From: Sigrid Peterson To: Multiple recipients of list Subject: Re: Matthew fragment X-Comment: First Century Judaism Discussion Forum Date: Wed, 24 May 1995 01:11:39 EDT The following "article" is Copyright 1995 Sigrid Peterson, all rights reserved, and may be quoted only with permission of the author. The following has been prepared without checking the corrections in Thiede's article which has also been published in the Tyndale Bulletin. I have appreciated the nudging from Dierdre Good, and the opportunity to discuss Roberts's and Thiede's views with Dr. Robert Kraft. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I am writing in reply to Dierdre Good's nudging and to requests on ioudaios-l for some (further) discussion of Carsten P. Thiede's reassessment of three fragments of a manuscript of Matthew. The fragments Thiede discusses are all from P. Magdalen Greek 17 (reclassified from P. Magdalen Greek 18), and are designated as {P}64 in the list of codices in my Nestle-Aland 26 Greek-Latin NT. There it is dated "ca. 200," in accordance with Colin Roberts's publication and redating of the fragment, to be found in Harvard Theological Review 46, 1953, pp. 233-7, plate [HTR]. Thiede's article is called "Papyrus Magdalen Greek 17 (Gregory-Aland {P}64): A Reappraisal," and appears in Vol. 105 of Zeitschrift fu%r Papyrologie und Epigraphik, pp. 13-20, and Plate IX. (ZPE) I. FULL ARGUMENT. As I understand the varied news accounts, Thiede called a press conference in December of 1994 to announce his forthcoming publication of a first century c.e. fragment of the Gospel of Matthew in a German journal of papyrology. The fragments were a) newly redated by paleography to the first century c.e., around 70 c.e.; b) contained a "stichometrically-plausible" instance of the nomen sacrum __ IS in fr. 1, recto, line 1, Mt 26.31; and c) therefore, first century followers of Jesus thought of him as divine, as bearing a name requiring special treatment in gospel accounts. II. ZPE ARGUMENT In his article in ZPE, Thiede does not address the implications of his redating and reconstructions of the {P}Magdalen Gr. 17 fragments. The fragments Thiede discusses are all from P. Magdalen Greek 17 (reclassified from P. Magdalen Greek 18), and are designated as {P}64 in the list of codices in my Nestle-Aland 26 Greek-Latin NT. There it is dated "ca. 200," in accordance with Colin Roberts's publication and redating of the fragment, to be found in Harvard Theological Review 46, 1953, pp. 233-7, plate [HTR]. Thiede's article is called "Papyrus Magdalen Greek 17 (Gregory-Aland {P}64): A Reappraisal," and appears in Vol. 105 of Zeitschrift fu%r Paleographie und Epigraphik, pp. 13-20, and Plate IX. (ZPE). There is no argument or discussion in the ZPE article of point c) above. Such a claim *does seem to have been made by Thiede in his press conference, in some fashion. In turn, the media have omitted any critical distinctions and said things like, "new papyrus fragment shows that followers of Jesus knew he was divine." Someone associated with ZPE responded to mention of the flap on the papy-l list by noting that Thiede had put together some material that deserved to be aired. This is indeed the case. In the article Thiede confined himself to the following points: * The fragments comprising {P}64, formerly known as {P}Magdalen Gr. 18, and so listed in Van Haelst's Catalogue, must be renumbered as Gr. 17 instead. Thiede's description of the error is not clear, but perhaps relates to his request to view Gr. 18, which turned out to be a tiny unrelated scrap. The Magdalen College Library now gives {P}64 the number Gr. 17. * {P}64 and {P}67 from Barcelona (P.Barc. inv. 1) are part of the same manuscript, but this manuscript should not be linked with fragments of Luke known from {P}4. Pickering thinks the association should not be abandoned so quickly. {P}4 is also known as P. Paris Bibl. Nat. Suppl. Gr. 1120. To quote C. H. Roberts, "There can in my opinion be no doubt that all these fragments come from the same codex which was reused as packing for the binding of the late third century codex of of Philo." [Manuscript, Society and Belief in Early Christian Egypt, Oxford University Press, 1979, p. 13.] * Nestle-Aland has mislabeled the contents of the {P}Magdalen Gr. 17 fragments, which Roberts labeled correctly. It is a matter of Mt 26.31 appearing on a different fragment (fr. 1, recto) from Mt 26.32-33 (fr. 2, recto). Verso listings are correct. * Four variant readings, most of which Stuart Pickering has discussed more adequately than Thiede. However, the scribal error of GALEGLAIAN for GALEILAIAN, `Galilean,' of Roberts (1953) is reported by Thiede to have been misprinted in Roberts (1962) [`Complementary Note,' in R. Roca-Puig, Un Papiro Griego del Evangelio de San Mateo, Barcelona\2/1962, 59-60.] This transcription reads, as Thiede reports, GALIGLAIAN, to which Roberts added a note "`v.33, vel GALEILAIAN." Thiede transcribed GALEGLAIAN (op. cit., p. 20). In discussing the article with Robert Kraft, he mentioned that it was apparent that the papyrus does *not* have a gamma before the lambda, but rather an iota. Close attention to the photos of Roberts (1953) indicates that what has been taken as a crossbar to a gamma is probably a flaw in the papyrus, and only the vertical line (of an iota) should be read. * Thiede gives the history of dating the fragment, starting with its acquisition by the Rev. Charles B. Huleatt at Luxor in 1901. Huleatt suggested third century; a