Eisenbrauns Deal of the Day for Today is: The Epistle of Jude: Its text and transmission by Tommy Wasserman (Tommy would have told you himself but he is a bit shy about shameless marketing).
60% off today only: here
A forum for people with knowledge of the Bible in its original languages to discuss its manuscripts and textual history from the perspective of historic evangelical theology.
- Contributors
- Peter M. Head (ed)
- Tommy Wasserman (ed)
- P. J. Williams, and others
Huh? It's still today where I live, and this is what the link brought up as today's special:
ReplyDeleteThe Earnest Expectation of the Creature
The Flood-Tradition as Matrix of Romans 8:18-27
by O. Christoffersson
Well, I guess they're still honouring yesterday's sale of the day, because I just bought it.
ReplyDeleteThanks Pete for making this announcement. Finally I had time to sit down at an internet cafe on my last day here in Edinburgh. When I come home I will write a brief report, but I can say that my trip has been very enjoyable.
ReplyDeleteTommy, I'm looking at Plate VIII and the page following, and though I'm having a hard time following this transcription of p78, there appears to be a transcription error. The labeling is extremely confusing, so I'll need to be rather explicit here.
ReplyDeletep78 is a single fragment of a miniature papyrus sheet written on both sides. The dimensions of the sheet are 2.9 by 5.3 cm, as folded in half to make a folio (I'm not sure what you mean by the distinction 'bifolium'). In the photo the folio is opened up to show all 4 columns (2 on each side of the sheet). But the numbering is so confusing that either the scribe or the diothortes at Almqvist & Wiksell got it wrong; I’m inclined to go with the page as printed.
At any rate, rather than numbering the 4 columns as to folio 1 or 2, | or > (see p. 53, which calls lines 2 & 3 of f1v lines 4 & 5), recto or verso, I'll just call the columns by the main verse they contain: 4,5,7, and 8. More precisely, they contain:
4c
GIANKAITONMONONDESPOTHNKNHMWNIHNCRN
5a APNOUMENOIUPOMNHSAIDEUMASBOULOMEADELF
7c AIWNIOUDIKHNEPWCOUSAIOMOIWSMENTOIKAIAUTOIEVUPNEIADOME
8a
SARKAMENMIAINOUSINKUREISTHTADEAQETOUSINDOXANDE
It is obvious that verses 5b, 5c-6a, 6b-c, and 7a-b made up the 4 columns of the innermost sheet of the quire.
Note that EPECOUSAI OMOIWS is the transcription for line 2 of column 7. But I read p78 here as EPWCOUSAI OMOIWS, which would change its citation in the apparatus on p 157 to p78f.
Dear Daniel, I did not see your note until yesterday evening, so I am responding now with a brief note, but, first, thank you for purchasing my book!
ReplyDeleteDB: "But the numbering is so confusing that either the scribe or the diothortes at Almqvist & Wiksell got it wrong; I’m inclined to go with the page as printed."
If you compare my description with the ed.pr. in the Oxy. volumes you will see that this is the way it is done. You have to see the fragment as a small book, so that the right side on the first photo is the first page in the book (folio 1, recto). This is also the first text from Jude (whereas the left side of the first photo shows folio 2 and verso, i.e., the last text in Jude (v. 8). I agree that this makes things confusing. From the pedagogical point of view I could have made four distinct photos showing only a page at a time, but there are other advantages showing the whole side.
The description on p. 53 is also correct as far as I can see, and follows the conventions (again see ed. pr.), i.e., the first folio has six lines, the second folio has nine lines. I agree that it may be confusing.
On what you call 7c: EPWCOUSAI (i.e., fol. 2r, line 2) I have EPEXOUSAI. It is simply a sloping E, not W (cf. the transcriptions in ed.pr. and Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus), so here in Jude 7 you have EPEXOUSAI for UPEXOUSAI (and no need to change my apparatus).
I notice that some parts of your long transcription was cut off in the comment, so I cannot see it all.
DB: "It is obvious that verses 5b, 5c-6a, 6b-c, and 7a-b made up the 4 columns of the innermost sheet of the quire."
