# Sigma / Stigma The Life of Christ



## CurtisHight

I can't get the Greek text to display, so someone will have to have the actual book I'm referencing this from.
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I'm trying to replicate Greek text given in a footnote on page 413 in the book "The Life of Christ" by Frederic W. Farrar. Unfortunately, I'm struggling to identify two different letters, I can't tell if they are "sigma," the ligature sign "stigma" (or) "zeta." I'm hoping that someone can read the sentence and discern the most likely choice:
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¹The MS. U (the Cod. Manianus in St. Mark’s at Venice) has here the curious reading----------------------------------------------------—“He wrote on the ground the sins of each one of them;” which shows how early began the impossible and irrelevant surmises as to what He wrote.
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In the Greek sentence above you see "stigma" used at the end of the 2nd, 5th, 8th, and 9th letters.
1. However, maybe it should be "sigma."
2. Also, the letter at the end of the 5th word as I see it in the book looks different than the others. Maybe this should be "sigma" and the others "stigma."
3. Or maybe the ending of the 5th should be "sigma" and the other three "zeta."

Help please!


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## orthophron

Are you aware that lower-case "sigma" when occuring at the end of word is another character (resembling "stigma")?
σ
ς (if it is the final letter of the word)
Σ capital (final or not)


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## CurtisHight

Yes, and that is part of the problem, since the instances I'm struggling with are the final letter, a variable has been added to the other existing variables: small font size, unclear printing, a font that may come from the 1800s, and my lack of expertise.


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## balgior

Hello! 


CurtisHight said:


> In the Greek sentence above you see "stigma" used at the end of the 2nd, 5th, 8th, and 9th letters.





CurtisHight said:


> Yes, and that is part of the problem, since the instances I'm struggling with are the final letter...


I'm not sure I understood what you're asking, however I can't think of any Greek words ending with 'ζ' (zeta), while there are trillions rolleyes of them ending with 'ς' (sigma), if that's what we're looking for.


CurtisHight said:


> I can't get the Greek text to display, so someone will have to have the actual book I'm referencing this from.


Would this or this help you type what you think you're seeing?


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## PacoBajito

well you can be sure that it is sigma:

in greek sigma can be written in many different ways. 
This happens because in the long story of greek handwriting the sigma was written in at least 4 different ways, according to the different scriptures that had place in the longest greek writing story:   Σ (used always until 4bc, and often even later) c and ς (that were used from 4bc) σ (less common in ancient world, more used in the middle ages), and this is a very general difference.

When the print was discovered, it was unclear which kind of sigma had to used in printing and so the Σ was used for capitols; in the text they used either c (in all positions) or ς (in the final position) and σ  (in all the other positions)

Above all, you can be sure that your letter is sigma, becvause zeta can be in final position only in words derived from others languages (as hebrew); stigma is neither a letter but a ligature common from IX a.d. for sigma tau and used in printings too until 1500, while in ancient greek writing stigma is only a numeral. In greek there are no words too ending for stigma except the cases when stigma is followed by an apostrophe (where the full form would be -sto -ste...)
So you can be sure at the 99.9999999999 % that they are alla sigma.

i hope it was clear and usefull in case of other doubts don't esitate to contact me


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## CurtisHight

Balgior/PacoBajito, thank you for pointing out the dearth of words ending in zeta and stigma. I was hoping that something like this was the case. It doesn't answer why the final letter in one of the 5th words appear different (but doesn't not match any other Greek letter). But for now I will go with your suggestion that it is sigma.

Balgior, thank you. Neither one of these will work because once the text goes into either of my browsers it becomes unsupported. (When I upgrade my system and software this should get solved.)
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Nevertheless, it appears that I'm able to upload a jpeg file. If so, please look at it and tell me if your opinions still hold.

Also, a new issue, please look at the first word and tell me if that is indeed a word--from the text in the book I'm not sure if this should be broken into two words with the first two letters being a first word, and the next five letters being a second word.


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## Vagabond

Pictures always help 



> In the Greek sentence above you see "stigma" used at the end of the 2nd, 5th, 8th, and 9th letters.
> 1. However, maybe it should be "sigma."
> 2. Also, the letter at the end of the 5th word as I see it in the book looks different than the others. Maybe this should be "sigma" and the others "stigma."
> 3. Or maybe the ending of the 5th should be "sigma" and the other three "zeta."


1. The letter at the end of the 2nd, 5th, 8th, and 9th words is indeed a sigma (ς).
2. Nope, still a ς. It doesn't look different at all to me, strange.
3. A zeta would be a ζ. They are all sigmas.



> Also, a new issue, please look at the first word and tell me if that is indeed a word--from the text in the book I'm not sure if this should be broken into two words with the first two letters being a first word, and the next five letters being a second word.


It is indeed one single word - έγραψεν (it has another tiny mark over ε that my keyboard doesn't support, but no matter) - meaning "he wrote".


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## wonderment

Hi 

I've transcribed the sentence from your text: ἔγραψεν εἰς τὴν γην ἑνὸς ἑκάδτον αὐτῶν τὰς ἁμαρτίας 

ς = sigma at the end of a word
σ = sigma in the middle of a word
ο = omicron
δ = delta 
ν = nu
υ = upsilon 

ἑκάδτον has to be an error in transcription from the manuscript; it should read ἑκάστου (= οf each), and you can see that with handwriting it's easy to mistake σ for δ, and ν for υ. So whoever transcribed the text from the manuscript made a mistake (and probably didn't know Ancient Greek). Here's the corrected version along with literal translation:

ἔγραψεν (he wrote) εἰς (on) τὴν γην (the ground) ἑνὸς ἑκάστου (of each one) αὐτῶν (of them) τὰς ἁμαρτίας (their sins/ errors). 

HTH


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## ireney

*Moderator's note: I realise that may look to strict but there is a good reason for a) thread titles that are descriptive b) one question per thread. I will be happy to explain to anyone who wants to know  
So I would like to ask you to open a new thread for the discussing any further questions since I changed the title myself 
Thank you for your understanding.*


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## PacoBajito

i confirm you that there is neither stigma nor zeta. don't worry


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## ekfrasi

is this the text you are talking about?



> i47.tinypic.com/1ouf4o.jpg



(I am new and I am not allowed to post a link, you can go and check it)

If it is, I just confirm it is a stigma at the end of words 2,5,8,9

.... and just to correct the footnote: John 8:6,8 is another passage where Jesus is said to have written something


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