7Q5 and Appeals to Authority, Part 2: Herbert Hunger

Posted on October 6, 2025 by Brent Nongbri

I have written before about 7Q5, a small fragment of papyrus found in Cave 7Q at Qumran. It contains an unidentified text in Greek. It became (in)famous in the early 1970s when José O’Callaghan (1922-2001) argued that it preserved a bit of the Gospel According to Mark (Mark 6:52-53). Crucial to this identification was the reading of line 2. The original editors had read the Greek letters tau, omega, iota, and alpha, ⲧⲱⲓ ⲁ̣. O’Callaghan saw instead tau, omega, and the remains of a very oddly shaped Greek letter nu, ⲧⲱⲛ.

7Q5 with digitally added scale for reference; original image source: Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library (photographer: Tsila Sagiv)

I say “oddly shaped” because construing the existing traces of ink in line 2 as a nu would result in a letter substantially different from the clear letter nu that occurs in line 4 of 7Q5.

Undisputed nu in line 4 of 7Q5 (left) and hypothetical forms of a would-be nu in line 2 of 7Q5 (center and right); original image source: Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library (photographer: Najib Anton Albina)

For this and other reasons, O’Callaghan’s argument did not prove persuasive to most scholars.1 His argument has, however, lived on among some enthusiastic supporters.

In an another post, I noted that those in favor of the identification of 7Q5 as Mark often invoke names of authorities who have at one time or another agreed with O’Callaghan. Figuring out what these authoritative voices actually said, however, is often challenging, as the advocates almost never cite arguments but instead just list names. So, over the last year, I have been tracking down some of these references. In my earlier post, I looked into what the papyrologist Orsolina Montevecchi (1911-2009) had to say about 7Q5. It turned out that she added nothing substantial to the discussion and in fact obscured matters by ignoring the key point (O’Callaghan’s readings of certain letters are not really possible given the ink on the page). In this post, I will examine the contribution of another authority whose name frequently comes up in these discussions.

Carsten Thiede (1952-2004), perhaps the most vocal promoter of O’Callaghan’s interpretation of 7Q5, frequently brought up the name of Herbert Hunger in support of O’Callaghan: “A classical papyrologist like Herbert Hunger, with no vested ‘theological’ interest either for or against the proposed New Testament passage, accepted the nu without the slightest hesitation.”2 This is interesting. Hunger was a scholar with a formidable reputation–What did he actually say in connection to 7Q5?

Herbert Hunger (1914-2000) is primarily remembered as a Byzantinist, but early in his career, he also had responsibility for the large collection of papyri in the Austrian National Library for a period of six years (1956 to 1962). During this stretch of time, he produced a booklet on the Vienna collection as well as editions of several Vienna papyri (17 pieces by my count, but I may be missing some).3 And in 1961, he published a short article on P.Bodmer 2 that attempted to redate that manuscript of John’s gospel from the early third century to the first half of the second century, an effort that received a mixed reception.4

Portrait of Herbert Hunger; image source: W. Hörandner et al. (eds.), ΒΥΖΑΝΤΙΟΣ: Festschrift für Herbert Hunger zum 70. Geburtstag (Vienna, 1984), iv.

In 1962, Hunger was appointed as Ordinariat für Byzantinistik at the University of Vienna and left behind the papyrus collection. Hunger held this position in Byzantine Studies for over twenty years. During that period, he was a prolific scholar, initiated many long-term research projects, and became widely known and respected in the world of Byzantine Studies. He was honored with multiple Festschriften by his colleagues and received several honorary degrees.

In a book published in 1992 (seven years after his retirement from the chair in Byzantine Studies in 1985), Hunger reclaimed the title of “papyrologist” and authored a chapter in support of Carsten Thiede’s identification of 7Q5 as a copy of Mark. The title of his contribution was “7Q5: Markus 6,52-53 – oder? Die Meinung des Papyrologen.”5

Unlike Montevecchi, Hunger did make a new argument in support of Thiede’s (and O’Callaghan’s) contested readings of letters in 7Q5. Hunger began his chapter by criticizing the appearance of the script of 7Q5, describing it as “below average” (unterdurchschnittlich) and even going so far as to call it the product of a βραδέως γράφων, a “slow writer,” that is, a person just (barely) capable of writing their own name and a short statement on a document.6

Hunger then offered comparisons between the letters in 7Q5 and the letters in two other pieces that have examples of less-than-competent writing: the student hand in the famous wax tablet at the British Library (Add. MS. 34186) and the signator’s hand in P.Vindob. inv. G 02001.

