Early Christian Manuscripts Texts and Editions for New Testament Study Edited by Stanley E. Porter and Wendy J. Porter VoluME 5 Early Christian Manuscripts Examples of Applied Method and Approach Edited by Thomas J. Kraus & Tobias Nicklas lEidEN • boSToN 2010 This book is printed on acid-free paper. library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data Early Christian manuscripts : examples of applied method and approach / edited by Thomas J. Kraus & Tobias Nicklas. p. cm. — (Texts and editions for New Testament study ; v. 5) includes index. iSbN 978-90-04-18265-3 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Christian literature, Early—Manuscripts. i. Kraus, Thomas J., 1965– ii. Nicklas, Tobias, 1967– iii. Title. iV. Series. bR60.E27 2010 270.1—dc22 2010008596 iSSN 1574-7085 iSbN 978 90 04 18265 3 (harback) iSbN 978 90 04 19434 2 (e-book) Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke brill NV, leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke brill NV incorporates the imprints brill, Hotei Publishing, idC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood drive, Suite 910, danvers, MA 01923, uSA. Fees are subject to change. CoNTENTS Editors’ Preface ........................................................................................... vii introduction ................................................................................................. ix list of Contributors .................................................................................... xiii Preface .......................................................................................................... xv Abstracts ....................................................................................................... xvii Chapter one Reconstructing Fragmentary Manuscripts—Chances and limitations ....................................................................................... 1 Thomas J. Kraus Chapter Two Hunting for origen in unidentified Papyri: The Case of P.Egerton 2 (= inv. 3) ...................................................... 39 Rachel Yuen-Collingridge Chapter Three Papyrus oxyrhynchus X 1224 .................................... 59 Paul Foster Chapter Four is P.Oxy. Xlii 3057 the Earliest Christian letter? .... 97 Lincoln H. Blumell Chapter Five 𝔓50 (P.Yale i 3) and the Question of its Function ..... 115 John Granger Cook Chapter Six The Reuse of Christian Texts: P.Macquarie inv. 360 + P.Mil.Vogl.inv. 1224 (𝔓91) and P.Oxy. X 1229 (𝔓23) .......................... 129 Don Barker Chapter Seven Papyri, Parchments, ostraca, and Tablets Written with biblical Texts in Greek and used as Amulets: A Preliminary list .................................................................................. 145 Theodore de Bruyn Chapter Eight The Egyptian Hermas: The Shepherd in Egypt before Constantine ................................................................................. 191 Malcolm Choat and Rachel Yuen-Collingridge vi contents Chapter Nine The babatha Archive, the Egyptian Papyri and their implications for Study of the Greek New Testament ...................... 213 Stanley E. Porter index ............................................................................................................. 239 EdiToRS’ PREFACE This volume continues the series of Texts and Editions for New Testament Study (TENTS). We hope that it provides useful insight into an area of New Testament and related study through treatment of relevant texts and issues. The series Texts and Editions for New Testament Study is designed to offer texts and editions, with commentary and comment, of important sources for the study of the New Testament and its world. Primary sources are envisioned as a mainstay of the series, in which documents that enlighten and support New Testament study are published in definitive, accessible and informative editions, often with supporting commentary. Collections of essays and monographs that focus upon these types of important sources are also welcome as they advance the scholarly discussion. The series is designed for scholars and is meant to push discussion forward by providing access to and engagement with primary sources and the latest critical schol- arship. This is a growing and dynamic series of volumes designed to extend study of the New Testament in ways that have not been fully explored in recent scholarship. The editors welcome submissions of proposals for manuscripts. it is anticipated that subsequent volumes will include editions of papyri and inscriptions relevant for New Testament study, other Greek and related documents, early Christian and Jewish texts, Coptic documents, commen- taries on important primary sources, and critical analyses of various por- tions of the New Testament in relation to these documents and the world out of which they emerged. if you would like to make a proposal, or to discuss further a potential topic of a future volume, please do not hesitate to contact one of the edi- tors of the series. Stanley E. Porter Wendy J. Porter McMaster divinity College [email protected] iNTRoduCTioN EARly CHRiSTiAN MANuSCRiPTS: EXAMPlES oF APPliEd METHod ANd APPRoACH Thomas J. Kraus and Tobias Nicklas Even before New Testament Manuscripts: Their Texts and Their World (TENT 2; leiden: brill, 2006) was in print, definite arrangements had been made to comprise studies for a second volume. Some of the contributors to the first volume and some others who could not contribute due to workload or other obligations confirmed their willingness to write articles for a sec- ond volume whose primary focus would be on (a) individual manuscripts and (b) on certain groups of manuscripts. Consequently, the approach of the second volume would be a more papyrological one. in other words, this implies, for instance, that standard technical terms to describe manuscripts and critical transcriptions of their texts had to be presented in order to base a discussion of specific features on them. Soon we had a remarkable line-up of scholars and topics so that we were very confident of publishing a second volume just one year after the appearance of the first. but then occurred, by accident, what many other editors and authors know about: some contribu- tors could not continue their work on their articles. it is needless to list the private or professional reasons that stopped the progress of the book, but all of them were serious. We fully understood and accepted each of them. As if that weren’t enough, we, the editors, had to face some difficulties ourselves that brought our project to an immediate stop. Above all, the usual but heavy workload, some other projects we were and are still involved in, and the experience we had already had with volume two made it impossible for us to start anew. Thus, we decided not to pursue the aim to publish another set of articles on New Testament or Early Christian manuscripts and to turn to other projects. However, just by chance we made contacts with scholars who had recently started working on significant topics that would fit exactly within the scope of the volume we had laid aside. And it was just by accident that they accepted our offer to contribute to this volume immediately so that, together with some of the proposed articles from contributors who were still willing to write for a new volume on manuscripts, these studies added up to what we present here: a set of studies that specialize on certain fea- tures of early Christian manuscripts. The contributions to this volume now