Unfortunately, I missed the SBL session on the virtual Sinaiticus (David Parker, Juan Garces et al.), since there was another session on textual criticism at the same time (bad planning by the organizers; this thing happened me twice). However, on the blog, "On not being a sausage" there is a brief report (what a name for a blog by the way).
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Friday, November 28, 2008
Jan Krans on Conjectures in Nestle Editions (pt. 4)
Jan Krans on the Amsterdam NT blog continues his series on conjectures in Nestle editions. This time it is about a conjecture in John 19:29 mentioned by Johachim Camerarius the Elder in notes published in 1572. Read more here about this conjecture, which, according to Krans "has an impressive reception history, more so than almost any other conjecture on the text of the New Testament."
Ethiopic Manuscripts of the Bible
Visiting SBL 24-139 has been a wonderful experience, hearing a survey of all the Ethiopic manuscripts which are currently housed in North America and which will be, by and by, digitized and - at least in part - accessible in the internet. Steve Delamarter from George Fox University (http://www.georgefox.edu/seminary/faculty/delamarter.html) does the main work here, substantially helped by the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library: http://www.hmml.org/
The Bible in Classical Ethiopic, Ge'ez, is, despite its late appearance (most NT manuscripts date to the 12th-19th centuries, although Christianity entered Ethiopia before the 6th century), an important textual witness for two reasons: Ethiopia has been a long time virtually isolated from the Alexandrian and Byzantine mainstream Christianity, and most of the Ethiopic NT have been directly translated from the Greek.
I met Curt Niccum over there, whose edition of the Ethiopic Book of Acts will hopefully appear soon (so far, his edition proves the Book of Acts to have mostly Alexandrian, some D and some Byzantine readings).
The Bible in Classical Ethiopic, Ge'ez, is, despite its late appearance (most NT manuscripts date to the 12th-19th centuries, although Christianity entered Ethiopia before the 6th century), an important textual witness for two reasons: Ethiopia has been a long time virtually isolated from the Alexandrian and Byzantine mainstream Christianity, and most of the Ethiopic NT have been directly translated from the Greek.
I met Curt Niccum over there, whose edition of the Ethiopic Book of Acts will hopefully appear soon (so far, his edition proves the Book of Acts to have mostly Alexandrian, some D and some Byzantine readings).
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Historical Jesus and Textual Criticism
My attempt to show the relevance of textual criticism for study of the historical Jesus is now published in the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus:
Bird, Michael F.
Textual Criticism and the Historical Jesus
JSHJ 6.2 (2008) pp. 133-156
This study argues that historical Jesus research needs to pay greater attention to the field of textual criticism and study of early Christian manuscripts. It is accordingly argued that the field of textual criticism impacts historical Jesus studies in at least three ways: (1) the textual integrity of the New Testament and the possibility of historical Jesus research; (2) the significance of the agrapha; and (3) text-critical contributions to historical issues in life of Jesus research.
I note that relatively few text critics have anything to say about the historical Jesus (Westcott and Ehrman are the clear exceptions) and few historical Jesus scholars take into account the implications of textual criticisms for their respective studies. The article also includes a study of Mk. 5.1 and par. as a text case of how the two disciplines need to be brought together.
SBL Boston, Payne on the "Umlauts" in Vaticanus
This is the last paper summarized in this first NTTC session on Saturday. A paper by Michael Theophilos was announced in the program book, but that paper had been registered twice by accident (dittography?), so it was presented in a different session.
Philip B. Payne, "'Umlauts' Matching the Original Ink of Codex Vaticanus: Do They Mark the Location of Textual Variants?"
Payne began by advertising the facsimile which costs "just $5990" or something like it. (Payne's company, Linguist Software, is a retailer of this edition.)
As many of you know by now, Canart/Payne have earlier identified eleven places where the Umlauts in Codex Vaticanus have the apricot-colored original ink. The news is that the number of such Umlauts have increased with 40 new places! So now we have 51 instances. Another thing Payne wanted to demonstrate was that the scribe who penned them had the goal of systematically going through the codex to compare to another/other MSS. Payne presented some statistical counts which showed a very, very high "chi-square value" (statistics is not my thing, but Stephen Carlson helped me get that right in the comments section). Apparently, Payne had been checking all places against Nestle-Aland to find out if there was variation at those places where Umlauts exist, in order to calculate what the chances are that this reflects textual variation. The problems with this particular procedure (using Nestle-Aland 27) came up in the questions session.
