Media Papyri: Examining Carsten Thiede's Rediscovered Fragments
by Sigrid Peterson, PhD
University of Pennsylvania
May 14, 1995
(Revised September 1995)
INTRODUCTION: METHOD AND METHODOLOGY
METHOD
There is so much inaccessible and unpublished papyrus in
various corners of the world, almost entirely from Egypt, that
the great urgency within the field of papyrology is to publish
the pieces and thus make them available to the scholarly world.
For this reason, as well as others, a difference exists between
the kind of close scrutiny of methodology common to the study
of the historical import of ancient literature, and the close
scrutiny of a publication in the field of papyrology. The
former focusses on the assessment of historical information,
while the latter form of review is concerned with the accurate
representation of the physical details of a piece of papyrus or
ostrakhan with written words or symbols on it, a document.
There are some standards, and there is a desirable descriptive
rigor in treating a papyrus or group of papyri. Describing the
physical characteristics of the papyri, both the writing and
the material, is the conventional way to start. This involves
noting the size and determining the side of the sheet which is
being used, and whether there are two sides or one which
contain writing. For example, if both sides of a sheet are used
and the handwriting is the same on both sides, then the
document is tentatively identified as a codex. An assessment of
the type of document follows, making distinctions, as a rule,
between documentary and literary, between business and
personal, and between legal and commercial. The papyrologist
makes an attempt to locate the place of origin, using all
available clues. Such clues may be archaeological context,
place references in the text, close comparability in style with
documentary papyri whose text fixes the place, the way the
material is handled, and other specific characteristics of the
piece of papyrus being described. Those visible aspects of the
papyrus which correspond to known formats of manuscripts are
assessed; these include whether it is a two-column or single-
column codex, in the case of P. Magdalen 17, the subject for
analysis in this paper. A broad determination of the style of
handwriting is the next step, a step which takes advantage of
the characteristics already noted. This is a sort of decision
tree, as in diagnostic determinations of all kinds. In the case
of papyri, the effort is to determine provenance -- place and
date for the origin of the physical manuscript.
Many of the further points concerning paleographical dating of
Greek literary papyri are to be found in succinct summary in
Eric G. Turner, in GREEK MANUSCRIPTS OF THE ANCIENT
WORLD: SECOND EDITION, Edited by Peter J. Parsons,
Bulletin Supplement 46, 1987, London:University of London
Institute of Classical Studies, 1987:
To obtain a more precise result [in dating]. . . it
will be necessary to find a dated or datable handwriting
which the piece under examination resembles. . .
.Confidence will be strongest when like is compared with
like: a documentary hand with another documentary hand,
skilful writing with skilful, fast writing with fast.
Comparison of book hands with dated documentary hands
will be less reliable. . . .[[20]]For book hands a period
of 50 years is the least acceptable spread of time [to
suggest, as they are long-lived]. A palaeographer
familiar with the material will refuse assent to a
precise year date allocated to a manuscript simply by
comparison with other texts and by no other criterion.
How are `resemblances' between handwritings to be
judged? The first point of similarity to strike an
observer will be in the forms of the letters, but taken
in isolation this feature is too arbitrary to be
trustworthy. . . .The forms of letters must, as W.
Schubart pointed out, be considered in relation to the
manner of writing which they help to constitute. The
letter-forms chosen by the scribe are, of course, the
most important means by which stylization is achieved
(Turner, 1987: 19f).
In the case of the fragments of P. Magdalen 17, these steps are
described in the beginning of Colin Roberts's first publication
of the fragments (HTR 46, 1953). A sound basis in method is
crucial to the further exercise of critical thought.
Thiede's January 1995 article in Zeitschrift fu%r
Papyrologie und Epigraphik provides a casebook
demonstration of mistaken methods which invalidate his
inference about the date of the copy of the Gospel of Matthew
represented by the P. Magdalen 17 fragments. First of all, his
redating is opposed to a formidable foursome, that of Bell,
Skeat, Turner, and Roberts, all of whom agreed with Roberts
that these fragments should be redated from the third or fourth
centuries to ca. 200 ce. As indicated again later, Thiede does
not explain why the judgments of these eminent papyrologists is
faulty. Instead, he allows the existence of "new evidence" to
carry the weight of his proposed change in dating. However, he
does not use it to dissassemble the methodical assessment of
evidence in Roberts's first publication, nor does he establish
a good case for the relevance of his new evidence to the
methodical consideration of these fragments of papyrus.
