Capitilization of Holy Spirit

No they didn't. Actually Koine Greek in the first century was all capital letters.

 

Yep...when you're right you're right!:applause:

 

Yes and no.

First, the Hebrew and Aramaic of the OT, to my knowledge, do not ever make a distinction in upper and lower case letters, in any manner, so this is not relevant, as to the OT.

The Greek of the NT was initially written in all upper case or letters, making no distinction in case and proper nouns from anything else. (There were also no breaks between letters in sentences, nor was there punctuation, either.) These early MSS are known as 'uncial'

Thus, for an example using the English language, a portion of Matt. 28:19 would read in this manner, if we could duplicate this.

(Note any breaks in these letters are inserted by the computer, as I typed that in with no breaks.)

Later, lower case was developed for Greek language, thus we have what are known as minuscules (meaning small letters) and the majority of extant NT MSS are of this variety. (However, I think that there still were no punctuation or word breaks, at least initially.) Thus we would have something along these lines.

Still later we would find word separation, punctuation, etc. in the Greek language, reflected by late MSS and texts.

However, one simply cannot equate the writing style and conventions of the Greek and Hebrew languages with that of the English language, especially as used today, to reflect the capitalization of proper nouns (or Deity), as the writing convention. In fact, even from the written English of the 1500s into more modern times, this is not always made clear, as these examples from Ps. 51:11 should serve to show.

I would prefer all these words be capitalized, here as per the YLT, NASB, NKJV, LIT, and HCSB, as all three of these words, in this verse and context, refer to the Deity of God, but unfortunately, this simply hasn't happened. By the same token, I am not yet losing any sleep over this.

Hope that helps.


And, BTW, welcome to the Baptist Board. :wavey:

Ed

 

Welcome! Additionally, many English versions still do not capitalize terms of Diety. Why? Perhaps because there are some ambiguous passages (John 6:63, etc.). The KJV is very inconsistant in the application of uppercase intitial letters, as you have seen this recent thread --

http://www.baptistboard.com/showthread.php?t=60954

 

Oh silly me why didnt I think of it.......................:BangHead:

It didnt take long however that scribes started using the "nomina sacra" or sacred name abbreviations. That being, making Theos, Iesoos, pnuema and making a two letter abbreviation with a slash over the top to let the reader know it was a nomina sacra.

But I think this started in the 3rd century maybe.

 

I believe that any CURRENT reference to the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost should be capitalized. However, I am against changing the capitalization or lack thereof in any older versions. I liketa read them as close to their originals as possible, including their now-archaic spellings.