An unpublished fragment of the Fourth gospel in the John Rylands library [microform]

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I^N-UNPUBLTSHED-FRA
OF THE FOURTH G

iD-FRAGMENT
GOSPEL

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o

AN

UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENT
OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL

IN THE

JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY

EDITED BY

G. H. ROBERTS, M.A.

>*

FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD

WITH FACSIMILE

MANCHESTER : THE MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY
PRESS, 8-10 WRIGHT STREET, MANCHESTER, 15 ;
AND THE LIBRARIAN, THE JOHN RYLANDS
LIBRARY, DEANSGATE. MCMXXXV

O

AN

UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENT
OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL

IN THE

JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY

EDITED BY

C. H. ROBERTS, M.A.

>

FELLOW OF ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD

WITH FACSIMILE

MANCHESTER: THE MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY
PRESS, 8-10 WRIGHT STREET, MANCHESTER, 15 ;
AND THE LIBRARIAN, THE JOHN RYLANDS
LIBRARY, DEANSGATE. MCMXXXV

First Impression

Second Impression

November*

December, 1935

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
THE ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS LIMITED

D-

* ,-A .A

PREFATORY NOTE

THE precious little fragment of a papyrus codex
which is described in the following pages, forms
part of the hitherto unpublished portion of the
collection of Greek papyri in the John Rylands
Library.

The particular group to which this fragment
belongs was acquired in Egypt by the late Pro-

fessor Bernard P. Grenfell in 1920.

For many years Queen's College, Oxford, has
been a centre of Egyptian and papyrological
studies, and it was there that Dr. Grenfell
directed the attention of his friend and fellow-
Queen's man, Arthur S. Hunt, to the great
possibilities offered by the discovery of papyrus
fragments among the de*bris and rubbish heaps
of towns in the Fayum and other districts in or
near the Nile Valley.

Between 1895 and 1907 a number of joint
expeditions on the part of these two scholars

5

PREFATORY NOTE

yielded a rich harvest, and popular interest was
aroused by the publication in 1897, and again in
1904, ofLogia JesUy or Sayings of Our Lord, which were
among the first-fruits of a series of finds extending
over many years, bringing to the two brilliant
pioneers a reputation for scholarship and research
which rapidly became world wide.

It was during these joint expeditions that the
John Rylands collection of papyri was acquired,
at first for the late Earl of Crawford,_and^after
the^acquisition of the Crawford Collection of
Manuscripts, including the papyri, by the late
Mrs. Rylands in 1901, for the Governors of the
Rylands Library.

The Library's indebtedness to these two
scholars was further increased by their under-
taking to prepare a catalogue of the collection.
Unfortunately, ill-health, and the pressure of
other claims upon his time, prevented Dr. Gren-
fell from taking any active part in this work,
which consequently devolved upon Dr. Hunt.

The first volume of the resulting Catalogue

6

PREFATORY NOTE

of Greek papyri in the John Rylands Library, which
dealt with the literary texts, made its appear-
ance in 1913. This was followed in 1915 by
the second volume, devoted to documents of the
Ptolemaic and Roman period, the preparation
and publication of which was carried out by
several collaborating scholars under the super-
vision of Dr. Hunt.

Arrangements for the publication of the re-

documents of the Byzantine period, and includ-
ing those acquired in 1920 by Dr. Grenfell,
which were to form the third volume of the
Catalogue, were also undertaken by Dr. Hunt,
but by his untimely death in 1934 the Library
was deprived of his services, even before he
had found time to do more than a little pre-
liminary sorting.

Fortunately, just before his death, Dr. Hunt
had arranged with the present editor, Mr. C. H.
Roberts, Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford, to
take over the work of preparing for publication

7

PREFATORY NOTE

the remaining unpublished portions of the Rylands
collection.

It was in the process of sorting over the re-
sidue of the collection that Mr. Roberts found
the Grenfell purchase to contain some extremely
interesting papyri, including a considerable number
of literary texts, among them some unknown his-
torical writings, and a very interesting Christian
letter attacking the Manichees, but the gem of the
-collection is ^the fragment of^tr^John-s Gospel-
which forms the subject of the present volume.

We regard this fragment to be of such out-
standing importance, representing, as Mr. Roberts
has pointed out in his introduction, the earliest
known fragment of any part of the New
Testament, and probably the earliest witness
to the existence of the Gospel according to
St. John, that we have considered it advisable
to make the text accessible to scholars, without
delay, in this separate form.