librarian reported that A. S. Hunt thought the fourth c. was more likely. Hunt, together with Grenfell, assigned manuscripts which came from codices to third century or later. Roberts (1953) dared to question this, and reassigned {P}64 to ca. 200, based on paleography. Roberts (1953) announced that he had obtained the agreement on the dating of Bell, Skeat, and Turner, major names in paleography of Greek manuscripts. As Pickering notes, Thiede does not say *why* these notables were incorrect in their collective paleographical judgment as to the date of {P}64. * Thiede omits to note that {P}64 is clearly in two columns; he obscures this in his transcription, though the accompanying plate is similar to Roberts (1953) in presentation. Roberts (1953) in contrast notes the two-column format, and clearly labels his transcription according to columns. * Thiede argues that *new* papyri, published since Roberts (1953) allow the consideration of an earlier date. He mentions the Greek Minor Prophets Scroll, now called 8HevXIIgr, published in DJD VIII, Ed. by E. Tov, 1990, paleographically dated by P. Parsons. Thiede also mentions texts from Herculaneum (until 79 c.e. -- the eruption of Vesuvius) and a recent publication (Kim, Biblica, 1988) that lowers the date of Bodmer-Chester Beatty papyrus II ({P} 46) from ca. 200 to ca. 100 c.e. He then adduces likenesses of individual letters to these early papyri from various parts of the Mediterranean. As Stuart Pickering indicated, most of this work is unsound in its reliance solely on individual letter forms. I would add that Thiede sees resemblances between serifed letters from serif-style mss and 'plain' letters from {P}64, where the overall style is also lacking in serifs or other ornamentation. A sound investigation of the possibility of redating an individual ms would assemble a group of related ms wihout regard to their date, and then attempt to place the specific ms within a series of mss. This is a method which has led to good results with the paleographical dating of the Hebrew-Aramaic mss of the Dead Sea. Where there are few examples, as with the Greek mss of the Dead Sea, precise paleographical comparisons cannot be made, and dating is very hazardous. This is the case with the Greek Minor Prophets Scroll (8HevXIIgr). To use this ms as a basis for dating another ms, as Thiede has done, is to compound the unreliability of paleographical dating. In contrast to the method I have sketched, Thiede appears to have proceeded by assembling materials which *might* be datable to the first century, and then found individual letter forms from the Matthew fragments which are not unlike letter forms in his samples chosen only by their date. Such a method as Thiede's does not have what scientists call "face validity." There is no reason to think that the the investigator has been striving for objectivity, when the methodology is so closely related to the results obtained. While the initial methodological error of A. S. Hunt with respect to dating {P}64 - the Matthew fragments - occurred because he and Grenfell believed that codices did not appear until the third century (Roberts, 1953:234), codicological information is important and relevant. No one disputes that these fragments come from a codex. Eric G. Turner's investigation of the codex in The Typology of the Early Codex, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977, sets a lower bound for codex development as the second century c.e. (p. 4), based on the dating of "Christian" materials, with Greek literary codices becoming prevalent a century later. Thiede does not call for, nor address, the implications of his findings for codicology. Should Turner's dates for codices be lowered? Thiede does not say. * Thiede concludes his argumentation with a discussion of nomina sacra. He argues that Kim's lowered dating of {P}46, which has clear nomina sacra, supports Roberts's speculations that nomina sacra were used in the first century c.e. Roberts did not redate his list of early papyri to support his contention, however. [Source is C. H. Roberts, Manuscript, Society and Belief in Earliest Christian Europe, Oxford Univ. Press, 1979.] This material is included because Roberts (1953) and Thiede (1995) both reconstruct nomina sacra in unclear or missing portions of the fragments of {P}64. Whereas Roberts (1953) is methodologically within bounds in reconstructing nomina sacra for a date of ca. 200 c.e., because a fair amount of other evidence exists to support the practice, Thiede (1995) is methodologically less secure in reconstructing nomina sacra for a date around 70 c.e., since he relies on their plain existence only in Kim's redating of {P}46 (Bodmer II). Both the media presentation of I above, and Thiede's article in ZPE depend on the perception of nomina sacra in the text of these fragments of Matthew 26, and specifically on the nomen sacrum __ IS for IHSOUS. III ASSESSING THIEDE'S ARGUMENT Thiede contributes greater precision to the specification of {P}64, as {P} Magdalen Gr. 17, rather than Gr. 18. He notes Roberts's (1962) changed reading of GALEGLAIAN to GALIGLAIAN, or perhaps GALEILAIAN, which is helpful, as the source is not widely available. However, he still reads GALEGLAIAN in his own transcription. While he notes the relationship with the fragments in Barcelona, he did not obtain photos and include them in his argument. He also provides no reason for dropping {P}4 - the Paris Luke fragment which Roberts (1979) assigned to the same ms. His redating