Another “original Greek” artifact includes an interesting piece of pottery with the creed written on it (Accession number: 69.74.312, Israel Museum, Jerusalem). And then there’s P. Oxy. 1784, which may even be earlier than P6! Read all about it in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Part XV by Grenfell and Hunt, page 17. You can check out an image of the papyrus P. Oxy. 1784 at the Atla Digital Library.

But I was unable to track down any complete copies of the Creed in ancient documents, so I decided I’d have to make my own!

First I had to locate a suitable blank piece of parchment, which I finally found at the British Library. Then I had to find a complementary font from my page of free Greek fonts. Next I took the digital text of the Nicene creed, removed all modern punctuation, spaces and diacritic markings, and arranged it on the parchment. I tried to match the line length and line spacing of the codex from the British Library as closely as possible to make it look realistic. Of course I needed to add some special effects to make the ink fade a little in places so it looked like it had been written several hundred years ago. Finally, I set it on a nice wooden table top!

It’s definitely not going to fool any paleographers, but I think it’s pretty cool, if I do say so myself!

Sources:

• Unicode text of the Nicene Creed – Σύμβολο της Πίστεως
• Blank parchment page – Royal MS 1 D VIII folio 1
• Free Greek uncial font – 0512 Dioskorides from KPS fonts
• Wooden texture – Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Since the resulting image was created with free resources, I am making it available for free as well. Feel free to use, share and copy it freely without any restrictions from me!

I’ve been wanting to make some Mr. Greek Geek video content for a while now, and I thought that this would be a good way to start out. I’m inviting you to join with me in memorizing Matthew 28:1-10 by watching and listening to the following video as a way to start out with familiarizing yourself with the text.

I started out with a slow recording for those who may not be very familiar with the text, and then read it again at a normal (for me) reading rate. Finally, just for fun, I added a page from Codex Sinaiticus so that you can read an ancient version of the text while you listen!

Enjoy!

Wishing everyone a blessed and memorable Easter, especially in the midst of these interesting times! Let us rejoice in the resurrection and life of Christ our Savior, who has given us eternal life through His death on the cross! So thankful this year that we have the privilege to worship Him, even if we can’t make it to a church building because of COVID-19.

Have you ever wondered what an Easter greeting in Greek would sound like? Wonder no longer! I ran across this site (called YouTube, ever heard of it?) that happened to have a video of just that! Kind of a neat accent he has there, not exactly the kind I’m used to, but I can understand what he’s saying!

“Εὐλογητὸς ὁ θεὸς καὶ πατὴρ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ὁ εὐλογήσας ἡμᾶς ἐν πάσῃ εὐλογίᾳ πνευματικῇ ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις ἐν Χριστῷ…ἐν ᾧ ἔχομεν τὴν ἀπολύτρωσιν διὰ τοῦ αἵματος αὐτοῦ, τὴν ἄφεσιν τῶν παραπτωμάτων, κατὰ τὸ πλοῦτος τῆς χάριτος αὐτοῦ…”(ΠΡΟΣ ΕΦΕΣΙΟΥΣ 1:3,7)

The featured photo at the top of the post is a mosaic from the Hosios Loukas monastery in Greece, entitled “Harrowing of Hell.” credit: Wikimedia

The image above features Genesis Chapter 1 in Greek, and is taken from “BnF Coislin 1“, which is a 7th century Greek uncial manuscript.

Find out about the origins of “International Septuagint Day” here: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/ioscs/feb8/

To see one of the oldest surviving copies of a Greek manuscript, check out BP VI f.60 from the Chester Beatty collection!

Here’s what part of the description says:

The manuscript is the earliest dated book in the Biblical Papyrus collection and until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1947) was the earliest surviving copy of any portion of the Bible. Dated to the second century, it remains among the earliest surviving biblical manuscripts in codex form.

https://viewer.cbl.ie/viewer/object/BP_VI_f_60/1/

Note: The featured image at the top of the page is from the 4th century Codex Sinaiticus, and shows the first chapter of Esther (LXX).