Resources for Reading Greek Manuscripts

I have been a transcriber of Greek manuscripts for many years now, both paid and volunteer, and a question I often get as a result is how to interpret the vast number of letter combinations or “ligatures” that one finds in these texts. Over the years, I have read many books that cover this material, but have also collected various online resources that I can offer to new transcribers or those just interested in learning about these paleographic features.

Incidentally, learning these forms can also help with reading early printed Greek New Testament’s since the typeface used in those editions was modelled after written Greek and includes ligatures. In this article, I will offer my best suggestions for learning how to read Greek abbreviations and ligatures as seen in biblical manuscripts.

Terminology

First, let’s talk terminology. While the definitions often involve some level of overlap, there are differences in whether something is a ligature, a contraction, or an abbreviation.

• Abbreviation — the intentional shortening of a word by removing its last few letters.
• Contraction — the intentional shortening of word by removing letters between the first and last letters of the word.
• Ligature — the joining of several letters together to create a shortened form of a word, or the replacement of that word with a symbol.

Examples of abbreviations one might encounter in Greek manuscripts are numbers that have been replaced with their letter equivalent. Rather than spelling out the infamous mark of the beast in Revelation 13:18, for example, scribes often wrote its equivalent in letters (χξϛ). Another example would be the replacement of a final nu with an overhead line.

The most obvious examples of compactions or contractions that you will find in Greek manuscripts are nomina sacra which abbreviate certain common Greek nouns. Ligatures are more difficult to provide examples for since they generally employ symbols rather than letter shapes. However, two of the ligatures most often seen in manuscripts are the combination of omicron and upsilon and the καί (kai) ligature in its various forms.

History

Abbreviations and contractions can be found in Greek manuscripts during the centuries in which majuscule script was used exclusively. And, while ligatures generally do not appear widely in literary work prior to the transition to minuscule script, the presence of an early καί (kai) ligature can be found already in Codex Sinaiticus (4th c. AD) as shown above.

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Between the fifth and seventh centuries, as cursive majuscule became more prolific in documentary texts, ligature use increased as scribes desired a more rapid or tachygraphic mode of writing. By the ninth century, the conversion from majuscule to a literary minuscule began and the following centuries brought with them an increased production of ligatures for more words.

Generally, ligatures are used to represent words of three to four letters or less, but in some creative instances, the ligature for a word like κατά (kata) can be found in place of its use as a prefix on a word like καταβαίνω (katabainō). By the fourteenth century, manuscripts produced in a more scholastic style could be comprised of almost exclusively abbreviations, compactions, and ligatures, making the text almost indecipherable to anyone unfamiliar with this form of writing.

For present-day transcribers and students of Greek manuscripts the presence of these shapes and symbols can create an impenetrable barrier to proficiency, especially if they lack any resources to guide them through the maze. In order to help others become familiar with the forms they will regularly encounter in Greek manuscripts, I have compiled a list of resources, mostly available online for free, that can be used to help students along the way:

Print resources

The best print resources for reading and understanding ligatures are in several languages and are not available online are the following.

• English: Pat Easterling and Carol Handley, eds. Greek Scripts: An Illustrated Introduction. London: Society for the Promotion of Hellenistic Studies, 2001.
• Italian: Elpidio Mioni. Introduzione alla paleografia greca. Universita Di Padova Studi Bizantini E Neogreci 5 Padova: Liviana Editrice, 1973.
• French: Alain Blanchard. Sigles et abréviations dans les papyrus documentaires grecs: recherches de paléographie. Bulletin Supp. No. 30. London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1974.

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Online resources

Fortunately, living in a digital age means that many of the earlier, and still very helpful, works on paleography are now available online. The most important of which in English is T. W. Allen’s Notes on Abbreviations in Greek Manuscripts (1967). It has a full description of common ligatures and a discussion on tachygraphy making it a unique and extremely valuable resource.

Next to that would be the work of the famous paleographer, Edmond Maunde Thompson whose work Handbook of Greek and Latin Palaeography (1893) is a bit dated, but still contains a very helpful chapter on abbreviations.

Moving to resources that are produced exclusively online, the Vatican library website has an excellent page containing an introduction to Greek paleography. One of the links on the page is to a discussion on abbreviations with helpful diagrams of several ligatures.

Additionally, an online PDF of the introduction to William Wallace’s (no, not that one) An Index to Greek Ligatures and Contractions has been made available, which contains his diagrams of numerous ligatures.

An online website dubbed the “Textual Critic’s Corner” also has a section devoted to ligatures, with images, along with very clear scans of ligatures used in printed Greek New Testaments and other Incunabula.

The best resource of all

I intentionally left this last online resource for the end because, if you saw it first, you would have ignored all the others! It’s called the CRBMI Searchable Ligature Tool and is the brainchild of Dr. W. Andrew Smith and the Center for Research of Biblical Manuscripts and Inscriptions (crbmi.org).

Enterprising transcribers there have developed a searchable ligature/abbreviation tool that allows someone to simply type a letter combination into a search bar and it will return images for all known ligatures of that combination. It is the most thorough database that I am aware of, and it should be a tab on everyone’s computer.

Lastly, I would be remiss to not also put on every reader’s radar what will be the largest compendium of all Greek ligatures ever produced. It is slated for publication in 2026, coming from the University of London.

• Julian Chrysostomides, et al., eds. A Lexicon of Abbreviations & Ligatures in Greek Minuscule Hands: ca. 8th century to ca. 1600. Porphyrogenitus.

I would encourage all who are interested to save the information and keep an eye out for its eventual release.

Conclusion

Knowledge of abbreviations, contractions, and ligatures in Greek manuscripts is of vital importance for anyone in manuscript studies, be they paleographers or text critics. They represent an important era of manuscript production and cannot be ignored if one intends to read or transcribe manuscripts after the eighth century. By providing these resources here, I hope that it will encourage more readers to work with late-antique manuscripts of the Greek Bible and give them the ability to teach others to do the same.

Notes

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  My immense thanks to Dr. Amy Myshrall who was more than willing to share these examples of ligatures when she heard of this article.