Papyrus Facsimiles from Manuscript Shop

I recently received a gift from Wes Huff of three facsimile papyrus manuscripts from the Manuscript Shop. I have been so impressed by the quality and attention to detail that I wanted to share some of the features of these museum quality replicas. The three manuscripts are P75, P52, and P46.

P75
The facsimile of the Pap.Hanna.1 (Mater.Verbi) papyrus, formerly known as Papyrus Bodmer XIV–XV (also known as P75) is an excellent representation of the original. Comparing the overall shape of the replica with the online images provided by the Vatican Library (page 2A.8r) reveals how exactly the outline was matched with the original fragment, even the worn through-holes and edges of the original are recreated. On page 2A.8r are preserved the titles of both the Gospel of Luke and of John. Zooming into the titles on the facsimile and on the online images reveals an exact match of the letter shapes and the darkness of the ink represented in the ink of the original letters, however, the replica reveals what appears to be some bleeding of the title letters (see image below). 

P75 Facsimile on stand

The stand has a very nice inscription that includes the reference of the biblical text preserved on each side

P52
The famous Rylands Papyrus 457, more widely known as P52, is housed in the John Rylands library at the University of Manchester in the UK. This facsimile is quite striking and it is difficult to tell the difference between the original and the replica. The letters in the P52 facsimile are more exact than the P75 replica and do not have the "bleeding" effect. Even with my poor quality photograph, when the original P52 and the facsimile are seen side by side, the likeness of the two pieces is quite striking. The P52 copy is unique in that the description and content of the fragment is etched directly on the plexiglass plate covering the papyrus rather than on the stand as with the P75 and P46 stands (though the online version for sale doesn't have the plexiglass etched).

P46
The last facsimile is an excellent copy of a page from P46 that is owned by the University of Michigan where it is assigned the shelf number P.Mich inv. 6238 (both the recto and the verso). The lettering on this replica is very sharp allowing the small details of the interlinear correction on the recto, third line from the top, to show clearly. There is very little "bleeding" in the lettering and the worn holes in the papyrus are mimicked quite well, though, as the comparison image shows, the holes in the replica are slightly larger than in the original. 

Closeup of the etching on the stand for P46

All three replicas with their accompanying cloth protective pouches.

Despite the minor details that I mentioned above (the slightly larger wear holes and the "bleeding" of the letters) these facsimiles are absolutely stunning and the craftsmanship and attention to detail shows at every level and thus, they seem to be priced very low for their level of quality (consider the hefty price tag of these comparative quality papyrus facsimiles). It would take someone very familiar with the originals to be able to tell that they were reproductions. I would guess that if these facsimiles were placed beside their original counterparts, it would be difficult to discern which was the replica and which the original. At the very least, they are museum quality and would be very useful as classroom aids in learning palaeography, textual criticism, or learning to read Greek. Besides these useful applications, these pieces are excellent additions to any collection for display, whether a seminary, university, home, or office library.

Open Access Books: Manual of Roman Everyday Writing Volume 1 and 2

 

Alex Mullen & Alan Bowman, Manual of Roman Everyday Writing. Vol. 1: Scripts and Texts (Nottingham: LatinNow ePubs, 2021).

Anna Willi, Manual of Roman Everyday Writing. Volume 2: Writing Equipment (Nottingham: LatinNow ePubs, 2021).

Recently I came across these two new(ish) open access books on Roman Latin writing and extant writing tools and artifacts. Here is the information about these resources quoted from volume 1.

"The manual is split into two volumes. Vol. 1 prioritizes the reading and understanding of Roman cursive and the documents in which it is found. Vol. 2 provides an overview and catalogue of Roman writing implements, the main writing materials and accessories, and information about archaeological finds, photographs, drawings, and literary and iconographic testimony. It also presents a commentary on the social aspects of literacy and writing." ("Scripts and Texts," pg. 9)

The first volume, Scripts and Texts, focuses on the development of Latin scripts across the various geographical regions. There are ample pictures of artifacts and tables of the various letter forms of the Latin scripts. This volume is valuable for the study of Latin Palaeography.