In connection with the wax tablet, Hunger saw similarities between the sigma, eta, and nu of the student hand and the hand of 7Q5.

Wax tablet with a teacher’s example (top) and a student’s copy (bottom), British Library, Add. MS. 34186; image source: The British Library

in P.Vindob. inv. G 02001, Hunger pointed to the alpha and omega as being similar those letters in 7Q5.

Detail of P.Vindob. inv. G 02001 with digitally added scale for reference; original image source: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek

In these comparisons, Hunger also focused especially on forms of the letter nu, arguing that the scribe of 7Q5 was not an experienced writer and may thus have written the same letter in very different and even non-standard ways.

Up to this point the argument is comprehensible. I disagree with Hunger’s assessment (there is nothing about the script of 7Q5 that suggests the writer was incompetent), but thus far, Hunger’s argument is at least intelligible.

But then Hunger very abruptly and without comment begins a hunt through palaeographic handbooks and the Vienna papyrus collection in search of forms of the letter nu that might somehow fit with the visible bits of ink in line 2 of 7Q5. That is to say, rather than continuing the argument about incompetent writers, Hunger turns to alleged parallels from perfectly competent writers, which makes no sense in terms of his larger argument. To make matters worse, his suggested parallels do not really resemble the oddly shaped nu that O’Callaghan’s proposal demands. I offer just one of Hunger’s examples drawn from Seider’s palaeogrgaphic handbook, Seider II, plate 45 (that is, the Chester Beatty Ezekiel-Daniel-Esther codex):

The Chester Beatty Ezekiel-Daniel-Esther Codex, page 147; image source: Chester Beatty Online Collections

Hunger claimed the nu in the Beatty papyrus showed the same “diagonal oscillation” (diagonale Schwingung) of the supposed nu in line 2 of 7Q5. But there is no real similarity; the nu in the Beatty papyrus is formed in a perfectly normal manner. It will not be helpful to work through any more comparisons because Hunger’s approach involves piling up irrelevant palaeographic comparanda in order to give the impression of having a solid argument. In fact, it is all a house of cards (incidentally, this is also the approach that Hunger took in his article on P.Bodmer 2).

To confuse matters further, Hunger turned to an article by J.P. Gumbert, “Structure and Forms of the Letter ν in Greek Documentary Papyri: Α Palaeographical Study,” Papyrologica Lugduno-Batava 14 (1965), 1-9. From Gumbert’s chart of documentary forms (which, to be completely clear, tracks forms produced by competent writers of documentary texts–that is the whole point of his study). Hunger suggested that the (supposedly incompetent) writer of a literary text in 7Q5 was trying to produce a very particular documentary form of nu, marked with a red arrow in the Gumbert’s chart below:

With this alleged parallel, Hunger believed he had clinched his argument:

“The Urform to which the disputed nu in line 2 can be traced is found in Gumbert (Fig. 17). Once one has thought this through properly, one will not be offended by the remains of the letter that still exist today [in 7Q5], but will confidently interpret them as nu.”7

It is a baffling argument. According to this scenario, someone that could hardly write their own name or keep to a straight line would have managed to copy out (at least) two full sentences from the Gospel According to Mark in a literary script complete with serifs and sense spaces, but also with an intention to write the letter nu on the model of an obsolete documentary form (but only sometimes!).

Hunger followed up his defense of Thiede with a pretty shocking statement: “If someone rejects a meaningful decipherment and identification of a text, they should feel obligated to offer an alternative.”8 So, Hunger’s position is effectively that a manifestly incorrect identification is better than having the humility to admit the evidence is insufficient to make a confident identification. This is simply bad scholarship.

Finally, Hunger ended his chapter with an argument that is theological rather than palaeographic: If people disagree that 7Q5 is a copy of Mark, it can only be because “their hearts have been hardened” (Mark 6:52).

Whether or not one agrees with Thiede’s characterization of Hunger as “a classical papyrologist” with “no vested theological interests,” Hunger’s papyrological arguments on display in this chapter are poorly formed and completely unconvincing. Hunger’s argument is internally inconsistent, and neither of the two inconsistent parts of the argument is convincing on its own. Nothing about the script of 7Q5 indicates that it was the product of a βραδέως γράφων; the few extant letters have the appearance of being written by someone comfortable with copying literary Greek. At the same time, the alleged palaeographic parallels that Hunger presents with competent hands are not really relevant to the script of 7Q5.

