New Testament Manuscripts

Papyri

Contents: * P11 * P13 * P20 * P24 * P28 * P39 * P45 * P46 * P48 * P51 * P52 * P54 * P74 * P75 * P78 * P90 *

Note: Many of the papyri, especially the Beatty and Bodmer papyri, have been subject to so much discussion that no attempt is made to compile a full bibliography.


P11

Location/Catalog Number

Saint Petersburg, Russian National Library Gr. 258A

Contents

1 Corinthians 1:17-22, 2:9-12, 2:14, 3:1-3, 3:5-6, 4:3-5:5, 5:7-8, 6:5-9, 6:11-18, 7:3-6, 7:10-14, with even the surviving verses often damaged (so much so that Tischendorf was unable to tell whether the fragments he had were of five or six leaves).

Date/Scribe

Dated paleographically to the seventh century. Some older manuals give its date as the fifth century, but this was based on comparison with uncial manuscripts; a comparison with the style of papyri resulted in the change.

Description and Text-type

Aland and Aland list P11 as Category II. Von Soden listed its text as "H or I."

In fact the text of P11 seems fairly ordinary (though its fragmentary nature makes a firm determination difficult; the Nestle text, for instance, cites it explicitly only about fifteen times, most often with the Alexandrian group Aleph A C 33, but also, with the Byzantine and "Western" texts; there appears to be some slight kinship with the later members of Family 1739, particularly 1881. Overall, the best description of its text is probably "mixed," although most of the readings are old. It does not appear to have any immediate relatives).

The most noteworthy thing about P11, therefore, is not its text but its history: It was the first biblical papyrus to be discovered (Tischendorf observed it in 1862), and the only one to be cited in Tischendorf (as Q).

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript

von Soden: a1020
Tischendorf: Qp

Bibliography

Collations:
Ellwood M. Schofield, The Papyrus Fragments of the Greek New Testament
See also K. Junack, Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus, Vol. 2: Die paulinischen Briefe

Sample Plates:

Editions which cite:
Cited in all editions since Tischendorf.

Other Works:
Kurt Aland, "Neutestamentliche Papyri," NTS 3


P13

Location/Catalog Number

London (British Museum, Papyrus 1532 verso) and elsewhere (Florence, Cairo). Designated by its discoverers P. Oxy. 657

Contents

P13 is an opisthograph, with the epitome of Livy on the reverse side. Presumably the manuscript originally contained all of Hebrews (it has been suspected that it contained other material as well; a full-length scroll could contain rather more than twice the material found in Hebrews); it now retains Hebrews 2:14-5:5, 10:8-22, 10:29-11:13, 11:28-12:17, with many minor lacunae. Despite the damage, P13 is the most extensive papyrus outside the Beatty and Bodmer collections.

Date/Scribe

Dated paleographically to the third or fourth century. It has been speculated that the scroll was carried to Egypt by a Roman official, then left behind and rewritten.

P13
Portions of two columns of P13, beginning with Hebrews 4:2. Note the extensive damage (which is even worse in the lower halves of the columns). P13 is the only extensive NT opisthograph. Note the surviving numbering at the top of the left column.

Description and Text-type

Aland and Aland list P13 as a free(?) text with "A number of distinctive readings, often with P46." Von Soden lists its text-type as H.

The most substantial of the Oxyrhynchus papyri, P13 is also perhaps the most important. As noted by the Alands, it frequently aligns with P46 (and -- perhaps even more often -- with B for the portions of Hebrews where both exist); Kenyon notes an 82% agreement rate between the two papyri, with similarities even in punctuation and pagination (even though the two cannot have had the same contents; a scroll simply could not contain ten Pauline letters. It is possible that P13 contained Romans and Hebrews, in that order, in which case it followed the same order as P46). P13 contains a number of singular and subsingular readings, but this seems to be characteristic of the P46/B type. Since this type contains only three other witnesses (P46, B, and the Sahidic Coptic), P13 is an extremely important witness which has not, so far, received sufficient attention (Zuntz, e.g., never even mentions it in his work on 1 Corinthians and Hebrews).

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript

von Soden: a1034
Designated P. Oxy. 657 in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri series.

Bibliography

Collations:
B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Volume 4.
See also K. Junack, Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus, Vol. 2: Die paulinischen Briefe

Sample Plates:
Comfort, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible (1 page)
Comfort, The Quest for the Original Text of the New Testament (1 page; same photo as above)

Editions which cite:
Cited in all editions since von Soden.

Other Works:
Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, p. 37


P20

Location/Catalog Number

Princeton University Library, Am 4117 -- Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1171

Contents

Portions of James 2:19-3:9

Date/Scribe

Dated paleographically to the third century.

Description and Text-type

P20 is a fragment of a single leaf, 11.5 cm. tall and somewhat less than 4.5 cm. wide at the widest. It is the central portion of a leaf; both left and right edges are damaged, as is the bottom. Portions of 20 lines survive on each side, with usually about twelve characters per line. The original seems to have had about 30-35 characters per line, so the surviving portion is relatively slight. The hand is rough and hasty-looking; given the state of the manuscript, it is often difficult to distinguish the letters.

The small amount of remaining text makes it difficult to classify the manuscript. The Alands list it as Category I, with a "normal" text. Von Soden lists it as H (Alexandrian). Schofeld reports that it only twice departs only twice from the "B-group," -- but of course this is a vague group description. Still, the general feeling is that the manuscript is Alexandrian.

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript

von Soden: a1019

Bibliography

Collations:
B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, volume 9.

Sample Plates:
W. H. P. Hatch, The Principal Uncial Manuscripts of the New Testament

Editions which cite:
Cited in Von Soden, Merk, Bover, NA26, NA27.

Other Works:
Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, pp. 39-40
Ellwood M. Schofield, The Papyrus Fragments of the Greek New Testament


P24

Location/Catalog Number

Newton Centre: Andover Newton Theological School, Franklin Trask Library, O.P. 1230 (i.e. Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1230)

Contents

Portions of Rev. 5:5-8, 6:5-8

Date/Scribe

Dated paleographically to the fourth century by the Alands, though some have preferred the third century. The hand is unattractive and rather difficult; the copyist was probably not a trained scribe.

