Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Images of P46 (Michigan portions)

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Brandon Wason has compiled a useful list of all the (sixty) Michigan images of P46 (here).

Briefly this includes:
Fol. 16-17 = Rom 11.35-14.8
Fol. 19-28 = Rom 15.11-Heb 8.8
Fol. 30 = Heb 9.10-26
Fol. 40 = 1 Cor 2.3-3.5
Fol. 70-85 = 2 Cor 9.7 –end; Eph; Gal 1.1-6.10

Excellent work!
Up-date: this link doesn't work anymore, so I have found the entry in the Way Back Machine and paste some of the information in here (4.12.08). I have re-jigged the links so I hope that they work, but I haven't checked them all.

A New Way to Access Michigan's P46 Images
P46 is without question one of the most important manuscripts for New Testament studies, and arguably the most important text of the Pauline Corpus. The manuscript itself was comprised of 104 leaves strung together into a codex. Today 86 of those original 104 leaves are extant and housed in both Michigan and Dublin. The reason for its importance is that it is the earliest extant collection of Paul's letters. The usual date ascribed to it is 200 C.E., though Aland notes that there is leeway on either side (Text 87). The order of the contents of P46 is as follows: Romans, Hebrews, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, and 2 Thessalonians. The Pastoral Epistles, in their present form, were not contained in P46 as there was not enough space on the remanding leaves for them to have been included. Most scholars claim that 2 Thessalonians was counted, despite the fact that it has not been preserved over the centuries. Parts of Romans and 1 Thessalonians are also missing. 1 Thessalonians, if I recall correctly, does not contain an alpha in the title, thus some have argued that 2 Thessalonians was never included because the collater of P46 only knew 1 Thessalonians as Paul's only letter to that group. Another issue with P46 is how it handles the doxology in Romans by placing it after Romans 15:33 and before chapter 16. P46 is generally categorized as belonging to (or preceding) the Alexandrian text-type, though there are some Western qualities about it.
As I mentioned above, part of P46 resides in Michigan at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. They possess thirty of the 86 leaves, which they have made availabe on their website (which I blogged about in August). I often refer to the APIS (The Advanced Papyrological Information System at U Michigan) website to look at the very detailed images of P46, yet their system is often very difficult to navigate. I finally took the time to list the contents of each of the leaves (front and back, thus sixty images) and link to them individually, which is what I have below:
3553 • Rom 11.36—12.8
3554 • Rom 12.10—13.1
3555 • Rom 13.2-11
3556 • Rom 13.12—14.8
3557 • Rom 15.11-19
3558 • Rom 15.20-28
3559 • Rom 15.29—16.3
3560 • Rom 16.4-13
3561 • Heb 1.7—2.3
3562 • Heb 2.11—3.3
3564 • Heb 2.3-11
3565 • Heb 3.3-13
3569 • Rom 16.14-23
3570 • Rom 16.23—Heb 1.7
3571 • Heb 3.13—4.4
3572 • Heb 4.4-14
3573 • Heb 4.14—5.7
3574 • Heb 5.8—6.4
3575 • Heb 6.4-13
3576 • Heb 6.13—7.2
3577 • Heb 7.2-11
3578 • Heb 7.11-20
3579 • Heb 7.20-28
3580 • Heb 7.28—8.8
3581 • Heb 9.10-16
3582 • Heb 9.18-26
3583 • 1 Cor 2.3-11
3584 • 1 Cor 2.11—3.5
3585 • 2 Cor 9.7—10.1
3586 • 2 Cor 10.1-11
3587 • 2 Cor 10.11—11.2
3588 • 2 Cor 11.3-10
3589 • 2 Cor 11.12-22
3590 • 2 Cor 11.23-33
3591 • 2 Cor 11.33—12.9
3592 • 2 Cor 12.10-18 (typo on APIS)
3593 • 2 Cor 12.18—13.5
3594 • 2 Cor 13.5-13
3595 • Eph 1.1-11
3599 • Eph 1.12-20
3600 • Eph 1.21—2.7
3601 • Eph 2.10-20
3602 • Eph 2.21—3.10
3603 • Eph 3.11—4.1
3604 • Eph 4.2-14
3606 • Eph 4.15-25
3607 • Eph 4.26—5.6 (typo on APIS)
3608 • Eph 5.8-25
3609 • Eph 5.26—6.6
3610 • Eph 6.8-18
3611 • Eph 6.20—Gal 1.8
3612 • Gal 1.10-22
3613 • Gal 1.23—2.9
3614 • Gal 2.9-21
3615 • Gal 3.2-15
3616 • Gal 3.16-29
3617 • Gal 4.2-17
3618 • Gal 4.20—5.1
3619 • Gal 5.2-17
3620 • Gal 5.20—6.8



He also wonders about whether 2 Thessalonians was in the original collection: "1 Thessalonians, if I recall correctly, does not contain an alpha in the title, thus some have argued that 2 Thessalonians was never included because the collater of P46 only knew 1 Thessalonians as Paul's only letter to that group."

This doesn't actually relate to a Michigan piece at all, but fol 94r (in Chester Beatty Library).

I think it is a bit of a stretch to say that the absence of a clear alpha is significant here, since it is a rather damaged piece, reading basically:

PROS [QESSALONEIK]EIS [A
Here is a scan:



It seems to me that the tiny trace is at least compatible with either the tip of the alpha or the bar (for comparison we need fol 38v (also Chester Beatty). Scan of the 1 Corinthians title (blown up a bit):



11 comments

  1. I've removed a bigger version of the second scan since it seems disturbed the layout rather badly.

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  2. I've put in a smaller version. Hope that's OK!

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  3. Thanks for addressing the alpha, Peter. I remembered hearing about it with reference to p46 in a lecture, but the 1 Thessalonians text isn't included in Michigan's share of the leaves, so I couldn't look at it first hand.

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  4. I've never been able to figure out why critics make such a big deal out of the omission in p46 of 'en efesw' from Eph. 1:1. For one thing, there is PROS EFESIOUS right there at the top of the page, and the first few verses are so riddled with omissions that the line of thought is scarcely possible to follow grammatically.
    So Eph. 1:1-10 has a lot of words missing from the text.
    So one of them is "Ephesus".
    So what?

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  5. What happened to Brandon's blog?

    APIS is very hard to navigate, for a novice. Brandon's links was a great help.

    Some of the leaves at Michigan are mislabeled.

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  6. Mark, thanks for the comment. I have fixed up the links for you.

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  7. Thank you for these links. I am also interested in acquiring facsimiles of the Beatty Collection P46 leaves. Having searched extensively, I thought I would ask here, is Kenyon's book the only source? Namely his, "The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri Descriptions and Texts of Twelve Manuscripts on Papyrus of the Greek Bible, Fasciculus III Supplement Pauline Epistles, Text"? Thanks for your help.

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  8. Bonjour, je cherche des fac-similé du p45, savez vous ou je pourrez en trouver ?
    Hello, I'm looking for facsimile of p45, do you know where I can find it?

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  9. I see that your links skip from Eph 2.7 to Eph 2.10; does this mean that Ephesians 2:8-9 are omitted in this manuscript?

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    Replies
    1. No, it doesn't mean that. They don't survive, but they were not omitted. They would have been present in the manuscript. There is damage at the bottom of all the pages in the manuscript, with two or three lines missing; and it so happens that sometimes whole verses are lost, and in this case two whole (but short) verses are lost between the last words of verse 7 (which are visible) and the fourth word of v10 on the top of the next page.

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