I continue to work through the “Passages” speakers series videos. During his talk in the 2011 sequence of lectures, Scott Carroll mentioned a number of literary papyri that the Green Collection had acquired.
In the course of explaining the differences between literary papyri and documents, Carroll mentioned some of the Green Collection’s holdings: Continue reading
2018 was an important year for the study of the Bodmer Papyri, with the launch of the “Papyri” cluster of the Bodmer Lab website, which made available digital images of the papyrus and parchment manuscripts from Egypt in the collection.
2019 is now off to a good start with the announcement that the publication of P.Bodmer 1 (recto) is now available to freely download:
P.Bodmer 1 is a land list from the Panopolite nome that was turned over and upside down to be reused to copy books 5 and 6 of the Iliad. It was acquired by Martin Bodmer in the early 1950s, and the reused side of the roll (the Iliad) was published already in 1954 by Victor Martin as P.Bodmer I. The document on the front of the roll, however, has remained unpublished until now.
P.Bodmer 1 before conservation; image source: Victor Martin, Papyrus Bodmer I (Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, 1954)
In an earlier post, I mentioned some of my concern about the tendency to orient provenance discussions in relation to the year 1970, the date of the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. Specifically, I described my own problems and hesitations in working with materials that were acquired before 1970. In that context, I commented, that “the 1970 date is a legal marker, not an ethical one.”
I’d like to expand a little bit on that point and offer an example. Continue reading
I recently wanted to quickly refresh myself on what can be known about the provenance of the famous papyrus containing nearly the entire text of Aristotle’s Constitution of the Athenians (British Library Pap. 131, LDAB 391).
As usual, this turned out more complicated than I expected. The artifact itself is also somewhat complicated. Continue reading
I’ve had the break-up of libraries on my mind lately for several reasons. At one level, this phenomenon is never far from my thoughts. For years now, I’ve been working on the somewhat scrappy remains of what must have been many collections of ancient Christian books and wondered about how the books came together, and in the case of the Christian books at Oxyrhynchus, how they came to be tossed out as garbage. Continue reading
A papyrus “thingamajig” containing 1 Samuel obtained by Scott Carroll for the Green Collection; image source: Scott Carroll, Passages: The Experience. The 400th Anniversary of the King James Bible. Exhibition Guide (Marion, Indiana: Triangle Publishing, 2012), p. 4
The “Passages” speakers series videos continue to yield insights into the early formation of the Green Collection, and in particular this papyrus of 1 Samuel that I have mentioned before. The usual format of these “Passages” talks involves extended introductory and concluding remarks given by people associated with the Green Collection. When Scott Carroll was present (not off in Europe purchasing artifacts), he was generally involved in these aspects of the presentations. In his introductory remarks to a talk on C.S. Lewis by Charles Bressler given on 27 March 2012, Carroll described his upcoming travel plans with Jerry Pattengale. I have transcribed the relevant sections: Continue reading
I am in the process of working my way through videos of the lectures associated with the “Passages” travelling exhibition of Green Collection. At the prompting of David Bradnick who is also engaging in this pastime, I jumped ahead to “Season 2,” the group of lectures given in Atlanta in 2012. David mentioned that Scott Carroll had interesting things to say about some Christian manuscripts and also the Green Collection Sappho Papyrus. It is the latter that will be the topic of this post. Continue reading
In my last post, I mentioned I was watching a set of DVDs that documented the series of lectures that accompanied the “Passages” exhibition of the Green Collection. One of the Green Collection papyri that is mentioned in the lectures in these DVDs is perhaps the same papyrus that is mentioned as number 22 in a 2013 lecture by Scott Carroll:
Item number 22 is described as “Gospel of Mt c. 140.” A papyrus with a somewhat similar description comes up during the “Passages” lectures in Oklahoma City in 2011. In his closing remarks after a talk by the British Library’s Scot McKendrick, Scott Carroll announced the discovery of a new manuscript: Continue reading
I’ve written several posts (like this one) on different aspects of the “Passages” travelling exhibition of the Green Collection that took place between 2011 and the opening of the permanent exhibition at the Museum of the Bible in 2017. Some of the early Christian manuscripts associated with the “Passages” exhibition seem to have gone out of the public eye, as they have not gone on display in the Museum of the Bible. Continue reading
In a paper recently posted to academia.edu, Ryan Kaufman engages with some of my hypotheses about the ending of the Gospel According to John in P.Bodmer 2. His suggestions are excellent and in fact offer a simpler explanation for some of the strange features of page 149 that I pointed out in my article (discussed on the blog here).
Kaufman’s key insight is that the text of page 149 as reconstructed by the original editors, Victor Martin and J.W.B. Barns, is unlikely to be correct. Continue reading
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The Early History of the Codex
Thoughts on History, Religion, Archaeology, Papyrology, etc. by Brent Nongbri
Everyday Stories from the Ancient Past
Patristics, Apocrypha, Coptic Literature and Manuscripts
Pedagogical Approaches to Palaeography and Codicology
Thoughts on History, Religion, Archaeology, Papyrology, etc. by Brent Nongbri
Thoughts on History, Religion, Archaeology, Papyrology, etc. by Brent Nongbri
Thoughts on History, Religion, Archaeology, Papyrology, etc. by Brent Nongbri
Variant Readings 