Description and Text-type

P24 is a fragment of a single leaf, shaped rather like a very short, fat letter T turned upside down. The vertical stroke of the T contains two lines, with only about five or six surviving letters per line; the cross of the T contains portions of four lines, with about sixteen letters on the two central (and best-preserved) lines. The lines appear to have been fairly long -- about 30-32 letters per line -- so even the best-preserved lines retain only about half the text of the relevant verses.

The fact that the manuscript has so many letters per line, and so many lines per page (there are over 1600 letters between Rev. 5:6 and Rev. 6:6, which at 32 letters per line gives us some 50+ lines per page) implies a large papyrus size; Schofield thought it might have been a church Bible.

With only about 150 letters to examine, it is simply not possible to decide P24's text-type. The Alands list P24 as Category I, but this is doubtless based primarily on its date (early manuscripts of the Apocalypse being so rare); even they don't venture a guess as to whether its text is free, normal, or strict. Comfort observes that the manuscript has "only" three divergences from A, but in context this is quite a high number.

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript

Bibliography

Collations:
B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, volume 10.

Sample Plates:
Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, has plates of the entire manuscript.

Editions which cite:
Cited in Von Soden, Merk, Bover, NA26, NA27.

Other Works:
Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, pp. 41-42
Ellwood M. Schofield, The Papyrus Fragments of the Greek New Testament


P28

Location/Catalog Number

Berkeley (Palestine Institute Museum), Pacific School of Religion Papyrus 2 -- Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1596

Contents

Portions of John 6:8-12, 17-22

Date/Scribe

Dated paleographically to the third century. The hand slants slightly and looks hasty and unattractive. Numbers are spelled out (as, e.g., in P66) rather than written as numerals (as in P75). Its use of the Nomina Sacra is incomplete; although we find Ihsous abbreviated, in verse 9, we find anqrwous spelled out.

Description and Text-type

P28 is a fragment of a single leaf, ten cm. tall and five wide. The surviving portion is from the bottom of the leaf, and is broken on both sides. Eleven lines survive on the recto, twelve on the verso (plus a few blots from a thirteenth). About 13-15 letters survive on each line, out of an average of perhaps 32 letters per line (the lines seem to have been somewhat irregular).

Textually, most scholars have regarded P28 as Alexandrian. The Alands list it as Category I, with a "normal" text. Grenfell and Hunt described it as eclectic, somewhat closer to Aleph than B (though, given the list of variants below, I find it hard to see what led them to this conclusion). The small amount of surviving text makes any determination difficult, but the description "eclectic" seems to fit; it has noteworthy differences with almost every important manuscripts. The following table shows the notable readings of P28, with their supporters (the text is as transcribed by Finegan):

Readings of P28 and supportersOther readings
6:9 tauta ti estin P28 P66c P75 rell UBS tauta estin D*; ti estin tauta P66* e
6:11 elaben oun (P28 .leben o..) P66 A B D L W 892 al UBS elaben de Aleph* E F H 33 700 Byz; kai labwn G Q f1 f13 565 (579 kai elaben)
6:11 e...risthsas ed.... (i.e. eucaristhsas edwken or similar) P28 P66 (P75 ..............edwken, which could agree with P28 or with the later witnesses) N G 69 579 eucaristhsas diedwken A B K L W f1 33 565 700 892 rell UBS; eucaristhsen kai edwken Aleph D
6:11 tois anakeimenois (P28 ...........enois but lacks space for a longer reading) P66 P75 Aleph* A B L N W f1 33 565 579 1241 al UBS tois maqhtais oi de maqetai tois anakeimenois D E F G H K G D Q Y f13 892 Byz
6:17 kai skotia hdh egegonei (P28 ....skotia hd...) (P75 ....skotia hdh egegonei) rell UBS katalaben de autous h skotia Aleph D
6:17 oupw pros autous elhluqei o Ihsous (P28 .....hluqei o Is) (P75 hd. .... pros autous egegon.. . Is) B N Y oupw elhluqei pros autous i Ihsous (L) W (f13 33 69 788 pc UBS; oupw elhluqei o Ihsous pros autous D; oupw elhluqei Ihsous pros autous Aleph; ouk elhluqei pros autous o Ihsous A E F G H (K) D Q f1 565 579 700 892 Byz
6:19 stadious P28 P75-vid rell UBS stadia Aleph* D
6:20 o de legei (P28 o de...) (P75 ...gei) rell UBS kai legei Aleph
6:21 epi ths ghs P28 rell UBS epi thn ghn Aleph* f13 579 1424 pc
6:22 eiden oti (P28 ...iden oti) Aleph D eidon oti (P75 eido....) A B L N W Q 33 al UBS; idwn oti E F G H D Y 565 579 700 1241 Byz

(There are, of course, many other variants in this part of John, but P28 is too fragmentary to testify to these, and the line lengths seemingly too irregular to testify to most of the add/omit variants.) NOTE: NA27 and related editions list P28 as reading wsei pentakiscilioi in verse 10. This is based solely on calculations of line lengths; the only surviving text is -cileioi. This reading does appear likely -- the line is extremely short if the reading is ws -- but is too uncertain for us to use it in determining textual groupings. A similar situation occurs in verse 19, qewrousin ton Ihsoun. P28 breaks off in the previous line at eikousi p...., i.e. eikousi pente, and all that survives of the text qewrousin ton Ihsoun is n In. The Aland Synopsis lists P28 as omitting ton, but this is based solely on line lengths and must be considered quite uncertain.

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript

Bibliography

Collations:
B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, volume 13.

Sample Plates:
Finegan, Encountering New Testament Manuscripts

Editions which cite:
Cited in Merk, Bover, NA26, NA27.

Other Works:
Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, p. 43
Ellwood M. Schofield, The Papyrus Fragments of the Greek New Testament


P39

Location/Catalog Number

Rochester (New York, USA). Ambrose Swabey Library, Inv. no. 8864 -- Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1780

Contents

Portions of John 8:14-22

Date/Scribe

Dated paleographically to the third century. The hand is very clear and the surviving text easily read; one suspects an expert scribe.

Description and Text-type

P39 is a fragment of a single leaf, preserving the entire height of the manuscript but only one edge. There are 25 lines per page, but only about six or seven surviving letters per line (occasionally less, especially on the verso). There appear to have been about thirteen or fourteen letters per line (column?), meaning that about half the text survices.