on paleographical grounds is seriously flawed in four ways. First, he does not indicate how four great paleographers could all concur on a lowered redating of the Matthew fragments to a date ca. 200 and still be in error. Second, he compares letters in these fragments from Egypt [Luxor is purchase place, hand compares with {P}4, from Philo codex binding] with material from Herculaneum in Italy (that may be from ca. 40 b.c.e. on provenance grounds, with a terminus ad quem of 79 c.e.) and from Qumran in The Land, and from elsewhere in the wilderness of the Dead Sea (NaHal Hever). Third, he compares individual letters without an appreciation of the characteristics of their formation or the hands of which they are a part. Fourth, his assembly of mss for comparisons is not a coherent set, and was apparently chosen primarily as a group of mss which *could* be dated in the first century c.e., regardless of their other features. Thiede did not recognize that a two-column codex such as {P} 64 -- Magdalen Gr. 17 -- has no similarly-constructed examples with which to be compared. He does not recognize the need to provide some explanation for the appearance of a two-column codex at least a century earlier than all other examples of two-column codices. See Turner, op. cit. Finally, Thiede (1995) and Roberts (1953) both transcribed the fragments as thought they contained nomina sacra, and as though the use of nomina sacra was not restricted to KURIOS, KURIE, or QEOS, QEOU, but rather extended to abbreviations of IHSOUS. However, and I must state this emphatically, there is no visible support ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ for reconstructing nomina sacra of IS or IH. That is to say, almost no ink-papyrus combination exists for the areas where these have been indicated. In working out the stichometry, using the available text of Matthew 26 in the relevant verses, I was able to supply alternative lines in every case where Thiede proposed abbreviation or suspension (use of first and last letters), except for the proposed use of letters instead of a word to signify the number 12. There, I agree, the stichometry (line length) is such that IB (Greek letters standing for 12) must be read. This was also Roberts's (1953) transcription. Specifically, in the case of Fr. 2, verso (Mt 26.10), Thiede reconstructs a first line as __ [oISeipenau]t[o]i[sti] 16-letter stich There are at least two problems with this reconstruction. First, the column is missing both beginning letters and ending letters. Second, there are no letters on papyrus for this line. At most, there are two dots, which might be the bottoms of letters, and if they are the bottoms of letters, those letters just might be the indicated t and i of Thiede's line 1. In the case of Fr. 3, recto (Mt 26.22-23) both Thiede and Roberts reconstruct a line with KE, for KURIE of "Is it I, Lord." Thiede shows .. . [eimi]KEod[eapokri] 15-letter stich That there is a line of text here in the papyrus is apparent. What it might contain is not at all clear. The only clear line follows, with both beginning and end of the stich missing. The possibilities for reconstruction are numerous; Thiede's line is not supported by the miscellaneous ink in various spots on the line. In the case of Fr. 1, recto (Mt 26.31) many might argue that the name IHSOUS *must* be suspended, using IH, or abbreviated, using IS, in order for the line lengths to come out right. I would point out that we have a line clearly beginning autoiso..... and a following line that is 16 letters long, (Thiede counted 17) consisting of one word, skandalisqhsesqe, with the words following in the text appearing on the line below. The text we now have suggests that the first line would read autoisoiesouspanteshumeis for an impossible 25 letters. Thiede suggested autoiso[ISpantes] at 15 letters. I suggest that autoiso[iesouspantes at 19 letters is possible. This possibility exists because the word autois extends into the margin by one letter, and the following five letters occupy the space taken by only four in the following line. This would mean that a line of 19 letters would come out no longer than a line of 16 or 17 letters, yet could still contain the name IHSOUS written out. Something has to be done to fit the first line into the column. That it has to be done using an abbreviation or suspension of IHSOUS is not automatically the case. It is a plausible solution, however, for a manuscript considered in relationship with other two-column codices and other manuscripts containing nomina sacra, which Thiede does not do. IV SUMMATION Thiede's 1995 article suggests a lowered date for {P}64 -- P. Magdalen Gr. 17 -- by arguments which are methodologically unsound. His further argument that there are nomina sacra used in place of IHSOUS and KURIE is an extremely flimsy one. These fragments of papyrus do not witness directly to the reconstructions with recognizable inked letters on physical papyrus. The layout of visible letters in one case supports Thiede's (and Roberts's) observation that the text contains Greek letters which represent the numeral 12, rather than the Greek word for 12. In the other cases, other plausible reconstructions of the lines are also possible. In the absence of more data, such as the Barcelona fragments might provide, these fragments do not provide any firm evidence for the existence of nomina sacra in either Roberts's date of ca. 200, or Thiede's 1st century dating. Sigrid Peterson UPenn petersig@ccat.sas.upenn.edu