Not since the discovery of the two Logia papyri,
at Oxyrhynchos (P. Oxy. i and P. Oxy. 654) have

8

PREFATORY NOTE

any Christian papyri come to light which raise
so many and such interesting problems as the
Chester Beatty codices of the early third century,
the fragment of a papyrus codex of an unknown
Gospel of the second century acquired last year
by the Trustees of the British Museum, and this
Rylands fragment of a canonical Gospel of a date
at least as early.

To Mr. Roberts belongs the credit of having
identified the text of the fragment, and on be-
half of the Governors of the Library we desire
to congratulate him not only upon his discovery,
but upon the masterly way in which he has
presented the palaeographical and textual results
of his investigations to our readers.

HENRY GUPPY,

Librarian.
The John Rylands Library,

November, 1935.

AN UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENT OF THE

FOURTH GOSPEL 1

P. Ryl. Gk. 457. Fragment of a leaf of a papyrus
codex, 8-9 x 6 cm. ; text 6-4 x 5'8 cm. ; upper
margin and part of inner margin preserved.
Written in dark ink on papyrus light in colour

and of good quality. On verso a KoXXrjfjia or
perhaps part of a strengthening strip to cover the
fold of the sheet. First half of the second
century.

THE discovery of the famous Chester Beatty
biblical papyri now in course of publication, 2
followed close by that of the Unknown Gospel
(P. Egerton 2) in the British Museum, 3 has
added so much to our knowledge of the history
of the text and of the way in which it was
produced (with all that this involves for the
study of early Christianity in general) and at

ii

AN UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENT

the same time has opened up so wide a field for
speculation that a new piece of evidence, how-
ever small, is of quite peculiar interest. This
must be the excuse for the separate publication
here of a small fragment whose text is given
below, one of the as yet unpublished papyri in
the possession of the John Rylands Library,
which contains on the recto part of verses
3 I "33> on the verso part of verses 37-38 of

_The_fact_that_

it is part of a codex, not of a roll, need now
cause no surprise; thanks to recent discoveries
we are coming to regard the codex as the
normal vehicle for Christian literature even in
the second century.) 4 Its importance may be
stated very briefly : if the argument of the
present article is correct, it is the earliest known
fragment of any part of the New Testament and
probably the earliest witness to the existence of
the Gospel according to St. John. As this claim
rests solely upon considerations of palaeography,
it is as well to turn our attention to this before

12

OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL

embarking on the discussion of other problems,
none the less interesting if incapable of a final
solution, which such a text suggests.

Any exact dating of book hands is, of course,
out of the question; all we can do is to com-
pare the script as a whole and the forms of
particular letters with those found in other texts
and particularly in dated documents. A glance
at the accompanying photograph shows the dis-
tinct character of our text ; the scribe writes in
a heavy, rounded and rather elaborate hand,
often uses several strokes to form a single letter
(cf. the eta and particularly the sigma in Recto,
1. 3) with a rather clumsy effect and is fond of
adding a small flourish or hook to the end of
his strokes (cf. the omega, the iota and the
upsilon) ; among particular letters the epsilon
with its cross stroke a little above the centre,
the delta, the upsilon and the mu may be
noted. Some of these features can be paralleled
from dated documents ; but before citing any
of these it will be convenient to mention two

13

AN UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENT

literary texts to which it bears a striking re-
semblance. The first of these is no. 19 (c) in
Schubart's Papyri Graecae Berolinenses, part of a
roll containing Iliad, Bk. IX, assigned to the end
of the first or beginning of the second century
in the original publication, but which Schubart
now prefers to date to the closing decades of
the first century; 6 in spite of some differences
(notably the alpha which is of an earlier
type) the Berlin text presents the closest parallel
to our text that I have been able to find a
view which I was glad to find shared by so
great an authority as Sir Frederic Kenyon.
The second text and this resemblance, by no
means the only one between the two manu-
scripts, is suggestive is P. Egerton 2, assigned
by the editors to the middle of the second
century, a judgment which, as they remark, errs,
if at all, on the side of caution. 6 Although
P. Egerton 2 is written in a lighter and less
laboured hand, the family resemblance between
the two is unmistakable; the forms of the up-

