Galatians 3 and 0176 - The Byzantine Text in Egypt

Let’s take a look at one of the earliest manuscripts of Paul’s epistle to the Galatians:  0176, a small uncial fragment from the 400s (or, perhaps, the late 300s).  Researcher Brice Jones described 0176 back in 2015 as the remains of a “miniature codex,” that is, a small book designed for personal use (as opposed to large codices that were intended to be the ancient equivalent of pulpit Bibles).  It is indeed rather small; the description that accompanies the page-views at the CSNTM reports that 0176 is only 8.7 cm x 5.7 cm.  When intact, 0176 would have probably resembled a Gideons New Testament.  It is housed in Florence, Italy at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana.

The text that survives on this single parchment sheet, excavated in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, is from Galatians 3:16-24.  Here is the Byzantine Text of Galatians 3:16-24, adjusted to correspond to how the text was formatted by early copyists:  sacred names (God, Lord, Jesus, Christ) are abbreviated and underlined, and punctuation is reduced to a minimum.  The bold print represents text that has survived in 0176.  Red letters are letters in the Byzantine text that are not in 0176; green letters are letters in 0176 that are not in the Byzantine text: 

RECTO: 

16  Τω δε Αβρααμ′ ερρηθησαν αι επαγγελιαι και τω σπερματι αυτου·  Ου λεγει και τοις σπερμασιν ως επι πολλων αλλ’ ως εφ ενος και τω σπερματι σου ος εστιν Χς.

17   Τουτο δε λεγω διαθηκην προκεκυρωμενην υπο του Θυ εις Χν ο μετα ετη τετρακοσια και τριακοντα γεγονως νομος ουκ ακυροι εις το καταργησαι την επαγγελιαν.

18  Ει γαρ εκ νομου η κληρονομια ουκετι εξ επαγ[ν]γελιας· τω δε Αβρααμ′ δι επαγγελιας κεχαρισται[ε] ο Θς.

19  Τι ουν ο νομος;  των παραβασεων χαριν προσετεθη αχρι ου ελθη το σπερμα ω επηγγελται διαταγεις δι’ αγγελων εν χειρι μεσιτου.

VERSO: 

20  Ο δε μεσιτης ενος ουκ εστιν ο δε Θς εις εστιν.

21  Ο ουν νομος κατα των επαγγελιων του Θυ; Μη γενοιτο.  Ει γαρ εδοθη νομος ο δυναμενος ζωοποιησαι οντως αν εκ νομου ην η δικαιοσυνη.

22  Αλλα συνεκλεισεν η γραφη τα παντα υπο αμαρτιαν ινα η επαγγελια εκ πιστεως Ιυ Χυ δοθη τοις πιστευουσιν. 

23  Προ του δε ελθειν την πιστιν υπο νομον εφρουρουμεθα συγ[ν]κεκλεισμενοι εις την μελλουσαν πιστιν αποκαλυφθηναι.

24  Ωστε ο νομος παιδαγωγος ημων γεγονεν εις Χν ινα εκ πιστεως δικαιωθωμεν.

Although the text of 0176 has been classified as “mixed,” there seems to be no valid reason not to classify it as Byzantine, since its only deviations from the standard Byzantine text are trivial orthographic differences.  (This was noticed by Daniel Buck in the NT Textual Criticism discussion-group on Facebook.)  In verse 21, space-considerations require the inclusion of the phrase του Θυ (“of God”); otherwise the copyist would have begun the words that follow (Μη γενοιτο) further to the left.  Space-considerations seem to justify αχρις rather than αχρι in verse 19, but this is quite a minor difference (especially since the Hodges-Farstad 1982 Majority Text reads αχρις).   

The presence of an essentially Byzantine text of Galatians in use at Oxyrhynchus, Egypt in the 400s should elicit a question about how widespread it was, and about the plausibility of the theory that the Byzantine text’s popularity was limited to locales where John Chrysostom was influential. 

A few more observations round out this examination:

●  The copyist used ekthesis (slight reverse indentation) to separate paragraphs, a feature also seen in Vaticanus and some other early manuscripts.  The initial Pi at the beginning of Galatians 3:23 is also somewhat larger than the other letters; in this respect the script resembles that of Codex Alexandrinus. 

