Both manuscripts are held by the “Stimer Family Collection” in Camarillo, USA.
Apparently this is the collection of Andrew Stimer who is connected to Scott Carroll (see Brent Nongbri’s blogpost), and who sold several “Dead Sea Scrolls” to the Museum of the Bible, which have turned out to be fake manuscripts (see items 18, 77-79 in the list of unprovenanced post-2002 DSS maintained by the Lying Pen project).
I suspect it will take time before we learn anything about the provenance of these two items (if we will ever know). Also keep an eye on Roberta Mazza’s blog, because I expect her to blog about Stimer and his stuff.
The first papyrus is dated to the second century in the Liste(!) and preserves 1 Cor 7:33-38 (recto. 8 lines) and 1 Cor 9:10-17 (verso, 11 lines).
The second papyrus (three fragments) is dated to the early third century and preserves Rom 9:21-22 (recto, 3 lines) and Rom 10:3-4 (verso, 3 lines).
At this point there is no reference to any editio princeps so I assume the dating of both papyri is provisional.
I have not checked whether the manuscripts offer any interesting variant readings – I must not work too much on my vacation – but perhaps readers would like to check the images and comment.
Update: In the comments, co-blogger Elijah Hixson draws attention to Brent Nongbri’s blog (again) who in this post earlier this month pointed out that they are fragments of the two distinct manuscripts owned by the Greens and registered as P129 (1 Corinthians) and P131 (Romans). Now we also know who the owner is (Stimer).
Update 2: Greg Paulson of the INTF in Münster informs us that the entries in the Liste/NT.VMR (which appeared as P141 and P142) were provisional only and that the staff “are still reviewing whether these two fragments are parts of P129 and P131 at the Museum of the Bible and hope to make a determination soon.” I have edited the original blogpost and removed the references to P141 and P142.
Update 3: Greg Paulson has informed me that the INTF has not yet decided whether to assign any GA numbers to these. They are currently working to first ascertain if the fragments are authentic. All the information in the VMR was only meant for internal evaluation and has not yet been verified. The INTF has removed the entries form public viewing for now to avoid confusion. In the meantime, you can contact Greg directly with questions.
Thanks, Tommy! We seemed to have skipped P140 though. Does anyone know anything about it? Exciting all around!
ReplyDeleteThanks Elijah. Yes, maybe we have not reported on P140. I actually thought that one was a piece of P127 (suggested to me by a colleague who sent me the editio princeps of that one several months ago).
DeleteGenerally speaking, on what does the Liste base the dates it gives for newly added manuscripts like these? I notice that their bibliography sections for them (as well as the Lausanne bibliography links they give) are empty.
ReplyDeleteBrent Nongbri has already posted about both these items: https://brentnongbri.com/2019/07/07/one-of-the-other-oxyrhynchus-gospels-for-sale-and-a-pattern-in-the-green-collection/
ReplyDeleteThey do oddly fill gaps in P129 and P131. Are we going to have to refer to P64+P67, P129+P141 and P131+142 now? If Brent's right, (if I'm reading him right), then we don't have two new manuscripts, we have new pieces of two manuscripts that haven't been published yet, and these new pieces are not part of the yet-to-be-published bits.
Congrats, Brent for being ahead of the game here!
Thanks Elijah. As you can see I have updated the blogpost in light of your and Greg's comments.
DeleteHi Tommy and Elijah, Scott Carroll has been showing these fragments at his talks for a couple years. I was reporting what Carroll was had said, namely that these two "new" fragments were parts of P129 and P131. For further details, see here (along with the clarifying comments from Michael Holmes): https://brentnongbri.com/2019/02/26/p129-some-questions-about-a-papyrus-of-1-corinthians/
DeleteThanks Brent! And now we know who is the owner (which perhaps was not surprise).
DeleteHi Tommy. These two entries are actually not available for public viewing on the VMR; the entries were meant to be provisional for admins only. We are still reviewing whether these two fragments are parts of P129 and P131 at the Museum of the Bible and hope to make a determination soon. We'll also update entries at that time with more information about them.
ReplyDeleteGreg Paulson
I am sorry about that Greg. It was a reader of this blog who informed me, so it seems they were available for public viewing at some point.
DeleteNow I have edited the original blogpost and removed the references to P141 and P142. Sorry about the confusion.
DeleteSemi-relatedly, here is a thread from Jacob Peterson, who did some digging on P140: https://twitter.com/jacobwpeterson/status/1153712958586929152?s=20
ReplyDeleteThe ed. pr. suggested it was probably from the same codex as P127. I sent that publication to Georg Gäbel some months ago. He or someone else at the INTF seems to have identified it as a different MS.
ReplyDeleteIt's curious that Scott Carroll had the 1 Corinthians papyrus fragment on display in Belarus last year (2018) and identified it as belonging to the Museum of Christian Missions in South Korea. I contacted the museum's curator and was told it was not part of their collection. I had suspicions, and we now know, that it was part of Stimer's collection.
ReplyDeleteSeveral other items were on display, including an early papyrus fragment of Exodus 40:26-29, 33-34, which were also said to be from the same Korean museum. There is reason to think that these items are also in Stimer's collection.
Yes, Carroll has referred to “a collection from Los Angeles [that] includes, uh, by our research, uh, the earliest text of the book of Romans in the world, the second earliest Greek text of Exodus in the world, one of the earliest texts of Ecclesiastes, one of the earliest texts of Psalms, and an early text of 2 Corinthians.” I would imagine that these items were all part of the display you mention (probably "1 Cor." is meant instead of "2 Cor."; images gathered at the link I mentioned above: https://brentnongbri.com/2019/02/26/p129-some-questions-about-a-papyrus-of-1-corinthians/ )
DeleteBesides the Exodus fragment, none of the others were in the Belarus exhibit guide and I haven’t seen any videos or photos of them. But the guide did include early papyri fragments of Homer and Aesope, a couple of Coptic NT texts on parchment, and a Cunieform tablet all (incorrectly?) labeled from this Korean museum. I would bet that they were not on display but are also in the Stimer Collection.
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