First century Matthew! In 1994, that was how papyrologist
Carsten
Peter Thiede described
Papyrus
64, three fragments written on papyrus, containing Greek text from Matthew
26 (to be precise, Matthew 26:7-8, 10, 14-15, 22-23, and 31-33). The fragments are housed at
Magdalen
College in
Oxford,
England, and they are for
this reason called “
The Magdalen Papyri.” Thiede’s case was a cumulative one, involving
subtle factors such as the similarity of the lettering in Papyrus 64 and some
of the lettering in the Dead Sea Scroll 4QLXXLev (4Q119).
Papyrus 64
is indeed early, but subsequent researchers have responded to Thiede’s claim
with
strong
arguments for assigning a later production-date to P64, around the
beginning of the 200s.
This is from the same manuscript as Papyrus
64! That was the verdict of Colin H. Roberts when he described
Papyrus
67, a Greek fragment (presently housed at the
Abby
of Montserrat, west of
Barcelona, Spain)
with text from Matthew 3:9,
3:15,
5:20-22, and
5:25-28. Other researchers, after comparing the two
manuscripts, have reached the same conclusion:
although P64 and P67 were published separately and were assigned
separate identification-numbers, they are really only one manuscript.
Where did
it come from? Probably somewhere in
Upper (i.e., southern)
Egypt
– and therein lies a tale which implies that several important New Testament
papyri come from the same place. The
acquisition of P64 is no secret; it was purchased by Charles E. Huleatt in 1901
in
Luxor, Egypt. North of Luxor, in the area of Naqada, are
various
monasteries. Northwest of Luxor is Nag Hammadi, where a
collection of Gnostic texts were excavated.
And northeast of Nag Hammadi is the town of Dishna – which is, as far as
anyone seems to be able to tell, where a large collection of papyri were
recovered – papyri which eventually ended up in the collections of
Chester
Beatty and
Martin Bodmer. As
specialist
Dr. James Robinson has pointed out, the whole collection probably
constitutes the remains of a
Pachomian
monastery’s library, hidden near Dishna in the 600s, along with a variety
of Old Testament manuscripts and other documents (some in Greek, some in
Coptic), including copies of some letters composed by
Pachomius.
This means
that when textual scholars rely upon
Papyrus
66 (Bodmer MS 50),
Papyrus
72 (Bodmer MSS 7-8), and
Papyrus
75 (previously Bodmer MSS 14-15, but now housed at the Vatican Library and
renamed the Hanna Papyrus), they are relying on manuscripts from
Upper
Egypt. A variant shared by
P66
and P75 represents one, not two, locales.
Papyrus 64 and
Papyrus 67 were not part of the large collection found near Dishna; they
probably came from a location east of there: the city of Coptos (now
called Qift), which, after its citizens rebelled against the government, was
destroyed by Roman forces acting on orders from the Emperor Diocletian in 292 (or
later in his reign). What justifies this
idea? Enter Papyrus 4.
 |
Part of Papyrus 4
(enhanced pseudo-replica) |
Papyrus 4 is a manuscript
that consists mainly of substantial fragments from the opening chapters of the
Gospel of Luke (1:58-59, 1:62-2:1, 2:6-7, 3:8-4:2, 4:29-32, 4:34-35, 5:3-8, NS
5:30-6:16), written in two columns per page.
P4 also includes a heavily damaged page which appears to have been blank
when produced, except for the book-title “Ευαγγελιον Κα[τ]α Μαθ’θαιον.” Papyrus 4 has been assigned to the late 100s
or early 200s – the same era to which P64 and P67 have been assigned. The handwriting in P64, P67, and P4 is so
similar that Colin H. Roberts (the researcher who identified and dated
Papyrus
52 as a fragment of the Gospel of John from the first half of the 100s)
believed that all three manuscripts were actually parts of a single
manuscript.
