Nomina Sacra are Latin words (singular: nomen sacrum) is an abbreviation of several frequently occurring divine names or titles, especially in Greek manuscripts. The nomen sacrum consists of two or more letters from the original word spanned by an overline.
The first four Christian nomina sacra probably appeared as a group: ΚΣ (LORD), ΘΣ (GOD), ΙΣ (ISEOUS), and ΧΣ (CHRIST). Excuse me for the words which are pagan, that's what Greek is all about, they use translated names and titles for Yahuah, Aluahym, Yahusha & Messiah. Why did they use nomina sacra? To distinguish from Roman gods.
For example: Quoting from KJV. The word 'gods' wouldn't have the nomina sacra as it refers to all pagan gods but the distinguishing marker was placed by writing either the first two letters or first and last letter, or combination of 3 letters in a name or a title with an overline.
1Co 8:5 For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,)
1Co 8:6 But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.
The nomina sacra was not just limited to a direct name or title, it could also be an indicator as shown in the example below in image 1:
Image 1:
Two nomina sacra are highlighted, ΙΥ and ΘΥ, representing of/from Jesus and of/from God (as these are genitives) respectively, in this passage from John 1 in Codex Vaticanus (B), 4th century
Again excuse me for the usage of jesus and god here, this is Greek Codex Vaticanus and the Greek scribes who translated (either from Hebrew or Aramaic) atleast left an indicator for the divine names and titles. There are modern day disputers who argue that the scribes used a short hand method to save space on the parchments, but the question is why only divine names and titles were short hand written and why not other common names or places or things not written in this pattern?
There are some Greek manuscripts which have a blank space for the name of Yahuah or Yahusha or a Divine Title. This is because the copier would write on the parchment with black or brown ink and leave it for the secondary proof reader to write the divine name or title and some places were missed by the secondary proof reader. This was also seen in the Old Testament manuscripts of Greek translations. The images below show the parchments found in Dead Sea scrolls which have both the blank space as well as the nomina sacra. Hence, to adopt the same method in NT early Greek manuscripts were not new.
In P46, the nomina sacra frequently are
accompanied by extra space, which may indicate
that they were added in a secondary copying-stage.
Three-letter Forms:
The main nomina sacra (ΚΣ , ΘΣ, ΙΣ, ΧΣ) do not always appear as two overlined letters. The copyist of Papyrus 45 switched between two-letter and three-letter forms. In Papyrus 66, two-letter forms are used. In Papyrus 46, three-letter forms (such as ΚΡΣ , ΙΗΣ, ΧΡΣ usually consisting of the first two letters plus its last letter) are used. This might be explained in a number of ways: (1) The three-letter forms might be the original forms of the nomina sacra, or (2) Copyists slightly expanded some nomina sacra to make them a little easier to read, or (3) In a location where Greek and Latin were both spoken and written developed, some of the Latin nomina sacra were expanded to lower the risk that one would be confused with another, and a sense of tidiness motivated scribes to similarly expand their Greek counterparts.
Image 6:
Wikipedia lists the Greek manuscripts between 150- 300 AD which have the nomina sacra in them. Below is the link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomina_sacra#:~:text=In%20Christian%20scribal%20practice%2C%20nomina,word%20spanned%20by%20an%20overline.
Quote from Wikipedia: It is evident that the use of nomina sacra was an act of reverence rather than a purely practical space-saving device, as they were employed even where well-established abbreviations of far more frequent words such as and were avoided, and the nomen sacrum itself was written with generous spacing. Furthermore, early scribes often distinguished between mundane and sacred occurrences of the same word, e.g. a spirit vs. the Spirit, and applied nomina sacra only to the latter (at times necessarily revealing an exegetical choice), although later scribes would mechanically abbreviate all occurrences.
So from where did the early Greek translations which have the marker of nomina sacra get it from? It has to be some Hebrew manuscript/s or else the translators wouldn't know where to place the markers. No the NT was not written in Greek as Christianity believes and teaches. We don't have any New Testament Hebrew manuscripts is because the early Rabbanical Judaism destroyed them when they persecuted the early talmidim/disciples. In fact we dont even have left a authentic Old Testament Hebrew manuscript left, all is left are the 2 Masoretic Codex 1. the Leningrad Codex from the 11th century and 2. Aleppo Codex once oldest codex from the 9th century but many scrolls destroyed in the civil war with Palestine. Yahuah preserved his marker in OT even in the Greek translation which we saw earlier either with His name embedded in Paleo Hebrew, or with a nomia sacra with an overline.
The below image is from Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 3522, dated from the first century C.E., showing a portion of the book of Job. The Tetragrammaton appears in ancient Hebrew characters in this copy of the Greek Septuagint.
Image 7:
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