Magdalen papyrus

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Magdalen papyrus

The "Magdalen" papyrus was purchased in Luxor, Egypt in 1901 by Reverend Charles Bousfield Huleatt (1863–1908), who identified the Greek fragments as portions of the Gospel of Matthew (Chapter 26:23 and 31) and presented them to Magdalen College, Oxford, where they are cataloged as P. Magdalen Greek 17 (Gregory-Aland ⁶⁴) and whence they have their name. When the fragments were finally published by Colin H. Roberts in 1953, illustrated with a photograph, the hand was characterized as "an early predecessor of the so-called 'Biblical Uncial'" which began to emerge towards the end of the 2nd century. The uncial style is epitomised by the later biblical Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. Comparative paleographical analysis has remained the methodological key for dating the manuscript: the consensus is ca AD 200.

The fragments are written on both sides, indicating they came from a codex rather than a scroll. More fragments, published in 1956 by Ramon Roca-Puig, cataloged as P. Barc. Inv. 1 (Gregory-Aland ⁶⁷), were determined by Roca-Puig and Roberts to come from the same codex as the Magdalen fragments, a view which has remained the scholarly consensus.

Date

⁶⁴ was originally given a 3rd-century date by Charles Huleatt, the one who donated the Manuscript to Magdalen College, and then papyrologist A. S. Hunt studied the manuscript and dated it to the early 4th century. But in reaction to what he thought was far too late a dating for the manuscript, Colin Roberts published the manuscript and gave it a dating of ca. 200, which was confirmed by three other leading papyrologists: Harold Bell, T. C. Skeat and E. G. Turner,^[] and this has been the general accepted date of ⁶⁴ since.

But in late 1994, considerable publicity surrounded Carsten Peter Thiede's redating of the Magdalen papyrus to the middle of the 1st century (37 to 70 A.D.), optimistically interpreted by journalists. His official article appeared in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik the following year. The text for the layman was cowritten with Matthew d'Ancona and presented as The Jesus Papyrus, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1996. (also published as: Eyewitness to Jesus, 1996, New York: Doubleday). Thiede's re-dating has generally been viewed with skepticism by established Biblical scholars. (For example, Peter M. Head in Tyndale Bulletin 46, 1995.)^[]

Philip Comfort and David Barret in their book Text of the Earliest NT Greek Manuscripts argue for a more general date of 150–175 for the manuscript, and also for ⁴ and ⁶⁷, which they argue came from the same codex. ⁴ was used as stuffing for the binding of “a codex of Philo, written in the later third century and found in a jar which had been walled up in a house at Coptos [in 250].”^[] If ⁴ was part of this codex, then the codex may have been written roughly 100 years prior or earlier.^[] Comfort and Barret also show that this ^4/64/67 has affinities with a number of the late 2nd century papyri.^[]

Comfort and Barret "tend to claim an earlier date for many manuscripts included in their volume than might be allowed by other palaeographers."^[] The Novum Testamentum Graece, a standard reference for the Greek witnesses, lists ⁴ and ^64/67 separately, giving the former a date of the 3rd century, while the latter is assigned ca. 200.^[] Most recently Charlesworth has concluded 'that ⁶⁴⁺⁶⁷ and ⁴, though written by the same scribe, are not from the same ... codex.'^[]

Notes

References

Charlesworth, SD (2007) T. C. Skeat, P64+67 and P4, and the Problem of Fibre Orientation in Codicological Reconstruction, New Test. Stud. Vol.53, pp. 582–604,

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External links

More Proof The Traditional Text (Textus Receptus) Is of Apostolic Origin by Dr. David L. Brown
Peter M. Head, "The date of the Magdalen Papyrus of Matthew: A Response to C.P. Thiede": published in Tyndale Bulletin 46 (1995) p. 251-285; the article suggests that he has both overestimated the amount of stylistic similarity between P64 and several Palestinian Greek manuscripts and underestimated the strength of the scholarly consensus of a date around AD 200.
University of Münster, New Testament Transcripts Prototype. Select P64/67 from 'manuscript descriptions' box
T. C. Skeat, The Oldest Manuscript of the Four Gospels?, in: T. C. Skeat and J. K. Elliott, The collected biblical writings of T. C. Skeat, Brill 2004, pp. 158–179.

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