Another important observation related to the "mirror impression umlauts" (see Wieland Willker's description here: http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/Vaticanus/umlauts.html#imp). These imprints show that the Umlauts were added *after* the text was written, and when there was already a "provisional binding" (so that the wet ink would make a mirror on the opposite page).
Payne made some points in order to prove that their were multiple exemplars for the Umlauts:
(a)Some Umlauts did not affect a mirror-Umlaut (even on the same page where there are such imprints). Therefore they were probably written at another stage, and, that the scribe compared the MS to multiple exemplars several times.
(b) Multiple exemplars also explains how the Umlauts seem to reflect so many different strands. Not one MS can account for all the variants.
(c) It also explains why some pages have more Umlauts than other (there is a page in Romans with a very high number). Perhaps the exemplars then were papyrus exemplars with just Romans ...
Payne thinks this also points to an early date; While the MS was in the scriptorium the scribe(s) had access to many other MSS to compare with ... The more time that elapsed from the writing of the MS, the less likely that new Umlauts would have been added. No other MS has been shown to contain Umlauts indicating textual variants, according to Payne.
Further, he made the suggestion that Umlauts be added in critical apparatuses. Swanson has begun to add Umlaut-data. (I pointed out to him afterwards that I included the information in my own edition of Jude, although only in the textual commentary).
Then Payne went on to some Umlauts in particularly discussed places, namely the PA (John 7:53-8:11) and the passage in 1 Cor 14 (about women). According to Payne, the presence of an Umlaut on the page where the PA is omitted is the earliest evidence for its existence at this location (earlier than Jerome). Payne thinks the evidence is important for its antiquity. Concerning the passage in 1 Cor 14, about the silence of women, the MS includes the verse, but, according to Payne, is the earliest evidence that it was omitted in another MS. [Hence, this evidence can be appealed to by those who suspect the passage is a later addition and/or do not like the passage.]
In sum, Payne proposed that his observations have four key implications:
1) the scribe was aware of variation, and thought that they were important
2) he or she wanted to preserve the most original text
3) the Umlauts provide windows into the text (even for passages where papyri has not survived. Twenty of the fifty-one original-ink Umlauts occur where no variants occur in the papyri.
4) the high proportion of Umlauts where there are known variation (the statistics) proves that the variants have survived in our extant MSS to a very high degree [my remark: it points to the tenacity of the textual tradition.]
5) this proves that the most ancient text has been preserved
Q: "What makes NA27 an appropriate standard to compare with? There are 25 Umlauts in James in Vaticanus. It is 540 lines of text. The NA apparatus has 220 places of variation, more than every third line has variation. If I switch to the Editio Critica Maior in James, it has 761 places of variation, not a single line without variation. If my son marked lines, he would have a very good chance to hit a line where there is variation [100% implied]."
Answer: "It is the variants with significance that matters (and that is what is in the NA), not the minor variants... Payne thought Schmid's calculation was a confirmation (I didn't quite understand why).
Q: "Was there a companion collection where the reader could check the alternative reading?"
A: No, I don't think so. The scribe was a professional calligrapher working in a scriptorium (perhaps the best calligraphy of all extant MSS). There must have been many MSS, especially in a scriptorium in Alexandria. Anyone could compare with MSS in the Scriptorium. A companion volume was not necessary and there are no indications of chapter and verse numbers to facilitate such a use."
Q: Jongkind questioned the reference of the Umlaut in 1 Cor 14:34-35, and suggested that it may refer to the known transposition there (vv. 34-35 follows after 14:40 in D F G and other Western witnesses), it need not indicate an omission of the whole.
A: Payne thinks it is not about transposition, then it would have two sets of Umaluts, but Dirk then asked if there are other examples of this. Payne has not checked. Payne thinks that if it refers to a transposition, the Umlaut would be at v. 40 (since only one Umlaut was used). Or he/she would have added two Umlauts.