There is general agreement that the manuscript is Alexandrian. The Alands list it as Category I, with a "strict" text. Grenfell and Hunt list it as aligning with B; Schofield goes further, claiming it never departs from B. When these authors wrote, of course, P75 was not known. In the area covered by P39, there are only a handful of differences between P75 and B. P39 does not testify to verse 14, kai/h. In verse 15, where P75 d f cop add de, P39 is not extant, but line lengths make is more likely than not that it omits the word with B rell. (The next variant in P75, the omission of egw in verse 22, occurs after the end of the manuscript (which actually breaks off at the end of verse 21; all that is visible of verse 22 is part of a stroke of the first letter).

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript

von Soden: a1019

Bibliography

Collations:
B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, volume 15.

Sample Plates:

Editions which cite:
Cited in Merk, Bover, NA26, NA27.

Other Works:
Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, p. 47
Ellwood M. Schofield, The Papyrus Fragments of the Greek New Testament


P45

Location/Catalog Number

Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, P. Chester Beatty I; Vienna, Austrian National Library, Pap. Vindob. G. 31974 (one leaf, containing Matt. 25:41-26:39)

Contents

P45 is surely in the worst condition of any of the substantial Biblical papyri. Even the surviving leaves (a small fraction of the original contents, estimated at 30 of 220 original leaves) are damaged; the most substantial pages are perhaps 80-90% complete, but many others are just small fragments. There are relatively few complete lines; many of the surviving leaves represent only about 20% of the width of the original manuscript. Therefore any list of verses included in the manuscript will make it seem more substantial than it really is; very many of these verses survive only in part (often very small part).

With that said, the verses represented at least partly in P45 are: Matt. 20:24-32, 21:13-19, 25:41-26:39; Mark 4:36-40, 5:15-26, 5:38-6:3, 6:16-25, 36-50, 7:3-15, 7:25-8:1, 8:10-26, 8:34-9:8, 9:18-31, 11:27-12:1, 12:5-8, 13-19, 24-28; Luke 6:31-41, 6:45-7:7, 9:26-41, 9:45-10:1, 10:6-22, 10:26-11:1, 11:6-25, 28-46, 11:50-12:12, 12:18-37, 12:42-13:1, 13:6-24, 13:29-14:10, 14:17-33; John 4:51, 54, 5:21, 24, 10:7-25, 10:31-11:10, 11:18-36, 43-57; Acts 4:27-36, 5:10-20, 30-39, 6:7-7:2, 7:10-21, 32-41, 7:52-8:1, 8:14-25, 8:34-9:6, 9:16-27, 9:35-10:2, 10:10-23, 31-41, 11:2-14, 11:24-12:5, 12:13-22, 13:6-16, 25-36, 13:46-14:3, 14:15-23, 15:2-7, 19-26, 15:38-16:4, 16:15-21, 16:32-40, 17:9-17.

It is possible that the codex originally contained other books (e.g. the Catholic Epistles); unlike many of the major papyri, it is not a single-quire codex, but rather uses gatherings of two leaves, meaning that it could have had many more leaves at the end.

All told, we have two leaves of Matthew, six of Mark, seven of Luke, two of John, and thirteen of Acts, with the leaves of Matthew being only the smallest fragments. The leaves of Mark and Acts are rather more substantial, but still badly damaged; those of Luke and John are relatively complete. The leaves are broad enough, and the single column of text wide enough, that these thirty leaves contain substantial amounts of text, but still only about 5% of the original contents.

Kenyon was of the opinion that the gospels were originally in the "Western" order Matthew, John, Luke, Mark, with Acts (and conceivably other material) following. Given the state of the manuscript, the fact that it used multiple quires, and the fact that it was brought to the west in pieces, this cannot be proved -- but Mark and Acts were discovered together, so it seems likely.

Date/Scribe

Dated paleographically to the third century.

Description and Text-type

It appears that P45 was originally the most extensive of all papyrus manuscripts -- the only one to include more than one NT section. It has, however, been very badly damaged, meaning that relatively little text survives. This makes an accurate assessment of the manuscript's type rather difficult. Wisse, for instance, did not even attempt a profile.

When Kenyon first published the manuscript, however, he attempted to classify it, stating that in Mark it seemed to be Cæsarean; in Luke and John, neither purely Alexandrian nor Western; in Acts, primarily Alexandrian (although it has some of the smaller "Western" variants, it has few if any of the greater).

Kenyon, however, was probably led astray by Streeter's bad definition of the "Cæsarean" text and by all the bad work which followed from this. Two more recent works have re-examined the ground and produce a very different conclusion.

The first and, in the long term, probably more important is E. C. Colwell, "Method in Evaluating Scribal Habits: A Study of P45, P66, P75" (1965; now available as pages 106-124 in Colwell's Studies in Methodology in Textual Criticism of the New Testament). This showed that P45 is the result of a freely paraphrased copy; the scribe of P45 or one of its immediate ancestors felt free to expand, paraphrase, and shorten the text. (Though Colwell noted that deletions were much more common than additions -- "The dispensable word is dispensed with.")

The noteworthy point here is that this sort of editing is typical of at least two other Gospel text-types, the "Western" and the "Cæsarean." (Though both of these add and harmonize more than they delete.) Observe what this means: To a scholar who simply studied the types of readings in P45 (as opposed to the pattern of readings, which is the true definition of a text-type), P45 would appear to belong to one of the periphrastic text-types. Of the two, the "Cæsarean" is, of course, the more restrained, and also has more Alexandrian readings; P45, as an Egyptian manuscript, probably started with an Alexandrian text.

Thus, Colwell established that P45 needed to be examined more closely before it could be labelled "Cæsarean." Kenyon's "Cæsarean" classification was not rigorous, and was just what one would expect from a non-rigorous examination of a manuscript like P45.

Colwell's implicit call for a more detailed study was supplied by Larry W. Hurtado in Text-Critical Methodology and the Pre-Caesarean Text: Codex W in the Gospel of Mark. This study suffers from major methodological flaws, but it pretty definitely establishes its main conclusion: That P45 and W do not belong with the so-called "Cæsarean" text. (Hurtado has also been interpreted to mean that the "Cæsarean" text does not exist. This conclusion, however, is premature, given his methodology; see the discussion of the "Cæsarean" text in the article on text-types.)

