New Biblical Papyri Coming from Oxyrhynchus

For those who don’t follow the blog on Twitter or Facebook, here’s some very big news coming from the Egypt Exploration Society:

In response to recent queries about results of the review initiated in 2016 to identify unpublished New Testament fragments in its collection of Oxyrhynchus papyri (https://www.ees.ac.uk/news/poxy-lxxxiii-5345), the EES reports as follows:

Some twenty New Testament inedita have been identified, none of them apparently earlier than the late 2nd to early 3rd century AD. They have all been assigned to editors, and will be published in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri series as the editors complete their work over the next few years. There may be more small fragments still unidentified because, like the Mark fragment recently published (LXXXIII 5345), their identity only emerges from much more detailed study than is feasible when cataloguing. We note that Grenfell and Hunt were particularly keen to find New Testament texts, and so sorted out possible cases as they processed their finds in Egypt and back at Oxford, and published many of them.

Some ten patristic texts have also been identified and assigned to editors, and over eighty Septuagint and related texts are currently known to us and will gradually be assigned and published (some in the forthcoming volume LXXXIV). In the volumes of the Oxyrhynchus series we normally aim to publish a variety of texts, including literary fragments and the far more numerous documentary texts which are the primary interest of many of our readers.

Published: 7th March, 2019

HT: Brent Nongbri 

The Curious Case of P44

In my NA28, P44 is listed as a sixth/seventh-century manuscript containing Matt 17.1–3, 6–7; 18.15–17, 19; 25. 8–10 and Jn 9.3–4; 10.8–14; 12.16–18. It seems then to be a lectionary, which is how LDAB and the Met’s website list it. My co-blogger, Elijah Hixson, however, pointed out to me yesterday that P44 has been split in two since the printing of my NA28 so that it is now P44 and P128. The sections containing Jn 9.3–4; 12.16–18 are P128 and the other sections are now P44. That means that P44 still contains Matt and John materials and still seems to be a lectionary.

It’s the remaining bit of John in P44, however, that seems strange to me and I would like to hear from others about it. I pinged another one of my co-bloggers, Pete Malik, on this and all three of us get the impression that text of John that is still listed as part of P44 looks to be from a different hand. My library is limited at the moment and none of my own books gave me any help. So, I’m wondering if any of our readers know more about what’s going on here.

In this image, I’ve highlighted P44 in blue, P128 in orange, and the remaining John material of P44 in purple. It’s this last part I’m curious about.

P44 (in blue) and P128 (in orange). John 10.8–14 is in purple.

Update: Brent Nongbri emails this photo from the IGNTP volume of John, showing how they split it into A and B. In this case, their P44B is now P128 and they naturally don’t include the portions of Matt from what they’re calling P44A. But I’d like to know if they say anything more about their P44A and its relation to the rest of P44.

New NT Papyrus Manuscripts

One of the great things about working in the field of NT manuscripts and textual criticism over the last decades has been the steady flow of new material. Just to show two strands of that flow:

• NA26 (published in 1979) listed NT papyri up to P88; and majuscules up to 0276. 
• NA27 (published in 1993) listed NT papyri up to P98; and majuscules up to 0301.
• NA28 (published in 2012) listed NT papyri up to P127; and majuscules up to 0303.

 Recently new manuscripts of both types have been added to the online list in the VMR:

P128: VI/VII  (5 frags; single col.): John 9.3-4; 12.12-13, 16-18. New York; MMA Inv. 14.1.527

P128 is the Johannine portion of P44, now categorised as a separate papyrus, following (I presume) the conclusion in the IGNTP John Papyri volume that the two fragments ‘are without doubt by different hands’. (photos of the small John fragments are in that book as well as at the VMR). Interesting that the Liste states that they are all from a single page, this would suggest a possible liturgical text (as the original editors). The John transcript folk have provided a transcript (the clue is in the name) which places the different fragments over three separate pages (and hence reflecting a continuous text).

P129: III (4 frags; single column): 1 Cor 7.36-39; 8.10-9.3; 9.14-17; 9.27-10.6

P130: III/IV (1 frag; single col.): Heb 9.9-12, 19-23

P131: III (1 frag.; single col.): Rom 9.18-21, 22- 10.3

These three are not attributed to any particular location, but clearly are the first fruits of the Green Collection papyri. So congratulations are due to the Green Collection for that. Clearly they are making progress on the publication of the first volume of their Greek papyri (mentioned previously on this blog). No photos are available as yet (although somewhere on this blog there is a fuzzy photo of the Romans papyrus). It is, of course, interesting to note that the dates now assigned to these papyri are a century later than were first pronounced (as this blog has suggested on many occasions). On other details we await the forthcoming publications.

Majuscules up to 0323 are also listed. Many of these are extremely interesting, but I don’t have time right now to work through them all.

P99 and the Reader's Bibles

I have seen a few Reader's Greek New Testaments floating around Cambridge recently (sample), and I must confess to having bought a Reader's Hebrew Old Testament a couple months back. We have at least one ancient parallel to this phenomenon. The Chester Beatty Codex ac. 1499 (P99, ca. 400 CE) contains Greek glosses for difficult Latin words (or perhaps vice-versa as the Greek precedes the Latin) for Romans, 2 Corinthians, Galatians and Ephesians. The manuscript is probably a writing exercise from a Pachomian monk polishing his Latin (A. Wouters, 1988, 166–168). This codex says a great deal. Egyptian monks (assuming that P99 came from the Dishna papers) were interested in the Latin Bible. The monks were active in educating themselves (the codex also contains a Greek grammar which consists of verbal paradigms). The ancient writers were struggling with the increasing gap between spoken Greek and Classical/Attic Greek (ibid., 80 f.).