14

OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL

silon, the mu and the delta in the two texts are
akin and most of the characteristics of our hand
are to be found, though in a less accentuated
form, in P. Egerton 2. To turn to dated docu-
ments; here the most important parallels are
P. Fayum no (A.D. 94), which shows, as does
our text, the simultaneous use of two forms of
alpha, and, less close, New Palao graphical Society
II, 98 (P. Lond. 2078, a private letter written
in the reign of Domitian), while of interest for

forms of particular letters are P. Oslo 22, a
petition dated in A.D. 127 (n.b. the eta, the mu
and the iota) and Schubart, Griechische Palao-
graphie, Abb. 34 (p. 59), a document written
before the death of Trajan in A.D. 117. If only
to exemplify the need of caution, it should
be mentioned that Sir Frederic Kenyon, while
of the opinion that the affinities of the text are
early rather than late 7 and that one can
hardly go wrong in dating it in the first half
of the second century, points out that some
similarities are to be found in P. Flor. i, a

15

AN UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENT

cursive document of A.D. 153. In this text the
upsilon, the omega and sometimes the alpha
are similar to those in our text, but other letters
are radically different and its general style is
not very close to that of P. Ryl. Gk. 457. On
the whole we may accept with some confidence
the first half of the second century as the period
in which P. Ryl. Gk. 457 was most probably
written a judgment I should be much more
loth to pronounce were it not supported by Sir
Frederic Kenyon, Dr. W. Schubart and Dr.
H. I. Bell who have seen photographs of the
text and whose experience and authority in
these matters are unrivalled.

A few other palaeographical niceties deserve
mention. In employing the diaeresis both pro-
perly (as in R. 1. 2 ovSevdiva) and improperly
(e.g. in iva. in V. 1. 2) and in omission of the
iota adscript our papyrus is in agreement with
P. Egerton 2 ; that both these practices are not
inconsistent with a date in the first half of the
second century has been clearly shewn by the

16

OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL

editors of that text and needs no discussion
here. 8 The writer of P. Ryl. Gk. 457 (as far
as one can judge from the scanty evidence) used
neither stops nor breathings ; his orthography,
apart from a couple of itacisms, is good and
his writing, if not that of a practised scribe, is
painstaking and regular. In this respect the
verdict of the editors of P. Egerton 2 upon the
writer of that text is applicable to ours :
P. Ryl. Gk. 457 also has a somewhat " informal
air" about it and with no claims to rrnlT

writing is yet a careful piece of work. But
there is one point on which P. Ryl. Gk. 457 in
all probability differs from P. Egerton 2, and as
it may be of importance for the date, it is as
well, to consider it now : that is, the method of
writing the nomina sacra. Throughout P. Eger-
ton 2 certain nomina sacra are invariably con-
tracted 9 in accordance with what is almost uni-
versal practice and the contraction marked by
a horizontal line drawn over the top of the
letters. Unfortunately none of the nomina sacra

17 c

AN UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENT

which are abbreviated either in P. Egerton 2
or in the Chester Beatty codex of Gospels and
Acts occur in the surviving text of our frag-
ment, but in R. 1. 5 where 'Irja-ovv must be
supplied it is probable that this which, if any
of the nomina sacra (to judge from later practice),
would be contracted, was left unabbreviated ; 10
if it was uncontracted, the line would contain
32 letters, or 33 if HetAaroy is read for HiXdro? ;
if contracted to IH, there would be only 28
letters, whereas the average number of letters per
line for the four lines where no possible nomina
sacra are to be supplied, is 33, (IHN, found in
the Chester Beatty papyri of the early third
century is also a possibility, but the editors of
P. Egerton 2 suggest that IH may be the earlier
form). In Recto 1. 2 'Irjo-ov could be contracted
and there would remain either 31 or 32 letters
to the line according to the form of the con-
traction; but the probability is that the nomina
(or at least T^o-oOy) were uncontracted in this
text. Not much stress can be laid on this

18

OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL

argument, especially as we must reckon with the
possibility of varieties of spelling or text in the
missing passages ; but still it remains a slight
support for the early date to which the manu-
script has been assigned on palaeographical
grounds. For while it is no doubt true that
the presence of the abbreviated nomina sacra in
a manuscript is no evidence against a second
century date (as in the case of P. Egerton 2),
especially as the practice was probably Jewish
in origin and is found in early papyri of the
Septuagint such as P. Baden 56 and the
Chester Beatty codex of Numbers and Deuter-
onomy, both of the second century, 11 yet this
would make it more difficult to assign a late
date to a manuscript in which 'fyo-oOy at least
for Oeos and Kvpios the text supplies no evidence
remains uncontracted, suggesting as it does
that either the Christian sacred books were not
yet on a par with the Septuagint or that a
canon was not yet established.