● The reading εις Χν in Galatians 3:17 is supported not only by 0176 (at Oxyrhynchus) but also by Chrysostom (at Constantinople) and by the Peshitta (in Syria) and some Old Latin copies (in the West).  Its support is thus as widespread as the support for non-inclusion.  When one observes that the scribes of the text in Papyrus 46 and Codex Vaticanus managed to find a way to omit short phrases such as “of God” (του Θυ) in nearby 3:21, and also that a copyist could easily consider the phrase “in Christ” as out-of-place in a description of the establishment of the Law of Moses, it seems more reasonable to conclude that an omission yielded the shorter text, rather than that independent copyists reproduced the same accretion.  The phrase “in Christ” should therefore be retained in Galatians 3:17, as it is in the text of the Evangelical Heritage Version.

● The Alands’ categorizations of “mixed” texts (“Category III”), to whatever extent they are accepted, should be tested, in case other manuscripts that support the Byzantine Text have been improperly categorized, giving a false impression (spread by James White and others) that the Byzantine Text has less widespread support than it actually has.

You can see photographs of 0176 at the CSNTM website and elsewhere online.  Here is an artificially enhanced replica, with verse-numbers added and with the Byzantine text superimposed over the manuscript.

The Willoughby Papyrus of John 1:50-2:1

          Earlier this week at the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog, Tommy Wasserman reported about a lecture that Dr. Geoffrey Smith (from the University of Texas) gave at the Society of Biblical Literature’s gathering in Atlanta.  Smith’s lecture is about the Willoughby Papyrus, a small piece of papyrus which appeared for sale on eBay for $99 in January of 2015.  Brice Jones gave an early report about this item in January of 2015, and it was noticed by Wieland Willker as well.  It was mentioned at the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog, with comments, before disappearing from eBay. 

Harold R. Willoughby
(Univ. of Chicago Archive
apfl-08780)

         Fortunately, as reported at the New York Times, it has not vanished into obscurity, and is receiving some scholarly attention.  This tiny scrap of papyrus contains text from John 1:50-2:1.  (See Brice Jones’ description for a transcript and brief discussion of its contents.)  It appears to be from the mid-late 200’s or early 300’s.  At one time, it was the property of Harold R. Willoughby, who was a professor at the University of Chicago in the 1900’s.  (He was also instrumental in the acquisition of the Gangsters’ Bible (also known as the Argos Lectionary), a lectionary which is part of the Goodspeed Manuscript Collection.)  The papyrus has text from the Gospel of John on one side, but something else is written on the other side, upside-down. This suggests that this fragment is from a scroll.

The Coptic Gospel of the Lots of Mary

            In a new book, Dr. AnneMarie Luijendijk of Princeton University describes a newly published manuscript, produced in the 400s-600s, titled The Gospel of the Lots of Mary.  The manuscript is not an account of the ministry of Jesus; nor is it a collection of sayings of Jesus.  Instead, it is a small collection of oracles, written on sheepskin parchment, designed to be used as a sort of horoscope.  The manuscript was in the possession of Harvard University ever since 1984, when it was donated by Beatrice Kelekian, in memory of her deceased husband Charles, to the Sackler Museum.  (So in this case, 30 years elapsed between the acquisition of the manuscript, and the publication of its text.)  Its previous history is not known.      

           

[Derived from a photo for which credit goes to Harvard Art Museums/

Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Mrs. Beatrice Kelekian 

in memory of her husband, Charles Dikran Kelekian, 1984.669] 
Unaltered Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College

This book was designed for a specific purpose:  fortune-telling.   Someone seeking guidance about the future would consult the owner of the book, who would then have the guidance-seeker pick a number at random – this would be the “lot” in the title – and then turn to the oracle that matched the selected number.  That oracle would then be delivered as a message for the guidance-seeker.

           Despite occasional references to Jesus, Mary, Gabriel, and Michael, this text does not really have much to do with the New Testament.  It is a divination-book with some Christian overtones.  There is not a lot about Mary!  Jesus is mentioned only three times:  in the title of the book (“The Lots of Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus Christ”), in Oracle 30 (“The Lord Jesus fights on your behalf”), and Oracle 37 (“Christ Jesus will give you a good fruit and a prosperous life”).  [See Forbidden Oracles, page 36.]  Some of the oracles contain statements that might be based on passages from the Gospel of Matthew.  One statement is similar to James 1:13.

           The Gospel of the Lots of Mary may have been produced in the 500s near, or at, a shrine for Saint Colluthus (a physician who was martyred during the Diocletian persecution) that was located in the Egyptian city of Antinoë.  One point in favor of this conclusion is that the lettering in The Gospel of the Lots of Mary resembles the handwriting in a fragment of Fourth Esdras from Antinoë.