So, when it comes to the readings of 7Q5, appeals to the authority of Herbert Hunger, just like the appeals Montevecchi, carry no weight.

  1. See, for example, E.J. Epp and L.W. Hurtado, “Qumran Greek Fragments 7Q3-7Q19” in The Dead Sea Scrolls: Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Texts with English Translations, vol. 5B (Westminster John Knox, 2024): “The chief problem was O’Callaghan’s need to assume or propose a number of highly unlikely or quite impossible readings, such as ν in line 2, when it is clearly ι-adscript.” ( ↩︎
  2. Carsten Peter Thiede, The Earliest Gospel Manuscript? The Qumran Papyrus 7Q5 and its Significance for New Testament Studies (Pater Noster Press, 1992), 35. ↩︎
  3. The booklet was H. Hunger, Die Papyrussammlung der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek. Katalog der ständigen Ausstellung (Biblos-Schriften 35; Vienna: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek), 1962 (37 pages and 16 plates).
    The editions of papyri that I have been able to identify are the following:
    H. Hunger, “Ein neues Septuaginta-Fragment in der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek,” Anzeiger der Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historische Klasse 93 (1956) 188-199.
    H. Hunger, “Die Logistie – ein liturgisches Amt. (Pap. Graec. Vindob. 19799/19800),” Chronique d’Egypte 32 (1957) 273-283.
    H. Hunger, “Zwei unbekannte neutestamentliche Papyrusfragmente der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek,” Biblos 8 (1959) 7-12 [updated in H. Hunger, “Ergänzungen zu zwei neutestamentlichen Papyrusfragmenten der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek,” Biblos 19 (1970) 71-75].
    H. Hunger, “Zwei Papyri aus dem byzantinischen Ägypten (Pap. Graec. Vindob. 16887 und 4),” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik  9 (1960) 21-30.
    H. Hunger, “Eine frühe byzantinische Dialysis-Urkunde in Wien (Pap. Graec. Vindob. 16),” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik  10 (1961) 1-8.
    H. Hunger and A. Fackelmann, “Grundsteuerliste aus Arsinoe in einem Papyruskodex des 7. Jahrhunderts. Ein neuartiger Restaurierungsversuch an Pap. Graec. Vindob. 39739,” Forschungen und Fortschritte 35 (1961) 23-28.
    H. Hunger, “Pseudo-Platonica in einer Ausgabe des 4. Jahrhunderts. Ein neues Fragment in der Papyrussammlung der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek (G 39846),” Wiener Studien 74 (1961) 40-42
    H. Hunger, “Ein Wiener Papyrus zur Ernennung der Priester im römischen Ägypten (Pap. Graec. Vindob. 19793),” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientarum Hungaricae 10 (1962) 151-156.
    H. Hunger Herbert and E. Pöhlmann, “Neue griechische Musikfragmente aus ptolemäischer Zeit in der Papyrussammlung der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek (G 29.825 a-f),” Wiener Studien 75 (1962) 51-78.
    H. Hunger, “Papyrus-Nachlese zu Homer (Unbekannte Fragmente aus der Papyrussammlung der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek.),” Wiener Studien 76 (1963) pp. 159-162.
    ↩︎
  4. H. Hunger, “Zur Datierung des Papyrus Bodmer II (P66),” Anzeiger der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historische Klasse 97 (1961) 12-23. Although Hunger’s article was cited with some frequency, the dated documentary parallels that Hunger proposed for the script of P.Bodmer 2 were described by Eric G. Turner as “not cogent.” For the assessment and Turner’s alternative analysis of P.Bodmer 2, see E.G. Turner, Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World (Oxford, 1971), 108. ↩︎
  5. The chapter was the published version of a paper given at a symposium on 7Q5 held at the Katholische Universität Eichstätt in 1991: B. Mayer (ed.), Christen und Christliches in Qumran? (Regensburg: Pustet, 1992). ↩︎
  6. On the term and phenomenon, see H.C. Youtie, “βραδέως γράφων: Between Literacy and Illiteracy,” Greek Roman, and Byzantine Studies 12 (1971) 239-261. ↩︎
  7. “Die “Urform”, auf die das in Zeile 2 vorliegende umstrittene Ny zurückgeht, findet sich auch bei Gumbert (Abb. 17). Wenn man das einmal richtig überlegt hat, wird man auch an den heute noch vorhandenen Resten des Buchstabens keinen Anstoß nehmen, sondern sie getrost als Ny deuten” (Hunger, “7Q5: Markus 6,52-53 – oder?” 37). ↩︎
  8. “Wer eine sinnvolle Entzifferung eines Textes und dessen Identifizierung ablehnt, sollte sich verpflichtet fühlen, eine Alternative anzubieten” (“7Q5: Markus 6,52-53 – oder?” 39). In point of fact, many alternative identifications have been proposed, though none has proven fully convincing. ↩︎
Posted in Palaeography, Dead Sea Scrolls, 7Q5, Herbert Hunger | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