Q: "Was it the original scribe who added the Umlauts?"
A: Payne thinks there are some reasons to believe so: It is generally agreed that it has preserved a very good text. We know that in the case of Luke of John (P75) it is ancient. The quality of Vaticanus' text suggests that the scribe copied ancient exemplars or those that had the reputation of being very good texts. It is this type of person that would take time and trouble to do this kind of examination (i.e., to add Umlauts in comparison to multiple exemplars).
Q: "But could they not have been added by someone else, who thought there should be another variant?"
A: Payne answers that then the actual readings would probably be indicated in the margins, but if it was the scribe it would suffice with just the Umlauts.
Q (from a papyrologist): "What is an 'Umlaut'? Why do you use this term?"
A: Payne explained what an Umlaut referred to (textual variation), and that he had coined the term because it referred to a unique sign and therefore not known until recently in papyrology, and because of its convenience without having to make longer explanations like "two dots placed next to each other..." since most will know what an Umlaut usually stands for, i.e., the two dots places over o in some alphabets like the German and Swedish).
My own concluding comment (made in retrospect): I think the statistics Payne referred to, and the method of comparing with Nestle-Aland was unconvincing. Otherwise the paper was good, some of the subsequent answers to questions a bit speculative. The case of 1 Cor 14:34-35 is ambiguous, more data is required. Moreover it would be important to check for Umlauts without MS support (and here we should compare with all available data). A high degree of Umlauts where there is no known variation would probably imply an early date (more likely for the textual data to have been lost).
Update: I have updated the text slightly thanks to Stephen Carlson (see comment). I should also add that it was unfortunate for the presentation that Payne did not show images. That would have been most helpful in this case, especially for those who were unfamiliar with Umlauts, but also in order to see the nature of the ink, the imprints, the position of the Umlauts, etc.
Philip B. Payne, "'Umlauts' Matching the Original Ink of Codex Vaticanus: Do They Mark the Location of Textual Variants?"
Payne began by advertising the facsimile which costs "just $5990" or something like it. (Payne's company, Linguist Software, is a retailer of this edition.)
As many of you know by now, Canart/Payne have earlier identified eleven places where the Umlauts in Codex Vaticanus have the apricot-colored original ink. The news is that the number of such Umlauts have increased with 40 new places! So now we have 51 instances. Another thing Payne wanted to demonstrate was that the scribe who penned them had the goal of systematically going through the codex to compare to another/other MSS. Payne presented some statistical counts which showed a very, very high "chi-square value" (statistics is not my thing, but Stephen Carlson helped me get that right in the comments section). Apparently, Payne had been checking all places against Nestle-Aland to find out if there was variation at those places where Umlauts exist, in order to calculate what the chances are that this reflects textual variation. The problems with this particular procedure (using Nestle-Aland 27) came up in the questions session.
Another important observation related to the "mirror impression umlauts" (see Wieland Willker's description here: http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/Vaticanus/umlauts.html#imp). These imprints show that the Umlauts were added *after* the text was written, and when there was already a "provisional binding" (so that the wet ink would make a mirror on the opposite page).
Payne made some points in order to prove that their were multiple exemplars for the Umlauts:
(a)Some Umlauts did not affect a mirror-Umlaut (even on the same page where there are such imprints). Therefore they were probably written at another stage, and, that the scribe compared the MS to multiple exemplars several times.
(b) Multiple exemplars also explains how the Umlauts seem to reflect so many different strands. Not one MS can account for all the variants.
(c) It also explains why some pages have more Umlauts than other (there is a page in Romans with a very high number). Perhaps the exemplars then were papyrus exemplars with just Romans ...
Payne thinks this also points to an early date; While the MS was in the scriptorium the scribe(s) had access to many other MSS to compare with ... The more time that elapsed from the writing of the MS, the less likely that new Umlauts would have been added. No other MS has been shown to contain Umlauts indicating textual variants, according to Payne.