This review will concentrate on understanding these fragments
of Matthew as assessed by Roberts, and then by Thiede. It is
thus a third-hand approach to the actual data. Stuart Pickering
(1995) has noted a more direct approach to redating the Matthew
fragments, beginning with Colin Roberts's assessment of the
handwriting style as "Biblical uncial" - now called Biblical
majuscule. His initial suggestion for dating is "try second
half of third century." His implicit method would be to
assemble a comprehensive group of Biblical majuscule
manuscripts for comparison purposes. These would be placed in a
rough sequence according to the development of letters.
The method I would suggest would be to assemble a very long
sequence of examples of "book hands," whether literary or
documentary, looking for several index letters which have a
particular identifiable shape at the beginning of the series,
and go through a small set of changes as the sequence develops.
This is a way of establishing some end points in time, after
which a letter never looks a certain way, and similarly a time
before which the letter is never -- in this kind of hand --
written in a particular way. The series would have examples of
both assigned and internally confirmed dates. It would be
necessary to exclude information from Herculaneum; such papyri
can be dated firmly as earlier than the eruption of Pompeii in
79 c.e., but their relationship to documentary and literary
papyri in other parts of the Mediterranean is not clear. See
further the introduction in Turner (1987). An informal trial of
this approach showed that the letter epsilon is squared off
before 200 bce and after 200 ce, and is rounded during the 400
years in between. Since the epsilon is squared off in most
instances in the Matthew fragments, the date of 200 c.e.
remains credible by this approach.
This method has the advantage of being able to make the
strongest "truth" statement possible, in the epistemological
sense. It can be demonstrated by the syllogism: If it rains the
streets get wet; At this moment the streets are NOT wet;
Therefore at this moment it is not raining. While there may be
other causes for wet streets, if wetness is absent then rain is
absent.
There is much art and ambiguity to paleography. However, if the
unsystematic survey just described holds up to systematic data
collection, one could express the finding as "If the time is
between 200 bce and 200 ce, the epsilon is rounded. In these
fragments of Matthew the epsilon is not rounded. Therefore the
fragments were not written between 200 bce and 200 ce.
Some additional questions would be asked of this data set, such
as: Are there are any indications of a two-column format for
the page? Do documentary papyri use abbreviation or suspension
when they abbreviate names? How do literary papyri treat names?
How many letters to a line? When does overlining appear and/or
disappear? Is the codex REALLY confined to early Christian
texts?
These are important questions in general, subject to change in
subtle ways with new information and new discoveries. It is a
complicated and circular process; without the knowledge gained
in this way, the recent effort of Thiede to redate Biblical
papyri simply contradicts what is known in the field. It does
not follow accepted standards of practice, and is therefore
suspect.
METHODOLOGY
A sound basis in method is crucial to the further exercise of
critical thought, called methodology, about the place these
fragments of papyri should take in our understanding of the NT.
Methodology is the effort to infer that a situation existed,
and that the inferred situation has a valid foundation. Without
a sound basis in established method, inference collapses.
Much of what passes for methodology in NT studies consists of
case-building, of assembling a number of bits of information
from a number of sources, and then arguing that the assemblage
provides the basis from which the historian can infer the
situation. It is crucial, for this process to be credible, that
the historian remain relatively distant from the desired
outcome, and alert to any evidence that contradicts that
outcome. It is also crucial to be aware of the biases inherent
in the sources themselves.
Papyrology would seem to offer the possibility of avoiding a
lot of the work involved in critical consideration of the
sources, and jumping straight into case-building for a
speculatively-developed historical theory. In the case of the
Matthew fragments, this basic work had already been done by
Roberts (1953). Thiede needed only to understand the
implications of Roberts's work before building his case for the
existence of an early manuscript of Matthew in Egypt.
Because Thiede's ZPE article makes a few necessary corrections,
he gives the appearance of having mastered the earlier work and
then having gone beyond it. However, Thiede erred in his
assimilation of Roberts's work, or in reproducing it. The
Matthew fragments come from a two-column codex. Thiede barely
notes this detail. Had he noted it, according to current
standards of practice, he would not have been able to claim
that the Matthew fragments stem from an Egyptian copy of the
Gospel written down around 70 CE. This is because the earlier
codices, according to current understanding, are written in one
column rather than two. Of course this could be questioned;
Thiede doesn't seem to notice or care or recognize the point.