On Leaving academia.edu

Posted on September 30, 2025 by Brent Nongbri

I’ve removed all the content I had on academia.edu. Much of what was on my page there is available here on the publications page and the book review page. For copies of other publications, just email me.

I’ve been contemplating this for a while, but it was the disturbing auto-generated AI podcasts combined with absurd changes made a couple weeks ago to the privacy policy that finally made me decide to remove the material. The company apparently walked back some of the language in the privacy policy a few days after the policy was issued, but it seems only a matter of time before the same kinds of things happen again. I understand that academia.edu is a for-profit company that needs to make money, but this stuff just feels somehow wrong.

I’m genuinely sad about this. Over the years I discovered a lot of interesting research on academia.edu that I would probably not have otherwise encountered. Also, if the stats provided by the site are accurate and meaningful, a decent number of people found my work there. And when I was unemployed and without academic affiliation, academia.edu was one of the few means I had to kind of stay connected to the world of research.

But this points to larger issues about the dissemination and availability of research in academic journals: Is the academia.edu model really any more exploitative than traditional academic publishers for whom we write and (peer review) at no cost, just so that they then can sell our scholarship back to universities at prices that are often outrageous? I don’t know. I’m trying to publish more in open-access venues, but that whole system has its own sets of problems. There are of course the predatory open access publishers, but even the traditional journals associated with the “big” presses have open access policies that are pretty shocking. For instance, I recently had an article accepted for publication in a venerable journal. To make the article open access, the publisher asks for a fee of $3,550 USD. But someone working at a wealthier institution that has a deal with the press could publish open access in the very same journal at no personal cost. So, the articles of authors at wealthy universities are freely available, while my article sits behind a paywall (it would cost an individual about $30 USD to access the article through the publisher website). I will of course make the “Author Accepted Manuscript” available and provide copies of articles to those who contact me, but these seem like inadequate solutions to a larger problem.

I honestly don’t know what is best solutions are, but I’m convinced that it’s time for me to move on from academia.edu.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 16 Comments

New Article on the History of Codex Alexandrinus

Posted on September 25, 2025 by Brent Nongbri

The latest issue of Novum Testamentum contains an important (open access!) article on Codex Alexandrinus:

Mina Monier, “The History of Codex Alexandrinus: New Evidence from Arabic Paratexts,” Novum Testamentum 67 (2025) 501-526.

Recent scholarship on the codex has generally rejected the possibility that the manuscript was produced in Egypt (Constantinople is the most frequently named alternative; Ephesus has also been suggested). Now Monier’s article brings together several arguments that undercut the case for Constantinople and offer support for an Egyptian provenance for the codex. Among other things, the article:

  • provides both an improved transcription and a richer contextualization of the Arabic endowment statement in the codex. The result is that there is no longer any reason to believe that Codex Alexandrinus came to Egypt with a group of books from Constantinople in the early fourteenth century, which has been the usual assumption since T.C. Skeat’s 1955 article on the provenance of Alexandrinus.
  • points out that marginal liturgical notes in Arabic can be explained only in light of the Coptic paschal lectionary.
  • highlights neglected Egyptian evidence for lists of New Testament books that match the curious contents and order of the New Testament books in Codex Alexandrinus (which includes 1-2 Clement and places Hebrews between 2 Thessalonians and 1 Timothy).