The second volume, Writing Equipment, contains several excellent essays on the mechanics of writing and composition and the use of ancient writing tools and media. There are ample pictures of extant artifacts that represent these various writing tools. There is an excellent final chapter that consists of quotations from ancient Greek and Roman literary sources that reference the use of writing tools or writing tools and media (pgs. 109-145). Here is just a random sampling of these quotations.

"To whom am I to present my pretty new book, freshly smoothed off with dry pumice-stone?" (Catullus 1.1-2)

"I suppose he has got some ten thousand or even more written out in full, and not, as is often done, put down on used sheets; imperial paper, new rolls, new bosses, red ties, parchment wrappers; all ruled with lead and smoothed with pumice." (Catullus 22.4-8)

"The wretched tablet, which I tire myself out waxing each month, lies orphaned before the bed-post next the wall, except when he looks at it as if it were Hades and writes nothing good but scrapes it all smooth." (Herodas, Mimes 3.14–18) 

"But as ink when handled leaves mark and stain, so ofttimes with unseemly verse poets put a blot on bright exploits." (Horace, Epistles 2.1.235–237) 

"We are informed that there are three kinds of sponge: a thick and very hard and rough one is called goat-thorn sponge, a less thick and softer one loose-sponge, and a thin one of close texture, used for making paint-brushes, Achilles sponge." (Pliny, Natural History 9.148)

"In her right hand she holds her pen, in her left an empty waxen tablet. She begins, then hesitates and stops; writes on and hates what she has written; writes and erases; changes, condemns, approves; by turns she lays her tablets down and takes them up again." (Ovid, Metamorphoses 9.522–525)

These two volumes are excellent open-access resources for those wishing to understand the writing tools, media, composition practices, and mechanics of writing in the Greco-Roman era. I think that it is very useful and valuable that students, professors, teachers, New Testament Textual Critics, and scholars of the New Testament more widely understand these processes in greater detail.

 

 

Forthcoming in The Journal of Theological Studies: Moses as a Symbol of the Crucified Jesus: An Early Reference to the Staurogram?

Early on in my studies, I came across Larry Hurtado's book The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins. It was deeply informative and fascinating to learn of all the features that were characteristic of Christian books; the codex, readers aids, and the nomina sacra (among other distinctives). I used his work as the basis for a detailed adult Sunday School class that I gave at my home Church over a period of several weeks that covered the information found in The Earliest Christian Artifacts. I had the opportunity to share this with Hurtado one time at SBL and he was thrilled. He said that one of his goals for writing that book was to inform the every day Christian of the rich heritage of the manuscript tradition of the New Testament. 

Hurtado was also well known for his work on the staurogram, to which he dedicated a chapter in his book. I too became fascinated with the nomina sacra (thanks to Hurtado), and in particular this curious tau-rho ligature. I was convinced by Hurtado's arguments that this device was used as a sort of crude pictogram of the crucified Jesus. Eventually this curiosity led to me writing an article on the origin of this device. After an earlier draft version was rejected by JBL, I submitted my manuscript to The Journal of Theological Studies and I recently learned that it was accepted for publication. I wish that Hurtado was still with us because I would love to talk about the staurogram with him over a cup of coffee.

I am not sure when the article will appear in print. Until that time, here is the title and an abstract to whet your appetite.

Moses as a Symbol of the Crucified Jesus: An Early Reference to the Staurogram?

Abstract:
This article investigates the origins of the Christian use of the staurogram, a ligature formed by the superimposed Greek letters tau and rho, as a symbol of the crucified Jesus, in three early New Testament gospel codices; P66, P75, and P45. Evidence is presented from the Epistle of Barnabas 12.1-3, which interprets Moses’s outstretched arms during the battle against Amalek as a prefiguring of Jesus’s crucifixion, demonstrating that the veneration of cruciform imagery was already present within the imagination of some Christian communities. This suggests that all the necessary ingredients and catalysts were present for the appropriation of the tau-rho ligature at the beginning of the second century. The presence of the staurogram in the Beratius Nikatoras inscription, several Christian gemstone rings, Codex Sinaiticus, and the “Jung Codex,” and the nomen sacrum evidence from a recently discovered Frankfurt Silver amulet, are used to construct a chronological framework for the adoption of the staurogram in the New Testament gospel papyri. This article argues that there is good reason to believe staurograms could have appeared in manuscripts of the canonical gospels as early as the end of the second century and were adopted as standalone pictograms by the fourth century

