Comment by markovs_gun | Hacker News Reader

Comment by markovs_gun | Hacker News Reader

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> I'm not sure if this pre- or post- dates the Jewish tradition of replacing the Name with "Adonai" (Hebrew for "Lord") or its Greek/Latin equivalent,

That taboo already existed even before the New Testament was written. The Septuagint, an early Greek translation of the Old Testament, was written around 260 BC and uses this convention, translating the Lord's name as "kyrios"- "Lord." The authors of the New Testament itself extensively quote this translation, and firmly established this convention within Christianity as well, especially because most Christian converts wouldn't know Hebrew or be expected to learn Hebrew to hear (remember that literacy rates were very low in this era compared to now) Jewish scriptures in their own languages.

Speaking of literacy, I notice that the Latin of this inscription is very messy. I don't know much Latin myself, but the handwriting is terrible, to the point where I wonder if the maker of this scroll was only semi-literate.

> I notice that the Latin of this inscription is very messy

To a modern eye (like mine), other examples of Roman cursive look hard to read as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_cursive

The examples on that page are way cleaner and easier to read than the scroll inscription. The letters in the scroll are not written consistently, and even the size of the letters changes dramatically as the inscription goes on.

> only semi-literate

Seems very possible when you consider that this is before the Roman Aristocracy decided to muscle in on the action and take over the church. Many of the original disciples and apostles were semi-literate working class types from the north country (see “nothing good could ever come from Nazareth”) and Paul, the one who wrote the most (but even then likely dictated a lot of it) was a late addition to the team. Sure he recruited a bunch of possibly “middle class” tradesmen and business owners to set up churches in their homes (Priscilla and Aquila, famously) but it was still mostly an underground movement among the slave and worker classes before Constantine decided he could put it to his own use.

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