There is much more in the article itself (including a thorough discussion of the enigmatic reference to “the handwriting of Thecla the Martyr,” as well as a new approach to the context of the foliation of the codex). This is a fascinating read, and I have no doubt that this will be a landmark study that reorients the discussion of the early history of Codex Alexandrinus.

Codex Alexandrinus (British Library, Royal MS 1 D. viii)
Posted in Codex Alexandrinus, Codices | 1 Comment

Binding Sets of Wooden Tablets

Posted on August 16, 2025 by Brent Nongbri

For a long time, I assumed that sets of wooden tablets from the Roman era were bound in a fairly simple way, with a cord looped straight through the holes as we see in this set of tablets from Kellis that were found with the cord in place:

Kellis Account Book with binding cord in place; image source: R.S. Bagnall, The Kellis Agricultural Account Book (Oxbow, 1997), plate 11.

The method results in a slightly clunky but effective method for holding the tablets together and allowing one to turn the “pages.” It had not occurred to me that tablets would be bound in other ways until I saw the remarkable exhibition and catalog from 2018 produced by Georgios Boudalis, “The Codex and Crafts in Late Antiquity.” One of the many interesting and innovative suggestions in that book is that the sewing of wooden tablets may have been more elaborate, with the binding cords wrapping around the outside of the individual tablets along the spine in a manner partly analogous to the way that a loop-stitch (or link-stitch) holds together the gatherings of a multi-quire parchment or papyrus codex. Boudalis illustrated this hypothesis with one of his excellent diagrams:


Boudalis’s reconstruction of possible method for sewing tablets together; image source: G. Boudalis, The Codex and Crafts in Late Antiquity (New York, 2018), p. 29, fig. 15

When I reviewed his book, I brought up these imaginative reconstructions and expressed some cautious enthusiasm:

“Boudalis’s reconstructions are rightly and openly signaled as hypothetical. And they are entirely plausible, but they are not (yet!) capable of being confirmed from existing archaeological remains.”

Now I have seen a relief that seems to show a set of tablets bound in a way very similar to what Boudalis proposed. It is a funerary relief in the Rheinische Landesmuseum in Trier. Many of the funerary monuments on display here show sets of tablets as part of “Kontorszene,” office scenes.1 This particular item (inv. 303) is a relief on sandstone showing seven people in a such a financial scene.

Relief showing men with money and a set of tablets (left); Rheinische Landesmuseum Trier inv. 303; image Brent Nongbri 2025

The figure at far left has a set of tablets that appear to be sitting spine-side-out, and it looks like the person who carved the relief has attempted to represent the stitching of the tablets:


Detail of bound tablets showing sewing(?) on the spine; Rheinische Landesmuseum Trier inv. 303; image Brent Nongbri 2025

The series of small knobs that correspond to each of the individual tablets seem to me to be an attempt to show stitching in the medium of carved stone. If this is correct, it would confirm Boudalis’s hypothesis that some sets of tablets were bound with this more elaborate type of stitching that is related to the sewing of multi-quire codices. I have not noted this detail in other reliefs, but I haven’t really been on the lookout for this kind of thing. If anyone knows of other examples, I would be grateful to learn of them.

  1. These reliefs are the subject of a chapter by Anja Klöckner and Michaela Stark, “Bildsprache und Semantik der sog. Kontorszenen auf den Grabmonumenten der Civitas Treverorum,” in Sabine Lefebvre (ed.), Iconographie du quotidien dans l’art provincial romain: modèles régionaux (Dijon: ARTEHIS Éditions, 2017). Thanks to Michele Cammarosano for drawing it to my attention. ↩︎
Posted in Book binding, Tablets | 1 Comment

Taking Care of Papyrus Scrolls in Antiquity

Posted on August 10, 2025 by Brent Nongbri

The digital edition of a new book has recently become available:

Jeremiah Coogan, Candida R Moss, and Joseph A Howley (eds.),Writing, Enslavement, and Power in the Roman Mediterranean, 100 BCE–300 CE (New York: Oxford University Press, 2025)

The volume is the result of a workshop back in 2022 in which I was fortunate enough to participate. It was a somewhat unusual seminar in the sense that we were all assigned a topic to explore, and it turned out to be quite illuminating for me. I have a chapter in the book that is just called “Maintenance,” and it discusses the care of papyrus rolls from the point of production through the life of the roll. I have discussed some of these topics on the blog in the last few years with posts on such things as parchment covers for bookrolls, the storage of rolls, and the alleged stands for holding open scrolls. My chapter touches on these topics and also discusses things like repairs of papyrus rolls and the people who carried out such work.