Another question of bibliographical interest

'9

AN UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENT

remains to which an answer must be attempted
what was the size of the original codex and
how much did it contain ? Part of seven lines
both on recto and verso are preserved together
with part of the inner margin so that it is
possible to calculate not only the amount of text
contained in a single page, but also the length
of the line and the size of the page. The
average number of letters to the line is 33 on
-the recto and 29/30 on the verso, (Ihis-dis=-
parity is explained, as Mr. T. G. Skeat has
pointed out to me, by the fact that whereas on
the verso the scribe was writing toward the
inner margin and would be limited by the fold
of the leaf, i.e. if he wrote too close the initial
letters of the right-hand columns of the outer
leaves would be obscured, on the recto he was
writing towards the outer margin and so could
allow himself more latitude.) Eleven lines
would be required to fill the gap between recto
and verso : this gives us a page of eighteen lines
and allowing for a lower margin of the same

20

OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL

height as the upper, the codex would have been
a little over 21 cm. high while its breadth-
assuming that the margin was uniform would
be c. 20 cm. Making allowance for the fact
that the lines on the verso were slightly shorter
than those on the recto, we can estimate that
the entire Gospel of St. John would occupy 130
pages or, with title-page, probably 66 leaves.
What is slightly surprising is the size of the
codex relative to the quantity of text it con-
tained. A comparison with the Chester Beatty
codex of Gospels and Acts is interesting: this,
measuring 10 x 8 inches (as compared with the
8-25 x 8 inches of P. Ryl. Gk. 457) with 39 lines
to the page and nearly 50 letters to the line,
contained all five books within 220 pages or no
leaves. A codex written on the scale of P. Ryl.
Gk. 457, in order to contain the four Gospels
alone, would have to consist of approximately
288 leaves. Although it would be unsafe to be
dogmatic, it is highly unlikely that, at this early
date, a papyrus codex of such a size would have

21

AN UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENT

been manufactured. (The largest of the Chester
Beatty codices, from the figures given by the
editor, seems to have been that of Isaiah which
when complete would have consisted of a single
quire of 112 leaves.) 12 It is far more probable
that the. codex to which this fragment belonged
contained nothing but the one Gospel; we may
then compare it with P. Oxy. 208 +1781, a
third-century papyrus codex of St. John's Gospel,

2f-letters

to the line would have consisted when complete
of 50 leaves. This is not in itself surprising,
especially when we remember that this Gospel
was not immune from attack as late as the
end of the second century and in some circles
at least was not regarded as being of equal
authority with the Synoptic Gospels. 13 Keriyon
has argued from the existence of the second-
century codex of Numbers and Deuteronomy
that we should be prepared to admit that the
codex may have been used for the books of
the New Testament in the second century (a

22

OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL

suggestion amply confirmed by P. Egerton 2 and
the present text), and also that the Christians of
that period may have been accustomed to see
the four Gospels in a single book ; 14 while this
discovery by no means invalidates this second
suggestion, yet we may do well to reflect that in
circles where the Gospels still circulated in
separate codices, i.e. where the stage of including
the four in a single book and consequently of
regarding them as an authoritative unity had
not been reached, it would be considerably
easier to explain the existence of such an ap-
parently orthodox and respectable "fifth gospel"
as that represented by P. Egerton 2. 15 Why the
early Christian communities should have pre-
ferred to have their sacred books written in the
codex form rather than in the common roll
form remains as obscure as ever; it may be re-
marked in passing that the papyrus codex was
cheaper than the roll in that both sides of the
papyrus could be utilised with the minimum of
inconvenience to the reader, although in this

23

AN UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENT

case, to judge from the spacing and the size of
the hand, it is unlikely that the format was
affected by considerations of economy.

Unfortunately, the provenance of the papyrus
cannot be exactly determined. It was one of a
large number purchased for the Library by the
late B. P. Grenfell in 1920 ; the group to which
it belongs consists of some literary texts and
documents of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods,
all of^whieh are stated to have come either^
from the Fayum or from Oxyrhynchos. Con-
sidering the enormous number of papyri found
in both of these districts, this information is
not of very much value, The editors of P.
Egerton 2 note that Oxyrhynchos is "the most
natural place of origin for the Gospel frag-
ments": 16 it would be most interesting if it
could be proved that these two texts, similar in
several respects, were of the same provenance,
but the evidence at our disposal is too slight to
admit of any such proof, and we must be con-
tent with the hypothesis that they may both

24

OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL

have originated from the same early Christian
community in Middle Egypt.