Thus Thiede does not use the method (Roberts, 1953) upon which
he relies as his basis for inference in the case of two-column
codices. He does appropriate Roberts's suggestion that areas
where the papyrus is broken contain nomina
sacra. These are two- or three-letter representations
of "sacred" names, usually marked by an overhead line, not seen
on these fragments. There are various technical aspects,
mentioned above as this article traced Thiede's arguments. To
reiterate: if nomina sacra for the name of
Jesus are present, and if the Thiede's downdating could
possibly be true, then these fragments are evidence that some
segment of the early Jesus movement thought that Jesus was in a
category with God, Moses, and David, and like them his name
deserved to receive special treatment as sacred. This group
produced bound codices of gospels which reflected their belief
by using the nomina sacra for the name of
Jesus, the argument would go. Since the evidence for the
practice can be identified particularly in this supposedly
early version of the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Matthew
must have been written within the lifetime of some of the
disciples, making it an eyewitness account (more or less), and
overturning most modern scholarship on the development of the
synoptic gospels. Thiede wisely does not claim any of this in
his January 1995 article in ZPE.
Thiede's inferences are based on the absence of something that
is evident in pictures of the fragmentary Matthew codex, namely
that it consists of two columns, and on the presence of
something that is not apparent in the photographs of the codex,
namely the nomina sacra.
Methodologically speaking, reconstructions of missing text
cannot prove that words existed. Inference from reconstructed
words is not valid. They cannot be used as evidence to answer a
question of inference, only a question of description. Where
several documents have similar phraseology, such as legal and
commercial documents, one document can be reconstructed in
terms of another. The reconstruction can be used to
characterize the contents of the document without reference to
the others from which it was reconstructed. However, they are
not a basis for specifics of any sort. That is, an attempt to
base an argument on reconstructions is an attempt to argue from
uncertain evidence.
Thiede's research is flawed in its conception and its
presentation, and his findings therefore have no basis. His is
a very limited contribution--he has established that what was
once P. Magdalen 18 is now P. Magdalen 17. The sections which
follow form a more technical review of Thiede's article.
TECHNICAL REVIEW
The following report has taken shape as the result of Dierdre
Good's nudging, requests on the electronic discussion list
called ioudaios-l for some (further) discussion of Carsten P.
Thiede's reassessment of three fragments of a manuscript of
Matthew.
The fragments Thiede discusses are all from P. Magdalen Greek
17 (reclassified from P. Magdalen Greek 18), and are designated
as {P}64 in the list of codices in the Nestle-Aland 26
Greek-Latin New Testament. There it is dated "ca.
200," in accordance with Colin Roberts's publication and
redating of the fragment, to be found in Harvard
Theological Review 46, 1953, pp. 233-7, plate [HTR].
Thiede's article is called "Papyrus Magdalen Greek 17 (Gregory-
Aland {P}64 ): A Reappraisal," and appears in Vol. 105 of
Zeitschrift fr Papyrologie und Epigraphik,
pp. 13-20, and Plate IX.(ZPE)
I. FULL ARGUMENT.
As I understand the varied news accounts, Thiede called a press
conference in December of 1994 to announce his forthcoming
publication of a first century c.e. fragment of the Gospel of
Matthew in a German journal of papyrology. The fragments were
a) newly redated by paleography to the first century c.e.,
around 70 c.e.; b) contained a "stichometrically-plausible"
instance of the nomen sacrum -- -- in fr. 1, recto, line 1,
Mt 26.31; and c) therefore, first century followers of Jesus
thought of him as divine, as bearing a name requiring special
treatment in gospel accounts.
II. ZPE ARGUMENT
In his article in ZPE, Thiede does not address the implications
of his redating and reconstructions of the P. Magdalen Gr. 17
fragments.
There is no argument or discussion in the ZPE article of point
c) above. Such a claim DOES seem to have been made by Thiede in
his press conference, in some fashion. In turn, the media have
omitted any critical distinctions and said things like, "new
papyrus fragment shows that followers of Jesus knew he was
divine."
Someone associated with ZPE responded to mention of the flap on
the papy-l list by noting that Thiede had put together some
material that deserved to be aired. This is indeed the case. In
the article Thiede confined himself to the following points:
* The fragments comprising {P}64, formerly known as
P. Magdalen Gr. 18, and so listed in Van Haelst's
Catalogue, must be renumbered as Gr. 17 instead.
Thiede's description of the error is not clear, but
perhaps relates to his request to view Gr. 18, which
turned out to be a tiny unrelated scrap. The Magdalen
College Library now gives {P}64 the number Gr.17.
* {P}64 and {P}67 from Barcelona (P.Barc. inv. 1) are
part of the same manuscript, but this manuscript should
not be linked with fragments of Luke known from {P}4.
Pickering thinks the association should not be
abandoned so quickly. {P}4 is also known as P. Paris
Bibl. Nat. Suppl. Gr. 1120. To quote C. H. Roberts,
"There can in my opinion be no doubt that all
these fragments come from the same codex which was
reused as packing for the binding of the late third
century codex of Philo." [Manuscript, Society
and Belief in Early Christian Egypt, Oxford
University Press, 1979, p. 13.]