Key words: staurogram, nomina sacra, Epistle of Barnabas, Ephrem the Syrian, Frankfurt Silver Amulet, P45, P66, P75, Codex Sinaiticus

 

P.Bodmer II (P66), a Marginal Correction, and the Useful Life of Books

While re-reading James Royse's discussion of P66, I came across his brief mention of a correction at John 13:19a. It seems that the original copyist skipped over an entire line in their exemplar and omitted the following phrase in red, 

ἀπ᾽ ἄρτι λέγω ὑμῖν πρὸ τοῦ γενέσθαι, ἵνα πιστεύσηται ὅταν γένηται ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι.

The interesting feature about this correction is that it appears to be the only correction not made by the original copyist of the manuscript. Here are Gordon Fee's comments in full.

"However, there is one correction which seems clearly to be the work of a second hand: the addition of απ αρτι λεγω υμιν προ at 13:19. The square μ and υ simply demand a second hand: in the original scribe’s hand (even in the corrections which are obviously his) these letters are always well-rounded. Although this particular hand does not seem to be clearly in evidence at any other point, it does indicate that a second hand has had access to the MS." (Fee, Papyrus Bodmer II, 59)

The script used in P66 has been classified by Turner as "informal round" which has letters that "are rounded but also seem flattened" (Turner and Parsons, Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World, 21). Orsini and Clarysse have placed the script of P66 into their "Alexandrian Stylistic Class" which is characterized by letters that are "unimodular and looped, and the strokes end in apices (in the lower parts) and small hooks (in the upper parts); sometimes curves and flourishes are added at the end of letters." (Orsini and Clarysse, "Early New Testament Manuscripts and Their Dates," 458).

 

P.Bodmer II showing correction at John 13:19

When examining the interlinear correction at John 13:19 in closer detail, the difference in the two scripts is apparent. As Fee noted in the quote above, the μ and υ are markedly different, the correction being more angular and less looped and curved than the letters of the main text. Also note the difference in shape and the flow of the pen strokes in the way the alpha, mu, upsilon, and omicron are formed (these letters are highlighted in red below).

Closeup detail of John 13:19 correction in P.Bodmer II (P66). Compare the highlighted letters in the original script with those of the interlinear correction at the top.

Also, added to the difference in letter shapes is the difference in ink. It is difficult to see the details in the gray scale image, but it appears that the ink of the marginal correction is darker and the ductus is sharper with less fading from the ink. Again, it is difficult to tell from this image, but it appears to be a different ink that was used in the correction as compared to the main body of text. When comparing the script of the correction at John 13:19 with the more formal rounded biblical majuscule of the fourth and fifth centuries, clear parallels can be seen.

Closeup detail of John 13.19 in Codex Sinaiticus (top), Codex Alexandrinus (Second from top), Codex Vaticanus (Second from Bottom), and the Correction at John 13.19 in P66 (bottom).

I aligned the same text from John 13:19 with the text from three other codices in order to illustrate the close similarities between the style of script used in these manuscripts (in Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, the text spread across two lines so I altered the image so that the text from these manuscripts would appear horizontally together for comparison purposes). When looking at the overall letter forms, it seems that the scribe of the correction in P66 was using a very similar script to that used in these other manuscripts. This script is designated by Orsini and Clarysse as "Biblical majuscule" and they place both Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus into this classification (Orsini and Clarysse, "Early New Testament Manuscripts and Their Dates," 451). According to Orsini and Clarysse, this script was used as early as the second century and they place P64+67+4 into an early stream of this style and assign a date of the late second to the early third century.

John 13.19 Correction in P66 (top) and detail from P4 (bottom)

Though the image from P4 is not as high quality, I compared similar letters from P4 with the correction at John 13:19 in P66 (highlighted in red above). There are definately close similarities between these scripts, especially with the more uniform thickness of the strokes, when compared with the corresponding thinner-thicker ductus of the fourth century codices. Therefore, purely on palaeographical grounds, this interlinear correction at John 13:19 could have occurred anywhere from the third century, into the fourth or even fifth centuries. However, the uniform thickness of the strokes in the P66 correction looks closer to the script in P4, so if this fact holds any chronological weight, then the correction is likely earlier rather than later within this 3rd to fourth century spectrum.

