Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 46:1 (NA 1995)
Article: Notes On "P" = Bibliothèque Nationale Paris, Supplementum Graece 1120/5
Author: Carsten Peter Thiede

TynBul 46:1 (1995) p. 55

Notes On P⁴ = Bibliothèque Nationale Paris, Supplementum Graece 1120/5

Carsten Peter Thiede

Philip W. Comfort’s appeal1 for a palaeographical re-analysis of the Paris codex comparison with p⁶⁴ and p ⁶⁷ was put into action when I had the opportunity to work with the original fragments in the manuscripts room of the Bibliothèque Nationale on February 22 and 23, 1995. The following is a brief summary of the most important and distinctive aspects to be gathered from p ⁴.

1) It should be noted that the fragments from Luke’s gospel are not kept in box 2 of Supplement Gr. 1120, as is the impression given by most references to it, but in box 5.

2) The fragment of a title page preserved with the other papyri in Suppl. Gr. 1120, ‘EYAGGELION KATA MATHTHAION’, which encouraged some scholars to believe that the Oxford/Barcelona Matthew may at one stage have belonged to the same codex, is written in a hand distinctly different from all three papyri; it is broader and wider, with a flat mu and markedly elongated upper horizontal strokes in the two gammas.

3) There can be no doubt that the material of the papyrus in p ⁴ and in p⁶⁴/p ⁶⁷ respectively is different. The dark brown of the Paris fragments, over against the light hue of the Oxford/Barcelona scraps, is organic and cannot be ascribed to different means of preservation and conservation. This observation alone seems to exclude the possibility

TynBul 46:1 (1995) p. 56

of the Paris fragment originally belonging to one and the same codex as the other two.

4) One of the striking features linking p ⁶⁴ with p ⁶⁷, the projection of a letter into the left margin in order to signify the first complete line of a new section which began in the preceding line,2 is markedly different in p ⁴: the Paris scribe always used two letters, rather than one, for this purpose. The photographs supplied in the first edition of p ⁴ are not very helpful, unfortunately, for any serious analysis,3 but even here, the unambiguous examples of ar/chomenos in fragment B, verso, I^re colonne, Lc III, 23 (planche IV) and of el/egen in fragment D, verso, I^re colonne, Lc V, 36 (planche VI) can be made out, pars pro toto. While this would not necessarily rule out the identicality of the scribes (any...