar drawn above the abbreviation. On the other hand, Theos is always written uncontracted. This is quite unusual given that Theos in Christian texts is always written as a nomen sacrum. Could the reason for this practice in P.Lond.Lit. 207 be found in the Semitic custom of contracting personal names to the first and last letter? Is Kurios abbreviated in this Semitic fashion to notify the reader that the word is being used to translate the personal name (the Tetragrammaton) of the Hebrew deity? 1 This paper was first presented at the 24th International Congress of Papyrologists, Helsinki, 2004, since then it has been revised and I am in debt to Prof. L. Hurtado whose British Academy of Humanities grant allowed me to give a revised version to a special conference held at Edinburgh University, June 2005. It is an expansion and further development of the paper 'The

No abstract

The narrow dating of some of the early New Testament papyri and the methodological approach that is used must be brought into question in the light of the acknowledged difficulties with palaeographical dating and especially the use of assigned dated literary papyri. The thesis of this paper is that the way forward in dating New Testament papyri, or for that matter any undated literary papyri, is first to locate the manuscript in its graphic stream and using, on the whole, dated documentary papyri belonging to the same stream, come to an approximate understanding of where in the history of the stream the manuscript lies. The following New Testament Papyri will be so treated: P  , P  + and P  .

This book sets out to make available a wide range of effective classroom strategies for teaching biblical studies. The volume is divided into three parts. Part one covers the topics of hermeneutics, methodologies, approaches and resources. Part two deals with what the editors call the Hebrew Bible and is treated under the headings of Torah, Prophets, Writings and varia, that is, anything that cannot be fitted under the three main headings. Part three deals with the New Testament under the headings of Gospels and Acts, Letters, Revelation and again varia. The students that this book has in mind are on the whole tertiary level undergraduates. Each entry assumes what is called in the introduction a critical, academic approach with

No abstract