Hixson on Lessons from P137 or “First-Century Mark”

Over at the Text & Canon Institute, Elijah purple-is-my-favorite-color Hixson has a new article on lessons from the “First-Century Mark” (aka P137) saga. Readers will probably remember that Hixson was the first to publicly connect the dots on this right here on this blog in what is now our second most read post ever.

More videos: Anderson on Family 1, Hixson on the Tyndale Textual Commentary

Two more videos from my ThM class on textual criticism are now live. In the first, Dr. Amy Anderson gives an overview and update of her work on the textual history of Family 1 in the Gospels. She also gives a helpful overview of the state of the discipline at the start. In the second, Dr. Elijah Hixson introduces the textual commentary being written to accompany the Greek New Testament Produced at Tyndale House, Cambridge.

Amy Anderson

Elijah Hixson

Thanks to both my guests for joining my class. You can find all the videos in this series at the Text & Canon Institute YouTube channel. Be sure to subscribe if you’re into that sort of thing.

Longform Guardian Article on the Mark Fragment Saga

This morning, the Guardian published a long story titled “A scandal in Oxford: the curious case of the stolen gospel.” Its about Dirk Obbink and the stolen Oxyrhynchus fragments. It’s quite good and worth reading in full. Here I highlight things that stood out as new or noteworthy.

Obbink has been suspended from Oxford.

Since October, he [Obbink] has been suspended from duties following the biggest scandal that has ever hit, and is ever likely to hit, the University of Oxford’s classics department.

We get some sense of how much these items might have been selling for.

The Greens, advised by Carroll, were buying biblical artefacts, such as Torahs and early papyrus manuscripts of the New Testament, at a dizzying pace: $70m was spent on 55,000 objects between 2009 and 2012, Carroll claimed later. The market in a hitherto arcane area of collecting sky-rocketed. “Fortunes were made. At least two vendors who had been making €1-2m a year were suddenly making €100-200m a year,” said one longtime collector. 

The prices of the items [on the MOTB sale contracts] were redacted, but an expert told me he thought they could have been sold for $200,000 each. 

No price is mentioned [in the Christie’s brochure for the Sappho papyrus], but a collector familiar with the field estimates a likely figure of around $800,000.

$200k seems low for a “first-century” NT fragment, but I’m hardly knowledgeable in this area. In any case, it appears that Obbink was not only making enough money to buy his “castle” in Waco, but also to upgrade his home in Oxford.

Hixson on Mark Fragment at Christianity Today

If you’re reading this blog, you’ve surely heard about the new Mark fragment which is now the earliest dated copy of this Gospel. You may also know there is some discussion about its publication and the claim that it was once up for sale. But, if you’re still wondering what all the hubbub is about, go read Elijah Hixson’s new article at Christianity Today. Elijah first broke the news that the fragment was being published here on this blog and he’s been closely tracking new developments ever since.

Here’s the conclusion:

Many people—including Carroll himself—believed that the Greens had at some point purchased the manuscript until it appeared in an Oxyrhynchus volume. Obbink recently denied attempting to sell the manuscript to the Greens, according to Candida Moss and Joel Baden, writing for The Daily Beast. When I contacted Carroll and Obbink for statements, Carroll replied that he had nothing to add to or subtract from his story, and Obbink did not respond.

This new publication is only the first word on the manuscript. There is surely much more to come. Manuscript dates are often disputed, though I expect the question will be whether P137 could be later, not whether it could be earlier. Multi-spectral imaging and digital image processing open new doors to deciphering and understanding manuscripts, and P137 might benefit from such types of analysis.

Rather than disappointment that P137 is not quite as early as once thought, the publication of P137 is a cause to celebrate. We have another significant find, and it is the earliest manuscript of Mark 1! The excavations of Oxyrhynchus continue to yield valuable artifacts of antiquity including new biblical manuscripts after over a century of publishing. We can happily look forward to more unknown treasures yet to come.

Codex Sinopensis (O 023) Online

The following is another guest post from Elijah Hixson. He is currently writing a PhD thesis at the University of Edinburgh on the NT purple codices about which Jerome famously said, “parchmens are dyed purple, gold is melted into lettering, manuscripts are decked with jewels, while Christ lies at the door naked and dying” (Epist. 22.32).

---

The Bibliothèque nationale de France have just made some very nice, high-quality images of (most of) Codex Sinopensis available! The manuscript is gorgeous and worth a look.

Codex Sinopensis (O 023), f. 8v.

Codex Sinopensis (Paris, BnF supp. gr. 1286; O 023) is a 6th-century manuscript of Matthew’s Gospel. It is one of the purple codices—deluxe manuscripts written in gold and silver inks on parchment that has been dyed purple (on Codex Rossanensis, one of the other 6th-century purple codices, see here). Codex Sinopensis is especially magnificent, because it was written entirely in gold ink, and there are five extant miniatures painted right into the pages of the Gospel. These are some of the earliest examples of Christian art in manuscripts. Art historians know this manuscript well, and its well-trained scribe was probably in his or her prime. There are very few mistakes and corrections in this manuscript, compared to its two siblings.