So where does this leave P45? The truth is, very little controlled analysis has been done of the manuscript. It was discovered too late for Von Soden. Wisse did not profile it. The Alands list it as Category I with a free text, but it seems likely that this assessment is based simply on what they think of the manuscript. The manuscript needs a re-evaluation before we can really state firm conclusions. My own analysis indicates that the manuscript is in fact closer to B than to any other uncial. On the face of it, it would appear that P45 comes from the Alexandrian tradition, but has been so heavily edited that it begins to appear "Westernized."

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript

Bibliography

Note: As with most major manuscripts, no attempt is made to compile a complete bibliography.

Collations:
The basic publication remains Frederic G. Kenyon, Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri (Part II, The Gospels and Acts, in two fascicles). Various authors (Gerstinger, Merk, Zuntz) have published supplements or additional analysis.

Sample Plates:
Aland & Aland, The Text of the New Testament (1 plate)
Sir Frederick Kenyon & A. W. Adams, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts (1 plate)

Editions which cite:
Cited in NA16 and later, UBS, Merk, Bover

Other Works:
The two most important works are probably those already cited: E. C. Colwell, "Method in Evaluating Scribal Habits: A Study of P45, P66, P75" (1965; pp. 106-124 in Colwell's Studies in Methodology in Textual Criticism of the New Testament).
Larry W. Hurtado in Text-Critical Methodology and the Pre-Caesarean Text: Codex W in the Gospel of Mark.


P46

Location/Catalog Number

Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, P. Chester Beatty II; Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Inv. 6238

Contents

86 leaves (out of an original total of 104), containing portions of Romans 5:17-1 Thes. 5:28 (including Hebrews, following Romans). The surviving leaves (most of which are somewhat damaged) contain Romans 5:17-6:3, 6:5-14, 8:15-25, 27-35, 8:37-9:32, 10:1-11, 11, 24-33, 11:35-15:9, 15:11-end (with 16:25-27 following chapter 15!); 1 Cor. 1:1-9:2, 9:4-14:14, 14:16-15:15, 15:17-16:22; 2 Cor. 1:1-11:10, 12-21, 11:23-13:13; Gal. 1:1-8, 1:10-2:9, 2:12-21, 3:2-29, 4:2-18, 4:20-5:17, 5:20-6:8, 6:10-18; Eph. 1:1-2:7, 2:10-5:6, 5:8-6:6, 6:8-18, 20-24; Phil. 1:1, 1:5-15, 17-28, 1:30-2:12, 2:14-27, 2:29-3:8, 3:10-21, 4:2-12, 14-23; Col. 1:1-2, 5-13, 16-24, 1:27-2:19, 2:23-3:11, 3:13-24, 4:3-12, 16-18; 1 Thes. 1:1, 1:9-2:3, 5:5-9, 23-28; Heb. 1:1-9:16, 9:18-10:20, 10:22-30, 10:32-13:25

The original contents of P46 are subject to debate. If the manuscript was indeed 104 pages long (and the quite numberings make it clear that it was intended to be so), there is no possible way it could have contained the Pastoral Epistles; the remaining space would have allowed inclusion of 2 Thessalonians but not much more. But, of course, scribes had to guess how many pages they would need in a single-quire codex. The Pastorals represent only a little more than 10% of the Pauline corpus, and an scribe's error of 10% in estimating the length of the codex is not impossible. Thus, while it seems fairly likely that P46 did not and was not intended to include the Pastorals, the possibility cannot be denied that they were included on additional leaves attached at the end.

Date/Scribe

Various dates have been proposed for P46, based entirely on paleographic evidence. The earliest dates have been around the beginning of the second century (a date which has significant implications for the formation of the Pauline canon, but to which few experts subscribe); the latest have placed it in the third. The most widely accepted date is probably that of the Alands, who place it circa 200 C.E.

The scribe of P46 seems to have been a professional copyist, working in a scriptorium. The former is implied by the neat book hand. The latter is less certain, but Zuntz notes several places where the scribe came to a crux in copying and left a small gap in the manuscript. Zuntz theorizes, and this seems reasonable, that the scribe was unable to read or understand the exemplar, and so left space to allow the corrector to settle the reading.

Despite his apparent profession, the scribe left a great deal to be desired; P46 contains a high number of peculiar errors. Zuntz thinks (and here again I believe he is right) that the copyist did much of the copying while tired or otherwise not at his best, as the errors seem to come in bunches, and are often quite absurd (e.g. writing GRA for GAR).

The correctors weren't much better. The first corrector was the scribe himself, who occasionally spotted his own errors and attempted to repair them. The second corrector seems to have been contemporary, and employed as the diorqwths. But this scribe wasn't all that much better; according to Zuntz, he missed the large majority of the original scribe's peculiar errors. (This raises the possibility that the errors were in their common exemplar, but Zuntz does not believe this.)

A third corrector, working probably in the third century, made a handful of corrections in a cursive script, as well as a line count. Zuntz thinks that this corrector was a private owner of the manuscript, making corrections as he spotted them rather than systematically examining the manuscript.

Description and Text-type

The text of P46 has been the subject of a quiet but significant controversy, with too many scholars ignoring others' results. When the manuscript was first found, it was thought to have mostly Alexandrian readings, but with a number of "Western" readings as well, especially in Romans.

The only possible word for this description is "simplistic." A number of those so-called "Western" readings are not readings characteristic of D-F-G, but rather scribal blunders in P46. The rest are much more interesting, because they have a very strong tendency to agree with B.

This point is well worth remembering. If two manuscripts display a mixture of Alexandrian and "Western" readings, they may simply be mixed manuscripts. But if they display the same pattern of mixture, then they are genetically related.

It should also be noted that P46 and B have a number of singular agreements -- and that these agreements are by no means harmonistic adjustments or the like. Several of them (e.g. Col. 2:2, tou qeou cristou; Col. 3:6, omit epi tous uious ths apeiqeias) display strong signs of originality.

It was Zuntz who first tackled this issue head-on. In The Text of the Epistles: A Disquisition upon the Corpus Paulinum, he examined the text of Paul starting not from the established Alexandrian/Byzantine/"Western" perspective but from the standpoint of P46. This proved an immensely (and probably excessively) laborious process; it took Zuntz a whole volume just to examine the data for two books (1 Corinthians and Hebrews). Nonetheless, it produced a noteworthy result: P46 and B form a group (along with a handful of other witnesses) which is clearly distinct from the main Alexandrian group found in Aleph A C 33 81 1175 etc.