Clearly no deductions can be drawn from so
small a fragment as to the affinities or quality
of the text itself; the only new contribution it
has to make to textual criticism is the probable
omission of the second ek TOVTO in v. 38 (v.
note). But it may well have some bearing on
the wider problem as to the date of the Gospel
-according to St. John. Not only is it the
earliest text of the Gospel ; it is also most
probably the earliest substantial evidence for
the existence of the Gospel. It is clear from
Justin Martyr that the Gospel was known in
Rome soon after the middle of the century, and
it is possible that Papias, whose writings are
placed between 135 and 165, alludes to it
though he does not mention it by name ; " on
the basis of the present discovery we may as-
sume that it was circulating in Middle Egypt in
the first half of the second century. This would
imply a slightly earlier date for composition,

25 d

AN UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENT

especially if with some critics we hold that
the Gospel was first intended for a select circle
at Ephesus ; from Ephesus to Middle Egypt is
a far cry, and in the case of the Unknown Gospel
the editors (The New Gospel Fragments, p. 17)
allow for a time-lag of about thirty years
between the date of composition and that of
the MS. But all we can safely say is that
this fragment tends to support those critics who
-favour an earlydate (late first to early second-
century) for the composition of the Gospel
rather than those who would still regard it a
work of the middle decades of the second cen-
tury. 18 But to trespass on these fields is to go
beyond the limits proper to the present writer:
de hac re viderint sapientiores.

In our fragment the recto the side on which
the fibres of the papyrus run parallel to the writing
precedes the verso ; if, as was the usual practice, 19
the sheets before folding were laid with the recto
side uppermost, the succession of pages on the
sheet would have been verso, recto, recto, verso

26

OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL

and our fragment would belong to the second leaf
of the bifolium ; but there is nothing to determine
the arrangement of the codex. There are no
traces of numeration.

The text is given below exactly as it appears
in the papyrus except that the words have been
divided. A dot below a letter denotes that it is
either badly mutilated or that very small traces
of it remain ; square brackets [ ] indicate
lacunae (which have been filled up from the
text of Westcott and" HorT)7 20 ~doTjble- S quare

brackets [ 1 an erasure by the scribe,

angular brackets < > an addition to the text
of the MS., round brackets ( )-in this publica-
tion only a letter whose presence or absence in
the text is uncertain.

27 d *

AN UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENT

RECTO (c. xvm, w. 31-33)

01 iov8ai[oi] r)fjLe[tv OVK e^ecrTtv airoKTei
ovSeva Iva o Xofyoy rov irjcrov TrXrjpcodrj ov i\

TTCV (T7)IJL(UVa>[v TTOICO QaVOLTto rjfJLeX\V

OvyarKtiv ur[rj\0v ovv 7ra\Lv ety TO
5 piov o ^[(e^Xaroy K.OLL ^wvrja-ev TOV 'Irja-ovv]
KOU nr[V aura) orv ei o /BacriXevs rav tov-]

VERSO (c. xvm, w. 37-38)

[Xevf eifju eyco eis ro]uro < y[e\'yvvijfJLOu,
[/cat <is TOVTO> \rj\vda et? TOV Kojaytoz/ iVa fj.apTV-
[prjo-co TTJ aXrjOeia ?ray o c0v]eK TTJS aXr)0e[t-]
[ay aKovei JJLOV TTJ? Qcovrjs] Aeyet aurto
5 [o 7r(e)iXaroy TL (TTIV aXrjdeta K\OLL TOVTO
[enrcov TraXiv e^rjX0ev irpo$\ TOVS to[u-
KOLI Aeyet OLVTOLS -yco o

Recto I 1. r)fjuv : 4 1. ei
28

OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL

Recto 1-2. It is clear that the scribe did not adopt
the common practice, found among other texts in
P. Egerton 2, of indicating either the beginning or
the end of a speech by leaving a small blank
space ; so we cannot reckon with this in calcu-
lating the length of the lines or the size of the
page. In 1. i a diaeresis should perhaps be placed
over the final iota of touSatot ; the traces are too
faint to decide whether this is the case or whether
the scribe, as in v. 1. 6 made an iota reaching
above the level of the line.