Its text is not especially exciting; Codex Sinopensis has an early form of what will become the Byzantine text. What is more exciting than its text is its textual relationship with two other purple codices, N 042 and Σ 042. These three manuscripts were all copied from the same exemplar. Back in 2015 at the SBL Annual Meeting in Atlanta, I presented a paper on Codex Sinopensis and its close relationship with its two siblings as a way to test the singular readings method of determining scribal habits (summarised here).

If my quick count of the newly available images is correct, the new images include 41 of the 43 folios at the BnF, but they also include images of the lost leaf from Ukraine. Shortly after Henri Omont published the editio princeps of the 43 Paris leaves, Prof. Dmitry Aynalov sent a photograph of a 44th leaf, which was in the custody of a gymnasium (the equivalent of American high school) in Mariupol, Ukraine. The leaf has been lost since at least 1966, when Kurt Treu could only write that it was formerly in Mariupol and to my knowledge, the leaf has never resurfaced. Now, however, the BnF has digitised their black/white photograph of the lost leaf, which is grounds for rejoicing.

The two pages I could not find on Gallica are folios 11 and 30, but both of those folios include miniatures, and images of the painted sides are readily available all over the internet. Realistically, that leaves 11v and 30r as the only pages of Codex Sinopensis that are still only accessible through Omont’s pseudo-facsimile in the editio princeps. Of course, Muphy’s Law would correctly predict that if one is writing a doctoral thesis on Codex Sinopensis, one would encounter a discrepancy on f. 30r, line 9 about which the editio princeps is unclear, but that is another story.

The images are posted at Gallica (gallica.bnf.fr). The easiest way to find them, however, is through the links to each folio/bifolio at http://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc24356w.

Codex Rossanensis Restored

The following is a guest post from Elijah Hixson. Elijah is currently writing his doctoral thesis on Codex Rossanensis and two other purple codices at the University of Edinburgh under the supervision of Paul Foster. When I saw last week that Rossenansis had recently be restored I asked Elijah if he would give us a quick intro to the manuscript. Enjoy!

---

Great news! Codex Rossanensis has been restored! It should be back on display in the Diocesan Museum in Rossano, Calabria, Italy by now. Codex Rossanensis is a sixth-century Greek purple Gospels manuscript included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. A recent article at The Realm of History by Dattatreya Mandal about Codex Rossanensis has been circulating online, and in light of the recent restoration of the manuscript, now seems to be a good opportunity to say a few words about this gorgeous treasure of Calabria.

Christ as the Good Samaritan, Codex Rossanensis, f. 7v

The Realm of History article includes some excellent photos of Codex Rossanensis. From the photos, one need not wonder why Codex Rossanensis is known as one of the “purple codices”. These manuscripts were written in silver and/or gold ink on parchment that has been dyed purple. Purple dye was expensive, and the rich purple is a striking background against which the silver and gold inks glisten in the light. Even as the silver begins to tarnish, the words of the Gospels still radiate from their pages.

2015 ETS and SBL Paper Summaries

ETC blog dinner 2015.

ETS and SBL are now finished although my internal clock has yet to be convinced. This year there was a spate of text critical papers—many more than I could attend or take notes on. So here is a sampling of what was on offer this year. Perhaps otherss can fill in the gaps.

Also, this is a good time to say thanks to all who joined us for the annual dinner in which we celebrated the blog’s 10th anniversary. It was good to see some faces I hadn’t seen before. Hopefully all had a good time. A very special thanks to Christian Askeland for organizing the whole thing for us again!

---

ETS

“Discoveries and Contributions to the Text of the New Testament Found at the National Library of Greece” by Roberto Marcello

Rob Marcello is the Research Manager and Expedition Maestro (my term) for CSNTM. At ETS he gave an update on CSNTM’s Athens digitization project—their largest ever. He noted that, since its founding, CSNTM has digitized about 80 manuscripts previously uncatalogued by INTF and that several more were digitized on this summer’s trip. There were lots of other interesting finds as well but, unfortunately, my notes are sparse. I did manage to catch that GA 498 was found to have Ambrosiaster’s order of the Gospels: Matt, Luke, Mark, John (if I wrote it down correctly). I'm hoping the paper will be published somewhere but, until then, next month or two, you should be able to buy the audio.

“The Earliest Evidence for the Longer Ending of Mark” by J. D. Atkins

Justin Atkins is just finishing his PhD on the resurrection narratives at Marquette and, as a spin off of that larger project, he argued in this paper that three texts from 100–150 each make use of the Longer Ending of Mark. The three texts he discussed in detail were the Epistula Apostolorum (142–149), the “Ophite” account via Irenaeus (110–140), and the Preaching of Peter (100–135) and argued that for each, there is a good case for their dependence on the Longer Ending. The details are too many to give here but I will say that I found the first two convincing but the third—also the earliest—a bit less so. He told me afterwards that he has submitted the article for publication, so hopefully we can see the full argument in print in the not-too-distant future.