Oracle #25.  Picture credit:  Harvard Art Museums/
Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Mrs. Beatrice Kelekian
in memory of her husband, Charles Dikran Kelekian, 1984.669

Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College

            The title “Forbidden Gospels?” may initially seem sensationalistic but technically it is correct:  at the Council of Vannes in 465, and again at the Council of Agde in 506, and yet again at the Council of Auxerre in 578, the use of oracular books, including the use of Biblical texts in an oracular manner, was forbidden.  (The oracular use of Scripture involved selecting a passage of Scripture at random and treating it like a horoscope to answer a question, such as “Will I reach my destination safely?”, “Should I get married now?”, “Will this business be profitable?” and so forth.)  Such practices, called bibliomancy, were officially considered a superstitious imitation of pagans.  A pagan oracle-collection called the Sortes Astrampsychi (Oracles of Astrampsychus), was already in circulation by that time; probably it was produced in the 200s or maybe earlier.

            Nevertheless, bibliomancy and similar practices endured.  A rehabilitated form of the Sortes Astrampsychi, known as the Sortes Sanctorum, was in circulation in the early Middle Ages when some of its interpretation-notes, or hermeneiai, were added to the margins of chapters 1-10 of the Gospel of Mark in Codex Bezae (an important manuscript of the Gospels, Acts, and Third John).  In 1901, J. Rendel Harris conducted an investigation of the Sortes Sanctorum in Codex Bezae; it can be read as part of his book The Annotators of Codex Bezae.  Harris also investigated the Sortes Sanctorum in the margins of the Gospel of John in the Old Latin Codex Sangermanensis (g¹), which features a circular diagram which was designed, it seems, for the purpose of oracle-number-selection.  Harris concluded that similarities in the oracular materials suggest that both manuscripts were at one time housed in the same library.

            Five papyrus fragments of John show that the use of the Gospel of John for oracle-consultation persisted in Egypt: 

            Papyrus 55 (500s-600s) – John 1:31-33 and 1:35-38, with notes on one side.

            Papyrus 59 (600s-700s) – snippets from John 1, 2, 11, 12, 17, and 18, with seven hermeneia.

            Papyrus 63 (500s) – John 3:14-18 and 4:9-20, with the oracular notes in Greek and Coptic.

            Papyrus 76 (500s) – John 4:9, 4:11-12, with two notes, both resembling notes in the hermeneia in Codex Bezae’s margins, and

            Papyrus 80 (200s-300s) – John 3:34.

Papyrus 63 - The word "Hermeneia," indicated by red arrows,
separates portions of the Gospel of John from oracle-notes. 

            Each of these manuscripts has at least one oracular note.  (A sixth, P60, does not have hermeneiai, but it probably did when it was in pristine condition.)  This is also true of two Greek uncials (0210 and 0302).  Not only does this raise the question of what these non-continuous manuscripts are doing in the Gregory-Aland list of papyri with their own identification-number, but it also raises the question of whether or not the Biblical text in manuscripts with oracular notes embedded in their texts (rather than added secondarily as in Codex Bezae) should be approached with extra caution, due to the possibility that such manuscripts were copied, not primarily as Scriptures used in the churches, but as oracular consultation-books used privately as horoscopes. 

            David C. Parker investigated this question of the reliability of the text of papyri manuscripts with oracular notes, in 2006; his research is accessible as chapter 11, Manuscripts of John’s Gospel With Hermeneai, on pages 121-138 of Manuscripts, Texts,Theology – Collected Papers, 1977-2007 (published in 2009 by Walter de Gruyter).  In this detailed study, Parker concluded that when the reliability of the texts of John in these manuscripts is tested, the texts “come out of the test very well,” and should not be assumed to be inferior to the texts of continuous-text manuscripts.  (For more information see Bruce Metzger’s “Greek Manuscripts of John’s Gospel with “Hermeneiai,” in Text and Testimony:  Essays on New Testament and Apocryphal Literature in Honor of A. F. J. Klijn, pages 162-169) and especially Stanley Porter’s The Use of Hermeneia and Johannine Papyrus Manuscripts, the gist of which can also be found on pages 60-63 of Christian Origins and Greco-Roman Culture (Brill, 2012)). 

            Recently, Brice C. Jones discovered a Coptic manuscript (sa 402) with text from John 3:17-21 accompanied by hermeneiai.  His report about this manuscript (assigned to the 400s-600s) includes pictures showing the oracular notes below the Scripture-text, similar to the format in P63.                

              Forbidden Oracles?  The Gospel of the Lots of Mary by AnneMarie Luijendijk is published by Mohr Seibeck and is available at http://www.mohr.de/en/nc/theology/series/detail/buch/forbidden-oracles.html (it is Volume 89 in the series Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum).  A book review by Sarah Parkhouse is at http://rbecs.org/2015/02/01/foglm/ .