If you look at p. 54 in my chapter on P78, you will see that the missing portion of text between Jude 5-7 consists of ca. 335 letters. I suggest that this would occupy two double leaves (considering the pattern of this extant leaf). These leaves would then contain an average of 42 letters per page. The extant pages contains 35 (fol. 1r), 39 (fol. 1v), 56 (fol. 2v) and 46 (fol. 2r) letters.
Again, thank you for examining my work. Welcome to contact me if you have other questions.
Perhaps I should have added that my transcription does have some minor differences compared to the ed.pr. and Junack & Grunewald's in NTP. THese are spelled out on p. 55, n. 18. I don't have time to list them here.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the explanation, Tommy. I now see that the lines are numbered by folio, not by page. My main source of confusion, though, was in the folio numbering.
ReplyDelete"the right side on the first photo is the first page in the book (folio 1, recto). This is also the first text from Jude (whereas the left side of the first photo shows folio 2 and verso, i.e., the last text in Jude (v. 8)."
This is what the scribe indicated in the text following Plate VIII, following the definition of 'recto' as the page that is bound along its left edge. But on page 55 and the errata sheet, the text follows the definition of 'recto' as that side of a papyrus sheet that is customarily used for writing, thus reversing the recto and verso of folio 2 only. But from the photo, it appears to me that the 'verso' side is much smoother and more likely to have been written on. At any rate, it's evident that the codex did begin on the 'recto' side, assuming it was either cut from one folded sheet, or, if written on separate sheets, they were all stacked facing the same way.
This morning I made a scale model of a reconstructed p78 and it came out to a quire of five sheets for v.1-12a, the first half of Jude (leaving a bit of space on the first page between the title and the text). The last half of Jude (v. 12b-25) fit nicely on another quire of five sheets. The total surface area of the reconstructed sheet of papyrus from which the quires were cut was only 17 by 22 cm; the same ratio as a standard sheet of stationery, but about half the size.
Now, the question arises, why two quires, if one could have sufficed? Given the miniature size of the codex (the dimensions of a large postage stamp), it appears that it was used for some symbolic purpose (an amulet has been suggested).
I would suggest that p78 originally took the form of 2 quires because it was divided in half, so that each of two people could carry a quire in a locket or some other form of phylactery, one likely inscribed with Genesis 31:49b.
This theory could be considered confirmed if a leaf of the other quire is found greatly removed from the original site at Oxyrhinchus.
DB: "This morning I made a scale model of a reconstructed p78"
ReplyDeleteDid your model leave for two similar bifolia like the extant one to fill the missing portion of Jude (ca. 335 letters)?
DB "an amulet has been suggested"
That is what I suggest, and try to explain in that chapter.
DB: "each of two people could carry a quire in a locket or some other form of phylactery, one likely inscribed with Genesis 31:49b.
This theory could be considered confirmed if a leaf of the other quire is found greatly removed from the original site at Oxyrhinchus."
Daniel, thanks for your suggestion. For me personally it would be far too speculative to suggest or specify another text (e.g., Gen 31:49b), or that two people carried one half each. (The principle of Occam's razor is of help.) I do find it likely that there was a text, at least at the beginning of this mini-codex, on the basis of a reconstruction of the quires, but I do not dare to say which text.
"Did your model leave for two similar bifolia like the extant one to fill the missing portion of Jude (ca. 335 letters)? "
ReplyDeleteNo, thanks for the correction. Upon further consideration I had to add 2 more sheets (bifolia) to each quire, giving the new total area dimensions of the papyrus as 22 by 24 cm.
I'm still stuck on the epsilon v. omega issue. I hope I don't have to go out and buy the e.p. to get closure on it, but that letter doesn't look anything like any of the epsilons I can pick out in the fragment.
DB: "I'm still stuck on the epsilon v. omega issue. . . . but that letter doesn't look anything like any of the epsilons I can pick out in the fragment."
ReplyDeleteDaniel, I believe it is a ligature, a combination of EPSILON and CHI, so don't expect it to look as the others. BTW, the hand is in general very irregular.