Zuntz proceeded to confuse the issue by calling this type "proto-Alexandrian," Even though he found that, where the types differed, both the proto-Alexandrian and Alexandrian texts preserved original readings, he still gave the clear impression that the proto-Alexandrian text was a forerunner of the mainstream Alexandrian group. I believe Zuntz knew better, but he did not really analyse the relations between his types, except on a reading-by-reading basis. This made his results hard to understand. In addition, Zuntz analysed the data only with respect to P46. This sounds reasonable, but in fact it has severe drawbacks. By his method, any manuscript which has a significant number of readings found only in P46+B, and not in the Alexandrian or Byzantine or "Western" texts, will appear to belong to the P46 type. So the Bohairic Coptic, which actually appears to be an Alexandrian text with some P46/B mixture, went into the P46/B type, as did 1739 (which on detailed examination shows readings of all three other text-types, plus some of its own, making it perhaps a text-type in its own right).

Unfortunately, Zuntz's research has not been pursued. Metzger's The Text of the New Testament, for instance, persists in describing it in terms of Alexandrian and "Western" readings. And Zuntz's research needs to be continued, as it focusses entirely on P46 and does not examine the tradition as a whole.

My own results imply that there are fully five text-types in Paul: The Alexandrian text of Aleph A C 33 81 1175 1506 and the Bohairic Coptic; the P46/B type (consisting only of these two and the Sahidic Coptic; this type too seems associated with Egypt, and so needs a name); the Western text of D F G and the Latins, the Byzantine text, and the Family 1739 text (in Paul, 1739 0121 0243 6 424** 630+2200 (Romans-Galatians) 1881; Origen's text is close to, but not identical with, that of this group). The Alexandrian, P46/B, and 1739 texts are somewhat closer to each other than to the other two, but by no means a single text. But it should be noted that these results, like Zuntz's, have not been tested (though based on stronger statistical tools than most scholars have used).

P46 should have been the most important papyrus ever discovered. P45 is too fragmentary and periphrastic to be important, P47 too limited in extent, P66 too error-prone, and P72 and P75 too close to B to really contribute much. P46 should have changed our view of the entire history of the text of Paul. Somehow, this seems not to have happened.

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript

Bibliography

Note: As with most major manuscripts, no attempt is made to compile a complete bibliography.

Collations:
Frederick G. Kenyon, The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri. (P46 is found in fascicle III, covering Paul)
See also K. Junack, Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus, Vol. 2: Die paulinischen Briefe

Sample Plates:
Aland & Aland, The Text of the New Testament (1 plate)
Comfort, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible (1 plate, same page as the above)
Comfort, The Quest for the Original Text of the New Testament (1 plate; same page as above)
Metzger, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible (1 plate)
Metzger, The Text of the New Testament (1 plate -- again, the same leaf)
Sir Frederick Kenyon & A. W. Adams, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts (1 plate)

Editions which cite:
Cited in NA16 and later, UBS, Merk, Bover

Other Works:
Perhaps most important of the many works on P46 is the one already mentioned, as it is the only one to treat P46 in light of its own text rather than by comparison to the more recent uncials:
G Zuntz, The Text of the Epistles: A Disquisition Upon the Corpus Paulinum.


P48

Location/Catalog Number

Florence, Laurenxian Library, PSI 1165.

Contents

Portions of Acts 23:11-17, 25-29.

Date/Scribe

Dated paleographically to the third century. The script is considered quite similar to P13.

Description and Text-type

P48 is extremely defective even for the surviving portion of a leaf. We have portions of three margins, but the key word is "portions"; we have really only about ten lines, from the middle of the page, and even those are damaged (e.g. one whole vertical strip of papyrus has been lost). The latter verses hardly exist at all; the surviving material is just a few strings and strips extending down to the bottom margin of the page.

It has become traditional to regard P48 as "Western" -- the Alands, e.g., list is as having a Category IV text, free but related to D. It is worth noting, however, that P48 and D have no common material at all.

Determining the actual text-type of P48 is extremely difficult simply because of its limited size. The Nestle-Aland text, for instance, reports ten readings from the first section (Acts 23:11-17). Two of these readings are singular according to the apparatus, one is supported only by pc, and four are supported only by versions (usually Latin). One is supported by 614 h and the Harklean margin. But several of these are really conjectural readings from the heavily damaged portion of the papyrus. At least one reading (23:16, insert ean deh kai apeqanein) is based on only the barest handful of letters and is reconstructed on the basis of 614 h hark-marg. This can hardly be accepted as valid evidence of text-type.

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript

Bibliography

Collations:
E. Lobel, C. H. Roberts, E. P. Wegener, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Volume 18.
See also K. Junack, Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus, Vol. 2: Die paulinischen Briefe

Sample Plates:

Editions which cite:
Cited in NA26, NA27, and the UBS editions. (The editions of Merk also claims to cite it, but lists it as containing Matthew!)

Other Works:
Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, p. 55


P51

Location/Catalog Number

Oxford (Ashmolean Museum, Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 2157).

Contents

Portions of Galatians 1:2-10, 13, 16-20. Every line of the surviving fragment is damaged (usually at both ends); every surviving verse is missing at least a few letters.

Date/Scribe

Dated paleographically to the fourth or fifth century.

Description and Text-type

Aland and Aland list P51 as Category II. It is hard to see how they determined this, however, as the fragment is so small. Collating its text against P46 Aleph A B D G K L 81 30 365 1739 produced only eight variants where at least two of these manuscripts agree against the others; in these eight readings, P51 showed the following rates of agreement:
ManuscriptAgreement Rate
P463/7=43%
Aleph3/8=38%
A3/8=38%
B7/8=88%
D2/8=25%
G2/8=25%
K2/8=25%
L2/8=25%
813/8=38%
3304/8=50%
3652/8=25%
17395/8=63%

Thus P51 is quite close to B. This is confirmed by the original editors, who describe the text as "eclectic... its closest affinities seem to be with B, but an agreement with D F G against Aleph A B P46 is worth noting." This reading is not, however, a true agreement with the "Western" witnesses; where D* F G read apostolwn eidon oudena and the remaining witnesses have apostolwn ouk eidon, P51 appears to conflate to read apostolwn ouk eidon oudena. (It should be noted, however, that every letter of this reading is at least slightly damaged; we should perhaps not place much importance on this variant.) It is curious to observe that P51 is not close to B's ally P46; as the editors note, "None of the three peculiar readings of ...[P46]... find support here, nor does [P51] ever agree with P46 except when the latter is supporting B." The most interesting reading of P51 is, surely, in Gal. 1:5, where (along with H 0278 330) it reads w estin h doxa. Thus, given the small amount of text we have to work with, we can hardly be dogmatic about P51's text.