Philip
W. Comfort concurs with Roberts in this view. So did T. C. Skeat, who developed a theory
that these fragments are from one early codex which, when pristine, contained
the four Gospels. Scott D. Charlesworth,
however, disagrees with Skeat’s theory, and has offered a nuanced case that at
the very least, P64/67, and P4 could not be parts of the same
single-quire codex.
It is
generally not denied, though, that the handwriting in all three fragments is very
similar, which implies that these fragments share the same production-center or
even the same copyist. If this is
granted, then if one fragment’s source can be found, it is very likely that the
source of the other two is the same.
The source
of Papyrus 4 is a known quantity, more or less.
In 1889 (not 1880), someone found Papyrus 4 in the ruins of the city of
Coptos, and within two years it was obtained by Vincent Scheil at nearby Luxor,
along with a leather satchel-like cover and another papyrus manuscript.
The other manuscript’s
text, written on eighty-nine pages, consisted of two compositions –
Quis
Rerum Divinarum Heres (Who is the Heir of Divine Things?) and
De Sacrificiis
Abelis et Cainis (The Sacrifices of Abel and Cain) – two parts of a
series of treatises by
Philo,
containing his allegorical interpretations of passages in Genesis. The manuscript, it seems, had been found
inside the wall which was part of the ruins of a house. According to James R. Royse in his essay
The
Biblical Quotations in the Coptos Papyrus of Philo, the text of Philo’s
two treatises is written on eighty-nine pages: “the two sides of forty-four folios and one
final page that is attached to the inside back cover of the binding.”
An account of the discovery of both these
manuscripts (and their leather container) was provided by Jean Merell in an
article in the 1938 Revue Biblique. Here are Merell’s prefatory comments about
the discovery of P4, translated from French:
In the course of working on the New
Testament papyri, I had the opportunity to study the originals very closely. I have thus found interesting details, and I
had even the good fortune to make some small discoveries; one of them will be
the subject of this article.
This is the papyrus P4, published
for the first time in 1892, and later in Memoirs of the French Archaeological Mission at Cairo by Father Scheil. It is now in the National
Library [of France], under no. 1120, suppl. 2.
After careful study of this
document, I have found that some fragments have not yet been – as far as I know
– deciphered and published. They constitute a larger part than the part already
published, and their publication will not be without interest, especially since
I can accompany it with photographic reproductions previously unpublished.
I will give the entire text, for the
parts already known call for some adjustments.
History of the
manuscript.
Father Scheil pointed out to me last
June that having bought a codex containing two treatises of Philo of Alexandria
in 1891, he had the good fortune to find fragments of our biblical papyrus.
The papyrus was found in Coptos, Upper Egypt, in 1889. [“1880” was a printing
error.]
Considered undoubtedly in ancient times as a very precious thing, it had
been enclosed and walled up in a niche. The hollow sound of the wall in this
place aroused its discoverers’ attention. After opening up the wall, they drew
from this hiding place two treatises of Philo of Alexandria.
The whole thing is in a known
format, almost eight inches square, like the Arabic books. It was contained in a leather cover, with a
tongue and a cord of leather falling on the cover. The book must have been squashed in its
hiding place; the mortar was as if it were inlaid on the outside; the pages
adhered strongly together in a mass, and were, in addition, fastened to one
another by a quantity of small grains of salt [or sand], produced over the ages
by a condensation-process in the vegetable tissue.
Following the forty-fourth leaf [i.e.,
sheet, consisting of the front and back of a page], in the form of padding [“en guise de bourre”], I think, and to fill the capacity of the cover, there were several
fragments of sheets stuck together. One
of them contained κατα Μαθθιον, and the others, fragments of Saint Luke.
Of the fourteen columns which
compose the total, Father Scheil has published four of them. Father Lagrange
has reproduced them in his Textual Critique (pp. 118-124).
Father Scheil gave the papyrus to
the National Library [of France].
I have not been able to ascertain,
in spite of much research, the details of the conservation of this papyrus. A
paper of April 24, 1913,
written by Gregory, however, indicates that the restorer should be Doctor
Ibscher of Berlin.
