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)

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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)