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript

Bibliography

Collations:
E. Lobel, C. H. Roberts, E. P. Wegener, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Volume 18.
See also K. Junack, Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus, Vol. 2: Die paulinischen Briefe

Sample Plates:

Editions which cite:
Cited in NA26, NA27, and the UBS editions. (The edition of Merk also claims to cite it, but lists it as containing Matthew!)

Other Works:
Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, p. 55


P52

Location/Catalog Number

Manchester, John Rylands Library, Gr. P. 457

Contents

Portions of John 18:31, 32, 33, 37, 38 (see transcription below)

Date/Scribe

Generally dated to the second century. C. H. Roberts, who first observed the manuscript, dated it before 150 C.E.. More recent observers have tended to date it in the range of 110 to 125 C.E.

Description and Text-type

Aland and Aland list P52 as a normal text. However, it should be noted that we really know nothing about the textual affiliations of this manuscript, which contains roughly 118 legible letters. The most noteworthy feature of the manuscript is its age -- though even this should be taken with some caution. How certain can a paleographic determination be when it is based on so small a sample?

The story of the manuscript is well-known. Acquired by Grenfell in Egypt in 1920, it went unnoticed among many other manuscript fragments until 1934, when C. H. Roberts recognized that it contained part of the Gospel of John. Impressed with the antiquity of the writing, he hastily published a booklet, An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library. Despite some caution among scholars about his early and precise dating, almost all accept that it comes from the second century -- simultaneously proving that the codex form and the Gospel of John were in use by that date.

The surviving fragment is only about 9 cm. tall by 6 cm. wide at its widest, counting lines makes it appear that the pages contained about eighteen lines of about 32 letters per line. This implies a page size of about 22 cm. by 20 cm.

Textually P52 tells us little. The complete text is transcribed below:

recto
OIIOUDAI  HME
OUDENAINAOL
PENSHMAINW
QNHSKEINIS
RIONOP
KAIEIP
  IW

verso
TOG  NN  AI
SMONINAMARTU
  THSALHQE
  LEGEIAUTW
    ITOUT
    TOUSI
      MI

As noted, it appears that P52 had about thirty characters per line. If so, then the likely reconstruction of the surviving lines is as follows (surviving characters shown in upper case, the rest in lower)

recto
OI IOUDAIoi HMEin ouk exestin apokteinai
OUDENA INA O Logos tou iu plhrwqh on ei-
PEN SHMAINWn poiw qanatw hmellen apo-
QNHSKEIN IShlqen ouk palin eis to praitw-
RION O Pilatos kai efwnhsen ton in
KAI EIPen autw su ei o basileus twn iou-
daIWn
...

verso
(...leus) eimi egw eis touTO GegNNhmAI
kai elhluqa eis ton koSMON INA MARTU-
rhsw th alhqeia pas o wn THS ALHQEi-
as akouei mou ths fwnhs LEGEI AUTW
o pilatos ti estin alhqeia kaI TOUTo
eipwn palin exhlqen pros TOUS Iou-
daious kai legei autois ego oudeMIan

Observe the mis-spellings of HMEin (line 1r), IShlqen (line 4r).

Perhaps more interesting are the uses of the name of Jesus in lines 2r and 5r. Was the name abbreviated? This is an important and difficult question. Looking at the verso, we find the following line lengths: 28, 30 (38 if eis touto is included), 29, 28, 29, 28, 31. In the recto, if "Jesus" is abbreviated, we have 35, 31, 31, 33, 28, 30; if it is expanded, 35, 34, 31, 33 (28 if we omit palin), 31, 30. This is problematic, as the average line lengths on recto and verso are distinctly different -- 29 for the verso, 31.33 or 32.33 for the recto. If we consider only the recto, using the long forms produces less deviation for the line lengths (standard deviation of 1.97; it is 2.42 if we use the short lengths). However, if we take all thirteen lines we can measure, using the abbreviations produces the lesser deviation (2.14, with a mean line length of 30.1; without abbreviations the mean is 30.5 and the deviation 2.30). On the whole, then, it is perhaps slightly more likely that the manuscript used the nomina sacra than not, but it is absolutely impossible to be dogmatic.

As far as interesting variants go, P52 tells us little. The following is a list of variants to which it attests (note that these are all either idiosyncratic readings or of trivial importance, often both):

By the nature of the case, P52 cannot help us with the variant add/omit egw (after eimi in verse 37).

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript

Bibliography

The bibliography for P52 is too extensive to be tracked here. The basic article is the C. H. Roberts item (An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library) mentioned above. For more popular works on the subject see the lists below.

Collations:
Collations of P52 are common -- and often rather optimistic in their readings of almost obliterated letters. Many include reconstuctions of the text as well. The following list includes some of the less scholarly, but more widely available, reconstructions:
Finegan, Encountering New Testament Manuscripts, pp. 85-100 (text, recontruction, and comparison with other manuscripts)
Metzger, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible, p. 62 (includes reconstructed text)
Salmon, The Fourth Gospel: A History of the Text, pp. 50-53

Sample Plates:
Almost every modern introduction to textual criticism includes photos of P52 (which is why no photo is included here). Examples include:
Aland & Aland, The Text of the New Testament
Finegan, Encountering New Testament Manuscripts
Metzger, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible
Salmon, The Fourth Gospel: A History of the Text

Editions which cite:

Cited in all the recent Nestle-Aland editions and the like; it should be noted, however, that P52 is so short that it plays no real role in the critical apparatus.

Other Works:
Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, pp. 55-56


P54

Location/Catalog Number

Princeton (University Library, P. Princeton 15).