4-5. In placing iraXw before eis TO TrpaiTupwv, our
-papyrus agrees with_the_JVIaticaiius, the Codex

Ephraemi and the restored text of the Codex Bezae,
some other MSS. and the Armenian and one of the
Syrian versions (followed by the text of Westcott
and Hort) ; the reverse order is supported among
MSS. by the Sinaiticus and the Alexandrinus, by
the Gothic version and another Syriac version and
is maintained by Tischendorf.

Verso 2. If the full text is supplied in this line, we
are left with 38 letters to the line in place of the
average 29/30 ; consequently it is fairly certain
that our text represents a shorter version. Most
probably we should reckon with the omission of
the repeated et? rouro, perhaps a slip, but more
probably a genuine variant, although unsupported
by any other MS.

29

AN UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENT

3. The letter after aXyO seems to have been corrected
or erased : possibly we should read aX^U^]] but pro-
bably the scribe's pen slipped while he was making
the epsilon.

1 1 am indebted to Dr. H. I. Bell for very kindly ad-
vising me on several matters in the preparation of
this article.

2 The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri, fasc. 1-4, by F. G.

Kenyon, London 1933-1934. The codex of Gospels
and Acts to which reference will be made is
published in the second fascicule.

3 Fragments of an Unknown Gospel and Other Early

Christian Papyri, by H. Idris Bell and T. C. Skeat,
London 1935. The volume is henceforward re-
ferred to as P. Land. Christ.

*Cf. F. G. Kenyon, Books and Readers in Greece and
Rome, pp. 94 sqq. Since that was written, there
is the additional evidence of the papyri published
in P. Lond. Christ.

5 Griechische Palaographie, pp. 1 17-1 18.

6 P. Lond. Christ., pp. i sqq.

7 On this point Dr. Schubart writes: " Manche Ziige

erinnern sogar an das i. Jahrhundert; aber in
Ganzen fiihrt der Stil der Schrift doch mehr ins 2.
Jahrhundert."

8 Op. cit. } pp. 4-6.

9 For the nomina sacra in P. Egerton 2, v. op. cit.,

pp. 2-4 : for those in the Chester Beatty papyri
v. Kenyon's article in Aegyptus XIII, pp. 5-10.

30

OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL

10 Traube, Nomina Sacra, p. 113, remarks "Es gibt wohl
keine griechische Handschrift, die die Namen des
Gottessohnes mit vollen Buchstaben bote ; kommt
eintnal ein ausgeschriebenes IH20V2 vor, so kann
man meist ganz leicht die Absicht oder das Versehen
nachweisen." The only exception to this rule
among papyri quoted by Traube is P. Oxy. 407, a
Christian prayer of the third or fourth century ;
probably (v. Traube, op. cit., p. 90) this is a private
copy and as such not evidence for the practice in
theological texts proper. It is difficult to argue
from the fourth and subsequent centuries to the
second ; but the paucity of manuscripts in which

appear un-

contracted, even occasionally, is very striking, cf.
op. cit.j pp. 53 sqq. In the Abinnaeus papyri, a
group of official and business documents of the
middle fourth century, 0eo> and 6eov (P. Lond.
II, p. 301) are found side by side with the con-
tracted forms : Traube (p. 49) considers this as
the mark of a "ganz ungebildeter Schreiber."
See further, for the method of writing nomina sacra
in the papyri, G. Rudberg, Neutestamentlicher Text
und Nomina Sacra, p. 60, and, for a brief discussion of
fresh evidence and theories advanced since Traube's
publication, Franz Boll's introduction to Traube,
Vorlesungen und Abhandlungen, III, pp. vi-x.
11 To the best of my knowledge the only biblical papyrus
in which 0eo? and KU/HO? appear uncontracted is
P. Oxy. 656, a codex of Genesis assigned to the early

