Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Brent Nongbri Responds

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Some of you may recall my recent post where I mention my recent article that briefly disputes Brent Nongbri’s case for P18’s greater likelihood of being a codex. Following this, Brent concocted a twofold response, which is as eloquent as it is amicable. In Part 1, he engages with Charlesworth’s response published last year and in Part 2 with mine. I won’t be writing a rejoinder and would encourage our readers to read Brent’s posts for themselves. He summarises the points of contact very accurately and, since both his and my piece were written in more tentative terms, the debate pretty much ends up in weighing the probabilities. I for one remain unconvinced by the counterproposal, but, once again, I am impressed by how Brent is able to interact with opposing views with civility and fairness. (Another good example of this is Brent’s latest post concerning Ryan Kaufman’s counterproposal concerning the ending of John 20 in P66.)

I might note, however, that I was quite intrigued by (parts of) Steven Goranson’s comment under Brent’s second post quite interesting. Let me quote it in full:
I am undecided whether it is a roll or a codex, and excuse me if I missed something, but concerning the paragraph ‘Yes, but the specific point at issue is “fragments of what were once more extensive rolls” that preserve no more or less than a single column of writing on both sides. How common is that? (It’s an honest question–I don’t know the answer.) If our Exodus/Revelation papyrus is indeed a portion of a reused roll, it would seem to be a very happy coincidence indeed that this surviving portion of the roll preserves exactly a single column of text on each side.’ I would comment that if one column from the *middle* of a roll were preserved on the recto, then the chances of a nearly-matching column on the verso would be smaller than the chances of a match if indeed this piece were a roll end. That it holds the end of Exodus and the beginning of Revelation (assuming the top edge, with room for initial Rev. verses, is missing) might suggest (but not prove) the end of a roll. After all, if using a similar margin, one side of the column already aligns as a given (unlike in a mid-roll scenario), so if similar column width was used, the match of columns may not occasion much surprise. Also, though I may be on thin ice, let me go further: aren’t Exodus and Revelation both scroll-prominent books, and scribes knew that? So, given a choice…
Although I’m not sure I’d call Revelation a ‘scroll-prominent book’ (it does involve a comparatively higher proportion of papyri, the numbers are so small that it’s very hard to make any convincing generalisations), I think the main force of Goranson’s argument lies in the fact that the beginning followed by the ending of another work in a fragment like this would speak in favour of a re-used roll. To this I might add that portions of the roll closer to the centre (i.e. ending of the → side) are more likely to get preserved than outer parts—for obvious reasons. This would fit nicely with the situation in P18, provided that the roll wasn’t rolled up the opposite way upon re-use. Here I must confess that I don’t really know how this was done or whether there are any studies that deal with this. I would thus gladly echo Brent’s observation that ‘we really do need a thorough survey of reused rolls’. I couldn’t agree more. How’s that for a doctoral thesis topic? 

9 comments

  1. Thanks. Allow me to comment on my perhaps unclear, or amphibolous, coinage of "scroll-prominent." I intended it to refer both to the physical scrolls as well as to text references to scrolls, Ezekiel 3:3 and Rev. passim.
    Elsewhere I wrote that the author of Revelation, whose place in the canon occasioned much comment, was Essene-influenced: DSD 1997, http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/Exclusion_of_Ephraim.pdf
    and in Legal Texts, Legal Issues (Joseph M. Baumgarten FS) 1997 453-60 and on the text of Rev. 22:14 in NTS 1997 154-7.

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    1. Thanks for chipping in, Stephen. Very helpful and interesting.

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  2. From the beginning, the major weakness of the 'reused' roll theory is the term 'reuse'. It evokes the image that the original text on the recto (i.e. Exodus), was no longer useful and that the material was repurposed for the text of Revelation. Nongbri's suggestion successfully avoids the notion of discarding Exodus for the sake of Revelation by assuming that the latter was added to Exodus, thus maintaining that both texts had value to the user who added Revelation.
    Given Exodus's status as Scripture within the early church, I cannot imagine that the Exodus roll was repurposed (in the sense described above) as a Revelation roll. It seems easier to assume that, in the style of miscellaneous volumes, Revelation was 'added to' Exodus, which still kept its value as an Exodus text. This could also explain why the roll was not turned as would be done for properly reused rolls.
    So I suggest we should see the whole manuscript as a miscellaneous volume. If a codex, it is miscellaneous by necessity (the deliberate act of continuing to write in the same manuscript); if a roll, it is miscellaneous not because of repurposing away from the first text, but because a second, valued, text was added on the verso to the original, valued text.

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    1. Thanks for this, Dirk. I agree that the manuscript now has miscellaneous contents and I also get the potentially problematical nature of the language of 're-use'. I think, though, that you're reading a bit too much into it. The re-use of a roll simply suggests that the back side, which was originally left blank, was used for some other text—contrary to the normal design of this book format. So, the re-use ipso facto meant 'adding'. Brent's counter-proposal was codicologically driven, and indeed that's where this debate primarily lies (and rightly so). I should also note that I've never suggested (nor has Hunt, the principal editor, done) that the inscription of the Rev text onto this roll did away with the possible continual use of the Exod text. Although I've found the argument for literary motivations behind this arrangement of texts dubious, I wouldn't rule out a possibility that the Exod side continued to be used. Who knows? The point of 're-use' in this case concerns the writing material. In case of rolls, this re-use could have, potentially, facilitated a continued use of the original side as half of the writing material was still available.

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    2. But the vagueness of 'reuse' shines through in Nongbri's argument that normally a reused roll is turned 180 degrees. Undoubtedly correct when you write your personal literary work on the back of tax roll.
      I know what you mean with 'reuse', but the semantics of the word don't seem to cover both 'reuse of the writing material' and 'continual use of the text'. You cannot have your cake etc.

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    3. I simply use the language of re-use because that's how it's normally done (even when the recto text involved is literary and even when the roll isn't rotated, which is by no means a rarity), but I do see the potential for misunderstanding. It'd be interesting to see if the practice of rotating/lack thereof correlates in any way with the character of the text on the → side. Food for thought.

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  3. Yes, and indeed ”miscellaneous” and not ”composite”!

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  4. I wondered whether it really needs to be a scroll or codex. Is a stack of leaves not an option?

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