-2 Q & ?

         Chi Phi Fraternity                                                        Chi Rho Alpha Omega Christ
                    Since 1824                                                            courtesy of Leo Reynolds on Flickr
​

The inscription in three languages, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew - Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews - was nailed to the cross.


Notice the first letter of the inscription. I and J were used interchangeably by scribes to express the sound of both the vowel and the consonant. It wasn’t until 1524 when Gian Giorgio Trissino, Italian Renaissance grammarian known as the father of the letter J, made a clear distinction between the two sounds. Once he distinguished the soft J sound, as in “jam” (probably a loan sound), the current phoneme for J was born. Source: dictionary.com

We see the Latin inscription, INRI, on the cross, instead. In the inscription above, all the words are run together. Find INRI by picking out the first letter of each word: I for Iesus, N for Nazarenus, R for Rex, and I for Iudaeorum.

---