Palaeography and Codices: A Couple Thoughts on Larry Hurtado’s Review of God’s Library

Posted on November 13, 2018 by Brent Nongbri

Over on his blog, Larry Hurtado has posted a detailed review of God’s Library. Early on in the book, I mention three of the main scholars who paved the way for those of us working on early Christian manuscripts today: Roger Bagnall, Harry Gamble, and Larry Hurtado. So I’m very gratified to see that Hurtado’s review is largely positive.

I’ll take this opportunity to follow up on Hurtado’s assessment of one of my more sweeping criticisms of the use of palaeography to assign precise dates to Greek literary manuscripts of the Roman era. Hurtado writes as follows: Continue reading →

Posted in Codices, Palaeography | 2 Comments

Manufacturing Square Papyrus Codices: Two Ways to Cut the Roll

Posted on November 4, 2018 by Brent Nongbri

When trying to understand the process of making small format papyrus codices, it is sometimes tricky to figure out how the papyrus bifolia were cut from the roll. For books that are more tall and narrow, like the Nag Hammadi codices, it is generally clear that the bifolia were cut from a roll with a height equal to that of the bifolia. But for codices whose height is smaller than that of the typical roll, there are other possibilities. Some of the newly available images of the Bodmer nicely illustrate one of them. Continue reading →

Posted in Berlin Coptic Proverbs Codex, Bodmer composite codex, Bodmer Papyri, Codices, Codicology | 3 Comments

Images of the Bodmer Papyri Online

Posted on October 31, 2018 by Brent Nongbri

Bodmer Papyri SiteI’m happy to announce that as part of the ongoing work of the Bodmer Lab, images of the Greek and Coptic manuscripts from Egypt held at the Fondation Martin Bodmer are now available online. The website remains a work in progress, but the bulk of the images are now available, and the site is live. A couple points to note as you use the site: Continue reading →

Posted in Bodmer Papyri, Codices | 4 Comments

An Old Quote from Frank Moore Cross on Unprovenanced Artifacts

Posted on October 30, 2018 by Brent Nongbri
Fake Dead Sea Scroll

A Fake “Dead Sea Scroll” in the Museum of the Bible Collection

I’ve just returned from a stimulating week at the University of Agder. I had loads of interesting conversations about a number of topics, many of them stemming from the Museum of the Bible’s admission that (at least) five of their recently purchased, unprovenanced “Dead Sea Scroll” fragments are fake. This admission has inspired a number of reactions in various online forums, the most interesting of which have less to do with the fact of the forgeries (which have been suspected by The Lying Pen project and others for some time) and more to do with the ethical issues involved in the purchase (by collectors) and publication (by scholars) of unprovenanced artifacts. Continue reading →

Posted in Antiquities Market, Dead Sea Scrolls, Fakes and Forgeries, Frank Moore Cross, Palaeography | 10 Comments

P.Bodmer II as Possible Evidence for the Circulation of John without Chapter 21

Posted on October 24, 2018 by Brent Nongbri

P66 Plate 145 Descreened

In the most recent issue of the journal Early Christianity (vol. 9, 2018), I have an article that bears on one of the classic “problems” of New Testament interpretation. I’ve given some background on the issues in previous posts here and here. So finally, here is the abstract of the article: Continue reading →

Posted in Codices, New Testament, P.Bodmer II, Textual criticism | 9 Comments

Fake Dead Sea Scrolls at the Museum of the Bible

Posted on October 23, 2018 by Brent Nongbri

MoB DSS Nehemiah

It has been a truly fascinating day for me at the University of Agder. After spending Monday morning and afternoon listening to sharp and informative talks by Matthew Monger, Ingrid Breilid Gimse, Josephine Munch Rasmussen, and Årstein Justnes on the probability that many recently published “Dead-Sea-Scrolls-like fragments” are forgeries, the Museum of the Bible has just earlier this evening confirmed that five of their Dead Sea Scrolls are fakes.   And now we await the testing of the rest of the alleged Dead Sea Scroll fragments in the collection…

Posted in Dead Sea Scrolls, Fakes and Forgeries | 1 Comment

Visiting the University of Agder

Posted on October 17, 2018 by Brent Nongbri

I’m excited that next week I’ll be heading to the University of Agder in Norway to visit the research project, “The Lying Pen of Scribes: Manuscript Forgeries and Counterfeiting Scripture in the Twenty-First Century,” best known for its incisive investigations into the so-called “post-2002 Dead-Sea-Scrolls-like fragments,” such as the detailed review of the Museum of the Bible’s Scrolls fragments by Årstein Justnes. Continue reading →

Posted in Fakes and Forgeries, Rylands Papyri | 2 Comments

The Corrections in P.Bodmer II

Posted on October 9, 2018 by Brent Nongbri

In an earlier post, I mentioned an article I just published on John 21 and provided a little background on the issues concerning the “endings” of the Gospel According to John. Before I can finally move on to a summary of the article itself, I need to provide just a little more background of a different sort.

This second piece of necessary information has to do with some of the textual peculiarities of P.Bodmer II, the well known papyrus codex containing the Gospel According to John in Greek. It is one of the earliest well preserved copies of the Gospel. It was published in two parts in the late 1950s and early 1960s (for a fuller discussion of the codex, see my 2014 article).

One of the first things that scholars noticed about the book was the high number of corrections it contained. Continue reading →

Posted in P.Bodmer II, Textual criticism | 5 Comments

John 21 in the Amsterdam Database of New Testament Conjectural Emendation

Posted on October 8, 2018 by Brent Nongbri

Just one more update on my discussion of the history of the proposal that the Gospel According to John circulated in a twenty-chapter version: Thanks to Jeff Cate for pointing out the Amsterdam Database of New Testament Conjectural Emendation has an entry for John 21:1-25 that contains several authors who have argued both for and against the view that the twenty-first chapter of John is a later addition. Hugo Grotius (1641) does seem to be the earliest author to discuss the matter in detail.

I’m pleased to learn that the Amsterdam database has an entry for John 21, because it once again helps me identify one of my own blind spots. Continue reading →

Posted in New Testament, Textual criticism | 2 Comments

Hugo Grotius on John 21

Posted on October 8, 2018 by Brent Nongbri

In my previous post on the twenty-first chapter of the Gospel According to John, I noted that the hypothesis that chapter 21 is a later addition to the gospel goes back at least to Julius Wellhausen’s 1908 commentary.  I’m grateful to Dexter Brown of Yale University for pointing out to me that the hypothesis in fact goes back (much!) earlier–at least to the 1641 edition of the Annotationes of Hugo Grotius. According to Grotius, chapter 21 was added after the death of John by the church of Ephesus. Grotius makes the point in one of his notes on John 20:30: Continue reading →

Posted in New Testament | 9 Comments