Further, he made the suggestion that Umlauts be added in critical apparatuses. Swanson has begun to add Umlaut-data. (I pointed out to him afterwards that I included the information in my own edition of Jude, although only in the textual commentary).
Then Payne went on to some Umlauts in particularly discussed places, namely the PA (John 7:53-8:11) and the passage in 1 Cor 14 (about women). According to Payne, the presence of an Umlaut on the page where the PA is omitted is the earliest evidence for its existence at this location (earlier than Jerome). Payne thinks the evidence is important for its antiquity. Concerning the passage in 1 Cor 14, about the silence of women, the MS includes the verse, but, according to Payne, is the earliest evidence that it was omitted in another MS. [Hence, this evidence can be appealed to by those who suspect the passage is a later addition and/or do not like the passage.]
In sum, Payne proposed that his observations have four key implications:
1) the scribe was aware of variation, and thought that they were important
2) he or she wanted to preserve the most original text
3) the Umlauts provide windows into the text (even for passages where papyri has not survived. Twenty of the fifty-one original-ink Umlauts occur where no variants occur in the papyri.
4) the high proportion of Umlauts where there are known variation (the statistics) proves that the variants have survived in our extant MSS to a very high degree [my remark: it points to the tenacity of the textual tradition.]
5) this proves that the most ancient text has been preserved
Q: "What makes NA27 an appropriate standard to compare with? There are 25 Umlauts in James in Vaticanus. It is 540 lines of text. The NA apparatus has 220 places of variation, more than every third line has variation. If I switch to the Editio Critica Maior in James, it has 761 places of variation, not a single line without variation. If my son marked lines, he would have a very good chance to hit a line where there is variation [100% implied]."
Answer: "It is the variants with significance that matters (and that is what is in the NA), not the minor variants... Payne thought Schmid's calculation was a confirmation (I didn't quite understand why).
Q: "Was there a companion collection where the reader could check the alternative reading?"
A: No, I don't think so. The scribe was a professional calligrapher working in a scriptorium (perhaps the best calligraphy of all extant MSS). There must have been many MSS, especially in a scriptorium in Alexandria. Anyone could compare with MSS in the Scriptorium. A companion volume was not necessary and there are no indications of chapter and verse numbers to facilitate such a use."
Q: Jongkind questioned the reference of the Umlaut in 1 Cor 14:34-35, and suggested that it may refer to the known transposition there (vv. 34-35 follows after 14:40 in D F G and other Western witnesses), it need not indicate an omission of the whole.
A: Payne thinks it is not about transposition, then it would have two sets of Umaluts, but Dirk then asked if there are other examples of this. Payne has not checked. Payne thinks that if it refers to a transposition, the Umlaut would be at v. 40 (since only one Umlaut was used). Or he/she would have added two Umlauts.
Q: "Was it the original scribe who added the Umlauts?"
A: Payne thinks there are some reasons to believe so: It is generally agreed that it has preserved a very good text. We know that in the case of Luke of John (P75) it is ancient. The quality of Vaticanus' text suggests that the scribe copied ancient exemplars or those that had the reputation of being very good texts. It is this type of person that would take time and trouble to do this kind of examination (i.e., to add Umlauts in comparison to multiple exemplars).
Q: "But could they not have been added by someone else, who thought there should be another variant?"
A: Payne answers that then the actual readings would probably be indicated in the margins, but if it was the scribe it would suffice with just the Umlauts.
Q (from a papyrologist): "What is an 'Umlaut'? Why do you use this term?"
A: Payne explained what an Umlaut referred to (textual variation), and that he had coined the term because it referred to a unique sign and therefore not known until recently in papyrology, and because of its convenience without having to make longer explanations like "two dots placed next to each other..." since most will know what an Umlaut usually stands for, i.e., the two dots places over o in some alphabets like the German and Swedish).
My own concluding comment (made in retrospect): I think the statistics Payne referred to, and the method of comparing with Nestle-Aland was unconvincing. Otherwise the paper was good, some of the subsequent answers to questions a bit speculative. The case of 1 Cor 14:34-35 is ambiguous, more data is required. Moreover it would be important to check for Umlauts without MS support (and here we should compare with all available data). A high degree of Umlauts where there is no known variation would probably imply an early date (more likely for the textual data to have been lost).
