Sacred language ideology for Nomina Sacra between the second and fifth centuries CE
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract This study investigates the sacred language ideology behind Nomina Sacra, which are contractions of certain words in religious texts used to express awe towards the referent. This study analyzes 170 New Testament Manuscripts written from the second century to the fifth century CE. The macro analysis finds no evidence of a language policy even after the Edict of Milan (313 CE), when Christianity became a dominant religion within the Roman Empire. However, the meso and micro analyses unveil two factors that potentially contribute to variations in the employment of Nomina Sacra: (1) the meso context, linguistic ideologies cultivated and propagated by local churches, and (2) the micro context, individual scribes’ personal preferences for using Nomina Sacra. The research findings of the meso contexts demonstrate the indexical fields of Nomina Sacra – namely, a degree of strong and weak linguistic ideologies for their contractions’ referents – between the second to fifth century CE. In addition, a micro analysis shows individual scribes’ styles of applying Nomina Sacra, which were based on their perspectives on the sacred language ideologies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".