31

AN UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENT

third century. In the introduction the editors remark
that, although the absence of contraction may be
no more than an individual peculiarity, it might be
construed as evidence for the antiquity of the text.
Traube, however (op. cit., p. 90) classes this fragment
with the fifth-century palimpsest of Aquila's trans-
lation of the Psalms (apparently the only MS. which
consistently gives the uncontracted forms of these
words) and regards both as being influenced by a
secondary and non-Alexandrine Jewish tradition.
12 For a discussion of the size of papyrus codices v. Gardt-
hausen, Griechische Palaographie, pp. iSS'W ( who
quotes none consisting of more than 40 leaves),
Schubart, Das BucfTl)ei~deTr~Griechen und~Rdmern,
p. 128, and Kenyon, Greek Paleography, p. 25. I
do not know of any full treatment of this subject ;
but the largest papyrus codices of Greek texts of
early date known to me (apart from the Chester
Beatty papyri, for which see Kenyon, fasc. i,
pp. 6-9) are as follows :

(i) P. Oxy. ion, remains of a codex of Galli-
machus, Aitia and Iambi, late fourth century,
consisting originally of over 100 leaves.

(ii) The Michigan Shepherd of Hermas (ed. Gamp-
bell Bonner, University of Michigan Press, 1934),
second half of the third century, 86 leaves, with
originally 12 or 14 more.

(iii) The Menander codex (ed. G. Lefebvre, Cairo,
1907), fifth century, 70 leaves.

32

OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL

(iv) P. Oxy. 22, part of a codex containing the
Oedipus Tyrannus, fifth century, at least 65 leaves.

(v) The Morgan papyrus of Iliad, xi.-xvi. (v.
Plaumann, SB. Preuss. Akad., 1912, pp. 1202 sqq.),
probably the second volume of a three-volume
edition, c. A.D. 300, 62 leaves.

(vi) The Washington MS. of the Minor Prophets
(ed. H. A. Sanders, University of Michigan Human-
istic Series, vol. xxi.), second half of the third cen-
tury, probably '48 leaves.

(vii) The Berlin codex of Aristophanes (ed.
Schubart-Wilamowitz, Berliner Klassikertexte, V,
xviii), fifth century, of at least 40 leaves.

\m* * 'i' JU Jb

and comparatively early date the largest known to
me is P. Ryl. i, 53, a codex of the Odyssey of the
late third or early fourth century, which when com-
plete would have consisted of 207 leaves ; it is run
close by the fifth-century Washington MS. of the
Gospels (ed. H. A. Sanders, New York, 1912) of
187 leaves. It may be noted that the earliest in this
list is at least 100 years later than P. Ryl. Gk. 457 ;
but that quite large papyrus codices were used at
an early date is shown by the fact that the earliest
of the Chester Beatty papyri, the codex of Numbers
and Deuteronomy which is assigned to the second
century, consisted of 108 leaves.

13 Cf. B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels, pp. 436 sqq.

14 Recent Developments in the Textual Criticism of the Greek

Bible, pp. 32-35.

33

AN UNPUBLISHED FRAGMENT

15 For the general character of this Gospel, cf. P. Lond.

Christ., p. 30.

16 Ibid., p. 7. On the hypothesis that both P. Egerton 2

and P. Ryl. 457 came from Oxyrhynchos, the fact that
the former is more closely connected with St. John's
Gospel than with the Synoptists, as is clear from the
verbal parallels pointed out by the editors, gives an
added interest to the relationship of the two papyri ;
in this connection Dr. Bell has pointed out to me
that the date of composition of the Unknown Gospel
and the date of the papyrus may be nearer together
than was originally allowed for.

17 Cf. Streeter, op. cit., pp. 12-13, 19 sqq.

18 E.g. M. Loisy who in his recent La naissance du Chris-

tianisme (1933), p. 59, is of the opinion that there
were two redactions of the Gospel, the first c. 135-
140 A.D., the second c. 150-160. But the balance
of modern critical opinion seems to favour an earlier
date, cf. Streeter, op. cit., pp. 45 6 -457> who would
date it c. 90-95 and, in general, W. F. Howard,
The Fourth Gospel in Recent Criticism and Interpretation.

19 v. Schubart, Das Buck, pp. 129-130, Kenyon, Books and

Readers, p. 104.

20 For the sake of conformity with the text, the iota sub-

script, accents and breathings have been omitted
from the supplements as well.

34

OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL

ADDENDUM

To the list of papyrus codices in note 12, the following
addition should be made :

P. Oxy. 2072, a leaf from a codex dated in the late
third century A.D., containing a Christian apologetic
writing and consisting of over 50 leaves.

35

BS

3615

.R6U

Roberts

An unpublished frag-
ment tf " the f ourth

-dap. 12-6-62

UNIVERSITY OF CHCAGO

SWIFT HAL

II

:o

CHli