Contents

Portions of James 2:16-18 (beginning with tou swmatos), 22, 24-25, 3:2-4. The manuscript is damaged on both sides and at the bottom (though the defect at the bottom does not involve much text); in addition, the manuscript is broken in the middle (it in fact consists of two major pieces and some shreds), which explains how a single leaf can contain four sections of text. All four sections are damaged. The state of the fragment is so bad that it is hard to determine even the line length, but it appears to have been about twenty characters; we have about ten characters in the surviving lines. A total of 29 lines survive.

Date/Scribe

Dated paleographically to the fifth or sixth century. The hand is quite firm and clear (or would be if the fragment were not so discoloured and faded).

Description and Text-type

Aland and Aland list P54 as Category III or possibly Category II. The Nestle text, however, cites it for only four readings (one of them, in 2:18, being subsingular); there just isn't enough text to make a clear determination of the manuscript's type.

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript

Bibliography

Collations:
E. H. Kase, Papyri in the Princeton University Collections, Volume II
Ellwood M. Schofield, The Papyrus Fragments of the Greek New Testament

Sample Plates:

Editions which cite:
Cited in NA26, NA27, and the UBS editions.

Other Works:


P74

Location/Catalog Number

Cologne, Bodmer library. Bodmer Papyrus XVII

Contents

Contains most of Acts (1:2-5, 7-11, 13-15, 18-19, 22-25, 2:2-4, 2:6-3:26, 4:2-6, 8-27, 4:29-27:25, 27:27-28:31) and fragments of all seven Catholic Epistles (portions of 75 verses of James, 16 verses of 1 Peter, 4 of 2 Peter, 27 of 1 John, 4 of 2 John, 2 of 3 John, and 5 of Jude).

Date/Scribe

Dated paleographically to the seventh century.

Description and Text-type

Aland and Aland list P74 as Category I. Richards lists it as a member of his Group A3 (Family 1739), but even he admits "P74 was classified even though there are only eight non-TR readings in 1-3 John by which the manuscript could be judged. We placed P74 in A3 because seven of its eight non-TR readings are group readings in A3, while only five of the eight are group readings in A2 [the main Alexandrian group], and just three of the eight are A1 [Family 2138] group readings" (W. L. Richards, The Classification of the Greek Manuscripts of the Johannine Epistles, p. 139). However, Richards seems to have been betrayed by his inaccurate groups and his small sample size. In the Catholic Epistles as a whole (meaning primarily James), P74 is not close to Family 1739. The following data examines all readings of P74 in the Catholics cited explicitly in NA27. There are exactly fifty such readings. Of these fifty, P74 agrees with the Byzantine text in a mere six. Nine of its readings are singular or subsingular (i.e. not supported by any of the test witnesses Aleph A B L P 33 323 614 1241 1505 1739) It has six readings which have only one supporter among the test witnesses. Its rate of agreements are as follows:

WitnessOverall
Agreements
Agreements supported only
by P74 and the listed witness
Aleph 17 of 50 (34%)0
A30 of 49 (61%)4
B21 of 50 (42%)1
L11 of 50 (22%)1
P14 of 46 (30%)0
3321 of 44 (48%)0
32317 of 50 (34%)0
61414 of 50 (28%)0
124120 of 49 (41%)0
150514 of 50 (28%)0
173922 of 50 (44%)0

Thus P74's allegiance is clearly with A. If we omit P74's nine singular readings, they agree in 30 of 41 variants, or 73% of the time. A is the only manuscript to agree with P74 over 70% of the time. In addition, A agrees with the larger part of P74's most unusual readings.

We also observe that P74's next closest relative is 33, which is fairly close to A.

Without adding statistics, we can observe that P74 seems to have a similar text of Acts. Although it has been called Byzantine, in fact it is a high-quality Alexandrian text of that book, and deserves the Alands' Category I description.

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript

Bibliography

Collations:
Rudolf Kasser, Papyrus Bodmer XVII: Actes des Apôtres, Epîtres de Jacques, Pierre, Jean et Jude
See also K. Junack, Das Neue Testament auf Papyrus (volumes 1 and 3, Catholic Epistles and Acts)

Sample Plates:
Aland & Aland (1 plate)

Editions which cite:
Cited in all UBS editions and in NA26 and NA27

Other Works:


P75

Location/Catalog Number

Cologny (Geneva), Switzerland, Bodmer library. Bodmer Papyrus XIV, XV

Contents

Contains major portions of Luke and John: Luke 3:18-22, 3:33-4:2, 4:34-5:10, 5:37-6:4, 6:10-7:32, 7:35-39, 41-43, 7:46-9:2, 9:4-17:15, 17:19-18:18, 22:4-end, John 1:1-11:45, 11:48-57, 12:3-13:10, 14:8-15:10. The volume, despite loss of leaves, is in surprisingly good condition, we even have portions of the binding (which is thought to have been added later). We have all or part of 102 pages (51 leaves), out of an original total of about 144 (72 leaves). Generally speaking, the earlier leaves are in better condition; many of the pages in the latter part of John have gone to pieces and have to be reconstructed from fragments.

Date/Scribe

Dated paleographically to the third century (with most scholars tending toward the earlier half of that century); Martin and Kasser, who edited the manuscript, would have allowed a date as early as 175. The scribe seems to have been generally careful, writing a neat and clear hand (though letter sizes vary somewhat), and (with some minor exceptions) using a fairly consistent spelling. Colwell observed that the natural writing tendencies of the scribe were strongly restrained by the text before him, indicating a copy of very high fideily. The editors of the codex argued that the copyist was a professional scribe. We do note, however, that lines are of very variable length (25 to 36 letters per line), as are the pages (38 to 45 lines per page). As P75 is a single-quire codex of (presumably) 36 folios, it has been argued that the scribe was trying to get more text on a page to hold the codex to the available space.

Description and Text-type

The fact which has struck every examiner of P75 is its extremely close resemblance to B. A number of statistical studies to this effect have been made; as far as I know, however, all have been done by textual critics with weak mathematical backgrounds and with inadequate controls. Thus, none of their figures for agreements between manuscripts can be regarded as meaning much. Still, the result is unquestionable: P75 is closer to B than to any other manuscript, and vice versa. There are enough differences that P75 cannot be the parent of B, and is unlikely to be a direct ancestor, but P75 and B certainly had a common ancestor, and this ancestor must have been older than P75. Moreover, both manuscripts have remained quite close to this ancestral text. The mere fact that the two agree does not tell us how good this ancestral text is (most scholars would regard it as very good, but this is for other reasons than the closeness of the two manuscripts). But we are able to reconstruct this text with great accuracy.