In Philip
W. Comfort’s The Complete Text of the
Earliest New Testament Manuscripts (page 27), the phrase “en guise de bourre” is translated as
“in the form of a wad.” However, I think
“padding” is a better rendering. What is
meant by “to fill the capacity of the cover” is that the pages that consisted
of Papyrus 4 were placed alongside the manuscript of the two treatises of Philo
so that the treatises of Philo would be secure and snug within the leather
satchel-cover. This could be done by
flat pages better than by a “wad.”
 |
The satchel in which P4 was found,
along with two treatises by Philo. |
Although T.
C. Skeat described Scheil’s discovery as “A papyrus codex, containing two
works of Philo, in a leather binding which had been reinforced by leaves from a
Gospel manuscript glued together,” some adjustments should be made to that
description. First, the cover being
described is not a binding (like a book-binding); it is a leather satchel –
basically a rectangular purse made to hold a manuscript slightly smaller than
itself.
Second,
inasmuch as a page of the second treatise by Philo is stuck to the satchel –
meaning that P4 was inserted between this page and the rest of the pages of
Philo’s treatises – this means, it seems to me, that the pages containing
text from Luke were not added merely
as padding-material. It is easy to see
how a person could slide a second manuscript alongside the first one, and not
notice that a page of the first manuscript had been caught behind the second
manuscript, if the purpose was merely to store them both in the satchel. But it is much more difficult to imagine that
anyone would insert discarded pages into the satchel, as permanent padding,
without noticing that a page of the Philo-volume was intervening between the
padding-material and the leather satchel itself.
When
Vincent Scheil first analyzed Papyrus 4, he assigned it a production-date in
the 500s. This does not interlock well
with the premise that the wall from which P4 was taken collapsed (with P4 and
the two treatises of Philo within a leather satchel-cover inside it) in 292 or
shortly thereafter. Scheil did not
explain the basis for dating P4 so late; perhaps he thought that the wall’s
collapse did not occur until the 500s.
In any event, practically everyone else has assigned a much earlier
production-date to the manuscript, usually a period around 200.
However, a
substantial part of the argument for that date depends on the premise that P4,
when it was placed in the leather satchel with the two treatises of Philo, was
used as padding – the idea being that only decayed or damaged pages would be
recycled as padding-material, and that some time would need to be posited
between the production of P4 and the time when it was considered suitable only
for use as padding-material.
 |
The page in P4 with
"The Gospel
According to Matthew"
(See Novum Testamentum,
2012, p. 216) |
If that is
the case, and if Roberts, Skeat, and Comfort are correct in their view that P4,
P64, and P67 are parts of the same manuscript, then it implies that either
(a) P64 and P67 were part of the initial
find in 1889, and were taken away from the rest, before P4 was obtained by Scheil
in 1891, or
(b) the manuscript was indeed
in a state of disrepair when part of it (the P4 part) was recycled as padding,
and the rest of it (of which P64 and P67 are the surviving representatives) was
set aside elsewhere.
Another
possibility – somewhat imaginative, I grant – is that a group of Gospels-readers
at Coptos in the 200s had a single unbound Gospels-codex to share among themselves, and they
divided it into parts, one of which was eventually hidden with the
Philo-treatises when the city was under siege in 292, one which survived
elsewhere (barely) as P64+67, and the rest of which is lost.
I suspect
that P64+P67 constitute part of an unbound codex (not a single-quire codex) that
contained the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke together. The page with “Ευαγγελιον Κα[τ]α Μαθ’θαιον”
written on it is, in this case, the final page of the Gospel of Matthew – that
is, we see here the closing-title of the Gospel of Matthew, not a flyleaf or opening
title-page. P4 was probably produced by
the same copyist, but not necessarily at the same time as the volume of which
P64 and P67 are the surviving parts.
