Wednesday, December 18, 2024

Scriptio Continua ("Continuous Script") and Phil. 1:1

There's a variant reading in Phil. 1:1 that gave me a good chuckle this morning:

Paul's either saying "with overseers" or "to fellow overseers." The ancient Greeks used no spaces between words. Texts tended to be a continuous string of letters. Sometimes it was difficult to distinguish between words. On the other hand, back then all reading was done aloud, so that readers could use their understanding of rhythm and flow to help determine word boundaries. Interesting! I suppose the same thing can be said for reading a website URL like daveblackonline. Pretty easy, right? 

By the way, if you've studied Greek, be sure to read out loud whenever you're exegeting your Greek New Testament.