Update: I have updated the text slightly thanks to Stephen Carlson (see comment). I should also add that it was unfortunate for the presentation that Payne did not show images. That would have been most helpful in this case, especially for those who were unfamiliar with Umlauts, but also in order to see the nature of the ink, the imprints, the position of the Umlauts, etc.
SBL Boston, Smith on P72 and Clivaz on P75
The following two presentations (in the same Saturday session as the previous) will not be as extensively summarized as the previous.
Claire Clivaz: "Reconsidering P75 in the Frame of a Various Egyptian Tradition"
Clivaz argued for a reconsideration of Egyptian witnesses. The presentation was divided into three parts:
1. The status of P75 in present Western culture
The high status (it costed millions of dollars to transfer the MS to the Vatican). This reflect a type of "consecration". On the other hand, in the Leuven database the MS is quite anonymous. There is also a growing number of designations for MSS, (cf. Stanley Porter who wants more sigla for some textual witnesses that do not make it into the Kurzgefasste Liste.)
2. The "P75-effect"
According to Martini's analysis of the relationship P75-B, the text of Vaticanus was not the result of a recension, but on the other hand, several questions, according to Clivaz, have not been solved, e.g., the bias of the witnesse in Luke 22:43-44, which calls for a cautious judgment.
In 1962 Joseph Fitzmyer suggested that P45 and P75 give evidence of a fluctuating state of the text in Egypt in the early period.
In order to prove this fluctuation Clivaz presented a comparison of P75 with P106, P119, and P120, and how much these witnesses disagree also in relation to the larger Alexandrian group.
3. What can be said before P75? A Difficult but Necessary Challenge
Here Clivaz presented a picture of the scribes, as making their own decisions about the text almost as authors. I may have misunderstood her. She brought up the so-called Western non-Interpolations as examples. Then she cited Clement of Alexandira who spoke about the "people of right opinion" Stromata I,IX. Clement claimed a distance to these "people of right opinion" (she thinks they are other Christians). She thinks it is warranted to speak about "Christianities" (cf. Ehrman's Lost Christianities).
She sees John 1:34 as a conclusive test case. She thinks the scribe of P75 was sensitive to a reading in Luke 23:35 here. The first hand copied ο υιος ο εκλεκτος which was corrected to ο υιος του θεου.
When there was time for questions I brought up the following:
(a) methodology. I wondered how and what Clivaz had actually counted in order to arrive at such fluctuation. One must first seek to establish what was in the exemplar of the scribe. Kyong Shik Min's study of the Matthean papyri is a good example of what kind of work is necessary. I can only suspect that Clivaz counted all sorts of scribal errors. Moreover, one could point to the example of P39 which agrees almost verbatim with B and P75, in order to prove that in the midst of "fluidity" there was a stream of a stable and controlled textual tradition.
(b) When it comes to John 1:34, and the new reading in P75, the easiest explanation is that the scribe made an error when he was correcting himself. I actually think the exemplar at this point had both εκλεκτος and θεου,i.e., a conflated reading, which reflects harmonization to Luke 23:35, εἰ οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ χριστὸς τοῦ θεοῦ ὁ ἐκλεκτός. This conflated reading in John 1:34 is attested by the Sahidic version. In fact P75 shares some unique readings with the Sahidic, one of which is in the preceding verse (the addition of και πυρι). Most importantly, one cannot base a thesis that the scribe of P75 made his own theological creations based upon one reading which is also ambiguous! I referred to James Royse's fine study of the manuscript (without knowing that Royse himself was in the room), which proves that P75 was copied from one exemplar. There are perhaps merely two or three readings in the whole MS which, according to Royse, may not have been in the exemplar (but they probably were).
Lastly, I should offer an apology because I thought her presentation of the textual data at one point was incorrect, which I also brought up, but it turned out that the data in question was not from John 1:34 (which I thought; the passage was not indicated on the power point), but from Luke 23:35, so I misunderstood her at that point.