Not every question about P4, P64, and
P67 has been answered, but at least we may draw the following conclusions:
(1)
Even before the establishment of Pachomian monasteries in the region,
there was a Gospel-reading community in Upper Egypt, and
its Gospels-text is represented by P4, P64, and P67.
(2)
The Alexandrian text of Matthew and Luke was in use in Upper
Egypt in the mid-200s.
(3)
The arrangement of the text in a format of two columns per page is not a
sign of lateness; it was used in the 200s.
(4)
Reckoning that P4 was not used as binding-material, but was kept in the
leather satchel alongside the two treatises of Philo (and also reckoning that
P4 is a separate manuscript from P64/67), there is no impetus for the
assumption that its pages had worn out prior to being placed in the leather
satchel, and this may justify a production-date closer to the mid-200s rather
than around 200.
Here are a
few online resources that one may consult for more information about P4 and/or
P64 and P67:
●
A
Comparative Textual Analysis of P4 and P64+67, by Tommy Wasserman, from
the 2010
TC Journal. Wasserman concludes that all three fragments
share the same kind of text, correcting an earlier assessment by Kurt Aland,
who made a distinction between them. (At
every point of disagreement between Wasserman’s transcription and the one
provided by P. W. Comfort, Wasserman’s should be favored.)
●
The
Earliest Manuscript Title of Matthew’s Gospel (BnF Suppl. gr. 1120 ii 3/P4,
by Simon Gathercole (downloadable at
Academia.edu,
for which membership, needed to download documents, is free), published in
Novum Testamentum in 2012. Gathercole provides a clear photograph of the
page of P4 which has the title of the Gospel of Matthew written on it. He transcribes the title (correcting earlier
editors’ mistakes) and describes the page insightfully. Yet I disagree with his view that this page
is a “flyleaf.” It seems more likely
that it is a page from a codex in which the text of the Gospel of Matthew ended
neatly at the end of the preceding page, and what we see on this page is the
closing-title.
●
The Oldest Manuscript of
the Four Gospels?, by T. C. Skeat, is a chapter in
The Collected Biblical Writings of T. C. Skeat, beginning on page
158. This volume was edited by J. K.
Elliott and most of the essay is accessible at Google Books. Skeat maintained that P64, P67, and P4 are
all parts of the same manuscript. He
provided plenty of interesting information about small but significant aspects
of the manuscript, such as the similarities between its section-divisions and
the section-divisions in Codex Vaticanus.
●
Fragmentary Papyri,
by Wieland Willker, in which P4’s Alexandrian text is described and several of
its readings are listed (for example, καὶ ἀμφότεροι συντηροῦνται (“and both are
preserved”) is not included in P4 at the end of Luke
5:38.)
 |
The satchel of the
Fadden More Psalter. |
In
closing: the discoveries of P64, P67,
and P4 raise some questions which are yet to be fully answered:
● Prior to
the introduction of
Pachomian
monasticism, were the New Testament manuscripts in
Upper Egypt
made by orthodox Christians, or by groups such as the Gnostics in nearby
Nag
Hammadi? Even the discovery of a
manuscript in the collection of a monastery is no guarantee of the orthodoxy of
its text, for many a monk may have studied his theological opponents’ writings
so as make a knowledgeable reply against them.
● Is there
a connection between the codex-production methods used in
Upper
Egypt, and the methods used in
Ireland? A link between Upper Egypt and Ireland may
seem unlikely, until one notices the popular use of leather satchels in both
regions, a persistent tradition about seven Egyptian monks who worked in
western Ireland, similarities in some Irish and Egyptian book-illustrations, the
papyrus-padded cover of the
Fadden
More Psalter, and occasional rare readings shared between Egyptian Greek and
Irish Latin manuscripts.
● Can
manuscripts’ texts be grouped according to the methods used to divide the text
into sections? The ways in which scribes
divided the text into paragraphs may shine some light on historical connections
between manuscripts. Perhaps the
text-divisions in manuscripts should be handled the same way textual variants
are treated.
[Readers are encouraged to use the embedded links in this post to explore additional resources.]