This correction indicates that someone was using P.Bodmer II at a date sometime after the book was produced, they noticed the omission by the copyist, and added the missing text in between the lines. It's possible that this correction occurred during one of the many rebindings that P66 underwent in its (apparently long) useful life. Nongbri has a detailed discussion of this rebinding in his treatment of the appearance of quire signatures in P66. The quire signatures could be from the orginal binding, or could possibly originate from a later rebinding. Either way, the quire signatures do not correspond with the latest binding preserved in the manuscript .According to Nongbri, quire signatures are first seen in the early fourth century so it is likely that multiple rebindings occurred on P66 in the fourth and possibly early fifth centuries (See the full discussion in Nongbri, "The Limits," 29-32).

 

P.Bodmer II detail showing reinforcement repair in the spine (highlighted in red)

P.Bodmer II detail showing reinforcement repair in the spine (highlighted in red)

 

 Figures 20 and 21 taken from Nongbri "The Limits of Palaeographic Dating of Literary Papyri," pg. 30, with the quire signatures highlighted in red.

If a third century production of the codex holds true, then the manuscript was used for about one hundred years before it was repaired sometime in the fourth century. It is possible, as Nongbri suggests, that at this time the quire signatures were placed in the manuscript and perhaps, the marginal interlinear correction at John 13:19 was made by the scribe who was facilitating the rebinding (highly speculative I admit). The manuscript continued to be used and the reinforcing strips and possibly another rebinding ocurred in the later fourth or even into the fifth century and the page margins (and the remains of the quire numbers) where trimmed. Then finally, the codex was deposited into its final location in the fifth, or perhaps (if Robinson's material is included in the same deposit) into the sixth or even seventh centuries (Nongbri, "The Limits," 25). That means that this manuscript was being used anywhere from 200 to 300 years before it was deposited into its final location (see earlier blog post here). 

One final comparison of scripts is worth noting here. P.Bodmer XIV–XV (P75) also contains a marginal comment that uses a similar "Biblical Majuscule" script as that used in the John 13:19 correction of P66. 

The marginal comments in P.Bodmer XIV-XV (P75) compared with the correction at John 13:19 in P.Bodmer II (P66) 

 

Though not an exact match, the marginal comments in P75 are very similar to the correction at John 13:19 in P66. Look especially at the two circled alphas, their shape and form is very similar, though they are not exactly the same hand because there are minor differences in the size and shape of the upsilon and the omicron, and the marginal hand in P75 has no serifs or hooks like those in the correction in P66. With that said, this indicates that these new testament codices were being used and read well into the fourth and fifth centuries. This corresponds with Houston's assessment.

"The identification of such collections, and of the manuscripts within them, provides new evidence on an old question: how long did a papyrus roll last? The evidence from our collections indicates that a usable lifetime of about 100 to 125 years was common and can reasonably be considered the norm; a small but significant number of manuscripts were still usable some 300 years after they were first created; and on rare occasions a manuscript might last, it seems, for half a millennium." (Inside Roman Libraries, p. 257)

____________________________________________

Fee, Gordon, Papyrus Bodmer II (P66): Its Textual Relationships and Scribal Characteristics (Studies and Documents, 34; Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1968). 

Houston, George W. Inside Roman Libraries: Book Collections and Their Management in Antiquity (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2014).

Nongbri, Brent, “The Limits of Palaeographic Dating of Literary Papyri: Some Observations on the Date and Provenance of P. Bodmer II (P66),” Museum Helveticum 71 (2014): 1-35

Orsini, Pasquale and Willy Clarysse, “Early New Testament Manuscripts and Their Dates: A Critique of Theological Palaeography,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 88 (2012): 443-74. 

Royse, James Ronald. Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri (NTTSD 36. Leiden: Brill, 2008).

Turner, E. G. Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World (2nd edition, ed. P. J. Parsons. London: University of London, Institute of Classical Studies, 1987)