Geoffrey Smith: "The Relationship between Physical Codex and 'Sacred' Text"
This was a paper on the final benediction in 1 Peter 5:14b omitted in P72, ειρηνη υμιν πασιν τοις εν Χριστω.
First Smith gave a general background to small codices (P72 is part of a rather small codex in square shaped format, and part of a miscellany). Then he referred to Jerome Quinn's proposal that the ending of 1 Peter in P72 is the original ending. However, Smith now proposes that the omission in P72 is instead a conscious alteration related to the scribe's theological tendency and purpose, as reflected in other variant readings and the very collection of this codex (referring to a study by Wasserman in NTS). The omission was affected by the presence of a colophon which includes the words ειρηνη τω γραψαντι και τω αναγινωσκοντι. This colophon occurs at other places in the collection too (also provided by other scribes). The "collection-addition," then, made the original piece benediction superfluous.
I offered two comments in response to Geoffrey during question-time:
(a) At one point Smith happened to state that P72 was the earliest witness to the text of 1 Peter, but it is not! He has to check the Coptic Crosby-Schøyen Codex MS 193, which is a century earlier! I am quite confident that this witness has the piece greeting, however.
(b) The same colophon has been found (by me) in another MS! MS Or. 7594 also known as "The Budge Codex" (dated to 275-325 C.E., i.e., roughly contemporary with the Bodmer miscellany). This codex is written in Coptic (the Bodmer miscellany was also copied by Copts), but, significantly, the colophon (after Deutoronomy) is in Greek reading, ειρηνη τω γραψαντι και τω αναγινωσκοντι. This shows that the colophon was maybe more common than previously thought, (the earlier parts collected in the Bodmer Misc. Codex are not unique in this regard), and this observation possibly weakens the force of this particular piece of evidence for a "scribal network," displaying certain conventions in this collection (Haines-Eitzen). On the other hand, the formula is still unusual, and the Budge Codex may have been produced by the same "network." But there is no other link between the two codices than what is already mentioned (they do not seem to have a common provenance, but they could of course have travelled).
I had planned to write a follow-up including this piece of evidence and its various implications, together with one of our co-bloggers, but I couldn't help disclosing the discovery, since it was rather important for the conclusions. I still hope to write something about it, perhaps from a wider perspective of miscellanies, scribal networks, etc. In the meantime I hope Smith mentions the helpful comments at this SBL session in a footnote ;-).
Claire Clivaz: "Reconsidering P75 in the Frame of a Various Egyptian Tradition"
Clivaz argued for a reconsideration of Egyptian witnesses. The presentation was divided into three parts:
1. The status of P75 in present Western culture
The high status (it costed millions of dollars to transfer the MS to the Vatican). This reflect a type of "consecration". On the other hand, in the Leuven database the MS is quite anonymous. There is also a growing number of designations for MSS, (cf. Stanley Porter who wants more sigla for some textual witnesses that do not make it into the Kurzgefasste Liste.)
2. The "P75-effect"
According to Martini's analysis of the relationship P75-B, the text of Vaticanus was not the result of a recension, but on the other hand, several questions, according to Clivaz, have not been solved, e.g., the bias of the witnesse in Luke 22:43-44, which calls for a cautious judgment.
In 1962 Joseph Fitzmyer suggested that P45 and P75 give evidence of a fluctuating state of the text in Egypt in the early period.
In order to prove this fluctuation Clivaz presented a comparison of P75 with P106, P119, and P120, and how much these witnesses disagree also in relation to the larger Alexandrian group.
3. What can be said before P75? A Difficult but Necessary Challenge
Here Clivaz presented a picture of the scribes, as making their own decisions about the text almost as authors. I may have misunderstood her. She brought up the so-called Western non-Interpolations as examples. Then she cited Clement of Alexandira who spoke about the "people of right opinion" Stromata I,IX. Clement claimed a distance to these "people of right opinion" (she thinks they are other Christians). She thinks it is warranted to speak about "Christianities" (cf. Ehrman's Lost Christianities).
She sees John 1:34 as a conclusive test case. She thinks the scribe of P75 was sensitive to a reading in Luke 23:35 here. The first hand copied ο υιος ο εκλεκτος which was corrected to ο υιος του θεου.