Here is the abstract:

This essay surveys the surviving evidence for the maintenance of books (papyrus rolls) from the Mediterranean world under Roman rule. After a discussion of an especially well-documented case of damage and repair of papyrus rolls in an archive in Roman Egypt, the essay turns to the steps taken during the manufacture of papyrus rolls to prevent such damage from occurring and the options for mending rolls when such damage occurred. This examination involves literary, documentary, and iconographic evidence that illustrates the storage, transportation, use, and repair of books. The essay closes with an investigation of what we can know about the people, both enslaved and free, who performed these tasks of maintenance. The surviving textual and material evidence that lets us see the results of this labor only rarely allows us to glimpse the people who carried out this work.

If you don’t have institutional access, send me a note, and I can send you an offprint.

Thanks to the editors for organizing this stimulating workshop and seeing the papers through to publication.

Detail of a sarcophagus of a Greek physician reading a papyrus roll with other rolls stored in a cabinet in the background; image source: The Met
Posted in Book Trade in Antiquity, Voluminology | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Crosby-Schøyen Codex now at the Museum of the Bible

Posted on August 6, 2025 by Brent Nongbri

Many of us had wondered who purchased the Crosby-Schøyen Codex when it was up for sale through Christie’s last year. Now we know (via an August 5th article by Emily Belz at Christianity Today):

“The Green Collection, connected to the Museum of the Bible, revealed that it purchased the Crosby-Schøyen Codex, which contains what is perhaps the earliest complete versions of Jonah and 1 Peter, at an auction last year.”

The article mentions plans to digitize the codex and make it available online.

Addendum (6 August 2025): I see the Museum of the Bible has its own announcement about acquiring the codex here.

A nearly complete bifolium of the Crosby-Schøyen codex; image source: CNN

The codex sold last year for a reported cost of £ 3,065,000 (about $3,900,000 USD at the time).

Posted in Crosby-Schøyen Codex | Leave a comment

New Article on P.Oxy. 1 2 and P.Oxy. 7 1010

Posted on August 6, 2025 by Brent Nongbri

This will be the first of a few posts about some recent articles of mine that have just been published. The first is a piece jointly authored by AnneMarie Luijendijk and me. The full article is available (open access!) here:

AnneMarie Luijendijk and Brent Nongbri, “The Codicology of Early Christian Books from Oxyrhynchus: Insights from a Papyrus Codex of Matthew (P.Oxy. I 2) and a Miniature Parchment Codex with 6 Ezra (P.Oxy. VII 1010),” ISAW Papers 29.3 (2025)

It is the outcome of an excellent session that was part of a Mellon Sawyer Seminar, Cultural and Textual Exchanges: The Manuscript Across Premodern Eurasia, organized by Paul Dilley and his colleagues at the University of Iowa.

AnneMarie and I gave a general overview of Christian codices among the Oxyrhynchus papyri and then focused on two pieces, P.Oxy. 1 2, a papyrus bifolium containing the beginning of the Gospel According to Matthew in Greek and P.Oxy. 7 1010, a parchment leaf from a codex containing 6 Ezra.

P.Oxy. 1 2 with outline showing Turner’s proposed dimensions for the full page; original image source: Penn Museum Online Collections E 2746

In connection to P.Oxy. 1 2, we cleared up some confusion about the dimensions of the page (Aland and Turner disagreed on the width by a centimeter) and the contents of the bifolium (O’Callaghan misunderstood some physical features of the papyrus and reported incorrect information about its contents that has made its way into reference works). Finally, we explored the implications of a codicological reconstruction that would fold the bifolium in the direction opposite from that which is usually assumed, which would potentially make the piece the outermost bifolium of a single-quire codex.

For P.Oxy. 7 1010, we worked through the problem posed by the page numbering (or is it foliation?) on the leaf and revisited possible connections to a personal letter from Oxyrhynchus, P.Oxy. 63 4365.

P.Oxy. 7 1010; original image source: Digital Bodleian MS. Gr. Bib. g. 3 (P)

It is always a pleasure to think about Oxyrhynchus materials with AnneMarie, and thanks to Paul for the invitation to participate in this seminar.

