Solving a Puzzle in P136

The following is a blog post I first wrote while on sabbatical in 2022 in Wake Forest. While there, I spent a nice afternoon with Libbie Schrader Polczer at the wonderful David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library examining their Greek NT manuscripts. One of those is P136.

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This last week I had the good fortune of getting to spend some time with Duke University’s sole NT papyrus, P. Duke Inv. 1377 (P136). The GA number is your tipoff that this is a recently published papyrus. Andrew and Valerie Smith published the editio princeps only in 2018. It’s so recent that it didn’t make it into the ECM Acts. (As an aside, one of the great things about textual criticism is that we regularly get new material to work with like this.)

It’s a sixth century fragment of Acts and it has some surprising features. The script is the first surprise. This is not your typical six-century majuscule. The Smiths identify it as chancery style and it does fit Kenyon’s description of 6th/7th century non-literary style for Byzantine papyri (Paleography of Greek Papyri, pp. 49-51). 

The more surprising feature is that P136 has text on both sides but is not a codex. The writing is upside down on the recto relative to the verso. The Smiths suggest it is most likely a scroll, written in rotulus format (meaning the text flows vertically rather than horizontally). This format apparently saw a resurgence of use in the sixth century. If this is the right format, the Smiths’ reconstruction would allow for Acts 1:1-13:43 in the original scroll. That’s a little less than half the book (based roughly on the pages in my NA27). 

One last feature that surprised me: it’s big. Bigger than I expected, at least. It would have been a good-size scroll. Here is Libbie holding it up to show the size.

All that is by way of introduction. My real interest here is in a curious reading in P136. I was tipped off by the Duke website which says, 

Text varies from Nestle-Aland 28th edition Novum Testamentum Graecum in 3 locations, most significantly at 3v (Acts 4:28), which reads η χειρ σου και η δουλη instead of η χειρ σου και η βουλη σου.

That lack of σου is not surprising. It’s missing in over a dozen witnesses according to the ECM, including 02* and 03. What is odd is δουλη for βουλη. It’s only a difference of one letter, and the word δουλοι does occur in the next line. But the result has Peter and John claiming that those who conspired to kill Jesus did “whatever your [God’s] hand and your (female) servant had predestined to take place.” That’s definitely odd. 

The letter in question on line 3 of the ↑ side

To be sure, the letter certainly did look to me like a delta not a beta. Then again, I had no prior experience with this script. I do, however, have enough general experience reading Greek manuscripts to know that two letters that look the same at first may well turn out to be different entirely. To add to my suspicion, I checked the NT.VMR transcription and it has βουλη instead of δουλη. (I do not know the source of this transcription.)

So, is this a delta or a beta? Unfortunately, there are no other betas in P136, but there are multiple deltas. And what we can see is that in each case, the final stroke ends down and does not connect with the next letter. This distinction may seem slight, but it is typical of how letters are distinguished in cursive scripts like minuscule. I’m not too surprised to see it here. It’s a subtle difference to us, but they must have recognized it easily enough.

Deltas (orange dot) vs. beta (blue dot).

We can confirm our suspicion by looking at comparanda. The Smiths point to P. Geneva 210 as “remarkably similar” to P136 and we can see why. The hand is very similar. Lucky for us, it has plenty of both betas and deltas and, sure enough, we find the same distinction between them.

P. Geneva 210 showing deltas (orange dot) and betas (blue dot). Image source

Again, the distinguishing mark is that deltas end on a down stroke whereas betas don’t. Instead, they connect in some way with the next letter.

One more example. P. Berol. 7027 is written in a decidedly more elaborate hand than our previous examples. It’s much harder to read to my eyes and so I haven’t highlighted all the examples I could. Here, the beta is not quite the same as P136 or P. Geneva 210. Instead, it looks much more like the form of we find in later minuscule (it looks like a u to me). The key distinction is still the same, however. The delta ends on a down stroke and the beta does not.

P. Berol. 7027 showing deltas (orange dot) and betas (blue dot). Image source

From these examples—both within P136 and without—I think we can confidently say that P136 reads βουλη not δουλη in Acts 4:28 and is a witness to the text otherwise known in all other manuscripts at this point. Kudos to whoever did the transcription for the VMR (anyone know?) for catching this before me. It certainly does look like a delta, but a closer inspection confirms we have a beta. There is still plenty to puzzle us about P136, but I hope to have shown that this one letter is not one of them.