When there was time for questions I brought up the following:
(a) methodology. I wondered how and what Clivaz had actually counted in order to arrive at such fluctuation. One must first seek to establish what was in the exemplar of the scribe. Kyong Shik Min's study of the Matthean papyri is a good example of what kind of work is necessary. I can only suspect that Clivaz counted all sorts of scribal errors. Moreover, one could point to the example of P39 which agrees almost verbatim with B and P75, in order to prove that in the midst of "fluidity" there was a stream of a stable and controlled textual tradition.
(b) When it comes to John 1:34, and the new reading in P75, the easiest explanation is that the scribe made an error when he was correcting himself. I actually think the exemplar at this point had both εκλεκτος and θεου,i.e., a conflated reading, which reflects harmonization to Luke 23:35, εἰ οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ χριστὸς τοῦ θεοῦ ὁ ἐκλεκτός. This conflated reading in John 1:34 is attested by the Sahidic version. In fact P75 shares some unique readings with the Sahidic, one of which is in the preceding verse (the addition of και πυρι). Most importantly, one cannot base a thesis that the scribe of P75 made his own theological creations based upon one reading which is also ambiguous! I referred to James Royse's fine study of the manuscript (without knowing that Royse himself was in the room), which proves that P75 was copied from one exemplar. There are perhaps merely two or three readings in the whole MS which, according to Royse, may not have been in the exemplar (but they probably were).
Lastly, I should offer an apology because I thought her presentation of the textual data at one point was incorrect, which I also brought up, but it turned out that the data in question was not from John 1:34 (which I thought; the passage was not indicated on the power point), but from Luke 23:35, so I misunderstood her at that point.
Geoffrey Smith: "The Relationship between Physical Codex and 'Sacred' Text"
This was a paper on the final benediction in 1 Peter 5:14b omitted in P72, ειρηνη υμιν πασιν τοις εν Χριστω.
First Smith gave a general background to small codices (P72 is part of a rather small codex in square shaped format, and part of a miscellany). Then he referred to Jerome Quinn's proposal that the ending of 1 Peter in P72 is the original ending. However, Smith now proposes that the omission in P72 is instead a conscious alteration related to the scribe's theological tendency and purpose, as reflected in other variant readings and the very collection of this codex (referring to a study by Wasserman in NTS). The omission was affected by the presence of a colophon which includes the words ειρηνη τω γραψαντι και τω αναγινωσκοντι. This colophon occurs at other places in the collection too (also provided by other scribes). The "collection-addition," then, made the original piece benediction superfluous.
I offered two comments in response to Geoffrey during question-time:
(a) At one point Smith happened to state that P72 was the earliest witness to the text of 1 Peter, but it is not! He has to check the Coptic Crosby-Schøyen Codex MS 193, which is a century earlier! I am quite confident that this witness has the piece greeting, however.
(b) The same colophon has been found (by me) in another MS! MS Or. 7594 also known as "The Budge Codex" (dated to 275-325 C.E., i.e., roughly contemporary with the Bodmer miscellany). This codex is written in Coptic (the Bodmer miscellany was also copied by Copts), but, significantly, the colophon (after Deutoronomy) is in Greek reading, ειρηνη τω γραψαντι και τω αναγινωσκοντι. This shows that the colophon was maybe more common than previously thought, (the earlier parts collected in the Bodmer Misc. Codex are not unique in this regard), and this observation possibly weakens the force of this particular piece of evidence for a "scribal network," displaying certain conventions in this collection (Haines-Eitzen). On the other hand, the formula is still unusual, and the Budge Codex may have been produced by the same "network." But there is no other link between the two codices than what is already mentioned (they do not seem to have a common provenance, but they could of course have travelled).
I had planned to write a follow-up including this piece of evidence and its various implications, together with one of our co-bloggers, but I couldn't help disclosing the discovery, since it was rather important for the conclusions. I still hope to write something about it, perhaps from a wider perspective of miscellanies, scribal networks, etc. In the meantime I hope Smith mentions the helpful comments at this SBL session in a footnote ;-).
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