Posted in Codices, Codicology, New Testament, Oxyrhynchus Papyri | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New Images of P52

Posted on July 20, 2025 by Brent Nongbri

For some time now, the Rylands Library at the University of Manchester has hosted good digital images of P.Ryl. Gr. 3 457 (a.k.a. P52), the fragment of the Gospel According to John. I recently visited the University of Manchester’s LUNA viewer to see what the permissions currently were for these images, and it seems that the library made new images in 2019 and again in 2024 (the 2024 images seem to have been taken in normal light and on a light table).

These new images are excellent. One can really zoom in and see the details of the script and the surface of the papyrus.

See the full images here: recto and verso.

I remember being thrilled with the digital images that the library supplied for me back in 2004, which were very good by the standards of the time. Thanks to the Rylands Library for keeping up with improving photographic technology.

Posted in P.Ryl. 3.457, Rylands Papyri | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Volumes 9 and 10 of The Bulletin of the Bezan Club

Posted on July 1, 2025 by Brent Nongbri

Thanks to C.R. van Tilburg and Jean Putnams for sending scans of issues 10 and 11 of The Bulletin of the Bezan Club. Thanks also to John Muccigrosso for improving the quality of some of the pdf files.

These files now make the set complete. Thank you to everyone who contributed to making this resource available!

Posted in New Testament, Textual criticism | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Volume 12 of The Bulletin of the Bezan Club

Posted on June 27, 2025 by Brent Nongbri

Thanks to Jean Putmans for tracking down a copy of volume 12 of The Bulletin of the Bezan Club. This, as far as I know, was the last issue of the Bulletin. The issue contains several comments that indicate another volume was expected (“Our next issue…” etc.), but it seems that it never appeared. I had assumed that events in Germany in 1938 had led to the dissolution of the Club. But I recently saw that Alessandro Falcetta, the biographer of Rendel Harris, has made an intriguing alternative suggestion:

“The twelfth issue of the bulletin was published in 1937. The secretary of the club, Plooij, had died in 1935 and had been replaced by Johannes de Zwaan of Leyden, a former student of Rendel’s at Woodbrooke. Several other members had also died, including Mingana, and obituary notices had almost become a fixed feature of the bulletin. Rendel had turned eighty-five and for the first time there was no contribution from him. He was no longer a driving force behind the club. Now, it was de Zwaan’s job to carry on the bulletin, but, though he had plans for a new issue, he never came to publish it. Probably, the reason was that the bulletin had to give way to a new enterprise. In 1937, during a conference in Edinburgh, de Zwaan met [with] Herbert G. Wood,… George Boobyer and other scholars. There he proposed to them the idea of forming a New Testament society. The following year, a number of scholars met at Carey Hall…and formalized the foundation of the Societas Novi Testamenti Studiorum (SNTS), of which de Zwaan was elected first president. The SNTS is today the most important association of its kind. One wonders whether de Zwaan had in mind the Bezan Club when he outlined his project in Edinburgh.”1

This seems like a plausible scenario.2

A second feature of volume 12 that stood out is a curious coincidence. The issue contains three articles by none other than Robert Eisler (1882-1949), whom I mentioned in a recent post in connection to his (baseless) identification of a marble bust in Copenhagen as a portrait of the Jewish historian Josephus. In the Bulletin, Eisler has written a (sort of?) obituary for Arthur C. Clark (1859-1937), Corpus Christi Professor of Latin at Oxford from 1913-1934, an article on Paul and the “pillars” in Galatians, and an article on Acts 19:14. This seems to be Eisler’s first appearance in the Bulletin (he is not listed on the first page among the members of the Club).

A third interesting aspect of this volume is the last article: “The textual relations of Codex Bezae in Matthew by Miss Ad. H.A. Bakker.” This would be Adolphine Henriette Annette Bakker (1907-1984), author of A Study of Codex Evang. Bobbiensis (1933). She is listed among the members of the Club on the first page of this issue along with “Mrs. Sylva New-Lake,” i.e. Silva Tipple New Lake (1898-1983). So, it seems that by at least as early as 1937, the Club had admitted women as members.

The other issues of the journal can be found here.

  1. Alessandro Falcetta, The Daily Discoveries of a Bible Scholar and Manuscript Hunter: A Biography of James Rendel Harris (T&T Clark, 2018), 455. ↩︎
  2. On the early history of the SNTS, see this page and its link to an article by G.H. Boobyer. ↩︎
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