Interestingly, there has been no systematic study examining the text of P75. The Alands, of course, list it as Category I, with a strict text, but this is based simply on the date and character of the manuscript; it is not really an examination of the text. Wisse, for some reason, did not profile P75, even though it is the only papyrus of Luke substantial enough to allow such an evaluation (at least of Chapter 10).

The discovery of P75 has had a profound effect on New Testament criticism. The demonstration that the B text is older than B seems to have encouraged a much stronger belief in its originality. The UBS committee, for instance, placed the Western Non-Interpolations back in their text based largely on the evidence of P75.

The irony, as E. C. Colwell pointed out in the essay "Hort Redivivus: A Plea and a Program" (p. 156 in the reprint in Studies in Methodology in Textual Criticism of the New Testament), is that P75 should have had no such effect. The existence of manuscripts such as P75 had never been questioned. The major Bodmer papyri (P66, P72, P74, and P75) are important and influential witnesses, but they should have little effect on our textual theory. The truly significant witnesses were the Beatty papyri -- P46, as Zuntz showed, should have completely altered our view of the text of Paul (but somehow it didn't); P47 perhaps should have a similar if less spectacular effect on our text of the Apocalypse; and P45 (as Colwell showed) allows us to see the sorts of liberties some copyists could take with the Biblical text.

This is not to deny the great value of P75. Since P66 is a notably inaccurate copy, and P45 paraphrases (see Colwell, "Method in Evaluating Scribal Habits: A Study of P45, P66, P75," pp. 196-124 in Studies in Methodology), P75 is the earliest substantial and careful manuscript of the Gospels. Most would also regard it as having the best text. It does have a few limitations, however. It has been accused of omitting minor words such as personal pronouns (see page 121 in the Colwell essay).

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript

Bibliography

Note: As with most major manuscripts, no attempt is made to compile a complete bibliography.

Collations:
Rudolf Kasser and Victor Martin, Papyrus Bodmer XIV-XV. Two volumes; Volume I contains the Lukan material, Volume II the Johannine.
Supplementary portions of the text are found in Kurt Aland, "Neue neutestamentliche Papyri III," New Testament Studies #22.

Sample Plates:
Complete plates in Kasser & Martin. Sample plates in almost every recent book, including Aland & Aland, Metzger's Text of the Ne Testament and Manuscripts of the New Testament, Finegan, Encountering New Testament Manuscripts, and anything ever published by Philip Wesley Comfort.

Editions which cite:
Cited in all editions published since its discovery -- including NA35 and higher, all UBS editions, and even Hodges & Farstad.

Other Works:
Calvin Porter, "Papyrus Bodmer XV (P75) and the Text of Codex Vaticanus," Journal of Biblical Literature 81.
E. C. Colwell, "Method in Evaluating Scribal Habits: A Study of P45, P66, P75," pp. 196-124 in Studies in Methodology


P78

Location/Catalog Number

Oxford, Ashmolean Museum. Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 2684

Contents

Portions of Jude 4-5, 7-8 (additional material illegible)

Date/Scribe

Dated paleographically to the third or fourth century.

Description and Text-type

P78 contains only a fragment of a single leaf, measuring a little over 10 cm. across by 2.5 cm. tall. This suffices to hold three to four lines of text. There are two columns of about a dozen lines each. The surviving portion appears to be the top of the page.

The verso portion is easily read, although written in a rather hurried, inelegant hand. The left-hand column begins with verse 4, arnoumenoi and ends with verse 5, eidotas. Column 2 begins with verse 7, aiwniou and ends with verse 8, enupniazome[noi].

The recto portion is in much worse shape, being practically illegible. The left column begins with verse 8, sarka men. The rest of this column is only marginally legible, and the second column cannot really be deciphered (at least in visible light). The fragment thus contains a total of only about 100 Greek characters.

Nonetheless its text is striking. The Alands classify it as Category I (based on its date) with a "free" text. We observe several noteworthy readings:

Several of these may be the result of a hasty and careless scribe. Sadly, the fragment is so short that we cannot really draw further conclusions.

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript

Bibliography

Collations:
L. Ingrams, P. Kingston, P. Parsons, J. Rea, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, volume 34.

Sample Plates:

Editions which cite:
Cited in UBS4, NA26, and NA27.

Other Works:
Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, pp. 64-65


P90

Location/Catalog Number

Oxford, Ashmolean Museum. Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 3523

Contents

Portions of John 18:36-19:7

Date/Scribe

Dated paleographically to the second century (making it, after P52, perhaps the oldest surviving New Testament papyrus). The script is considered similar to the "unknown gospel," P. Egerton 2.

Description and Text-type

P90 contains only a part of a single leaf, about 15 cm. tall and nowhere more than six cm. wide. It appears that we have the entire height of the leaf, but only a portion of its width, with thirteen or fewer characters surviving on each line (24 lines visible on the recto, 23 on the verso). Even the surviving characters are often illegible. (So much so that, of the eleven readings noted in NA27, eight are marked vid.) The manuscript appears to have originally has about twenty characters per line, meaning that even the best-preserved lines are missing a third of their text, and most are missing half or more. The hand is generally clear but not polished.

Because the manuscript is so newly-discovered, it has not been classified according to any of the standard classification schemes. It does not appear to contain any noteworthy variants. The following table shows its rate of agreement with some key manuscripts in the variants cited in NA27:
MSAgreementsPercent Agreement
P665/1145%
Aleph7/1164%
A1/119%
B3/1127%
Dsup3/1127%
K2/1118%
L6/1155%
Q2/1118%
13/1127%

With such small samples, our percentages of agreement obviously don't mean much. But it will be clear that P90 is not Byzantine; it appears to be an Alexandrian witness of some kind. Comfort listed it as closest to P66 (based probably on some relatively unusual readings they share), but his bias toward early papyri is well-known; in fact it looks closer to Aleph. Its lack of kinship with B is noteworthy.

Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript

Bibliography

Collations:
L. Ingrams, P. Kingston, P. Parsons, J. Rea, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, volume 50.

Sample Plates:

Editions which cite:
Cited in NA27.

Other Works:
Comfort, Early Manuscripts & Modern Translations of the New Testament, pp. 68-69