* Nestle-Aland has mislabeled the contents of the
P.Magdalen Gr. 17 fragments, which Roberts labeled
correctly. It is a matter of Mt 26.31 appearing on a
different fragment (fr. 1, recto) from Mt 26.32-33 (fr.
2, recto). Verso listings are correct.
* Four variant readings, most of which Stuart Pickering
has discussed more adequately than Thiede. However, the
scribal error of GALEGLAIAN for GALEILAIAN, `Galilean,'
of Roberts (1953) is reported by Thiede to have been
misprinted in Roberts (1962) [`Complementary Note,' in
R. Roca-Puig, Un Papiro Griego del Evangelio
de San Mateo, Barcelona\2/1962, 59-60.] This
transcription reads, as Thiede reports, GALIGLAIAN, to
which Roberts added a note "`v.33, vel GALEILAIAN."
Thiede transcribed GALEGLAIAN (op. cit., p. 20). In
discussing the article with Robert Kraft, he mentioned
that it was apparent that the papyrus does *not* have a
gamma before the lambda, but rather an iota. Close
attention to the photos of Roberts (1953) indicates
that what has been taken as a crossbar to a gamma is
probably a flaw in the papyrus, and only the vertical
line (of an iota) should be read.
* Thiede gives the history of dating the fragment,
starting with its acquisition by the Rev. Charles B.
Huleatt at Luxor in 1901. Huleatt suggested third
century; a librarian reported that A. S. Hunt thought
the fourth c. was more likely. Hunt, together
with Grenfell, assigned manuscripts which came from
codices to third century or later. Roberts (1953) dared
to question this, and reassigned {P}64 to ca. 200,
based on paleography. Roberts (1953) announced that he
had obtained the agreement on the dating of Bell,
Skeat, and Turner, major names in paleography of Greek
manuscripts. Unaccountably, Thiede does not say why
these notables were incorrect in their collective
paleographical judgment as to the date of {P}64.
* Thiede omits to note that {P}64 is clearly in two
columns; he obscures this in his transcription, though
the accompanying plate is similar to Roberts (1953) in
presentation. Roberts (1953) in contrast notes the
two-column format, and clearly labels his transcription
according to columns.
* Thiede argues that new papyri, published since Roberts
(1953) allow the consideration of an earlier date. He
mentions the Greek Minor Prophets Scroll, now called
8HevXIIgr, published in DJD VIII,
Ed. by E. Tov, 1990, paleographically dated by P.
Parsons. Thiede also mentions texts from Herculaneum
until 79 c.e. -- the eruption of Vesuvius) and a recent
publication (Kim, Biblica, 1988) that lowers the date
of Bodmer-Chester Beatty papyrus II ({P} 46) from ca.
200 to ca. 100 c.e. He then adduces likenesses of
individual letters to these early papyri from various
parts of the Mediterranean. As Stuart Pickering
indicated, most of this work is unsound in its reliance
solely on individual letter forms. I would add that
Thiede sees resemblances between serifed letters from
serif-style mss and 'plain' letters from {P}64, where
the overall style is also lacking in serifs or other
ornamentation.
* A sound investigation of the possibility of redating an
individual ms would assemble a group of related ms
without regard to their date, and then attempt to place
the specific ms within a series of mss. This is a
method which has led to good results with the
paleographical dating of the Hebrew-Aramaic mss of the
Dead Sea. Where there are few examples, as with the
Greek mss of the Dead Sea, precise paleographical
comparisons cannot be made, and dating is very
hazardous. This is the case with the Greek Minor
Prophets Scroll (8HevXIIgr). To use this ms as a basis
for dating another ms, as Thiede has done, is to
compound the unreliability of paleographical dating. In
contrast to the method I have sketched, Thiede appears
to have proceeded by assembling materials which *might*
be datable to the first century, and then found
individual letter forms from the Matthew fragments
which are not unlike letter forms in his samples chosen
only by their date. Such a method as Thiede's does not
have what scientists call "face validity." There is no
reason to think that the investigator has been striving
for objectivity, when the methodology is so closely
related to the results obtained.
* While the initial methodological error of A. S. Hunt
with respect to dating {P}64 - the Matthew fragments -
occurred because he and Grenfell believed that codices
did not appear until the third century (Roberts,
1953:234), codicological information is important and
relevant. No one disputes that these fragments come
from a codex. Eric G. Turner's investigation of the
codex in The Typology of the Early Codex
, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977,
sets a lower bound for codex development as the second
century c.e. (p. 4), based on the dating of "Christian"
materials, with Greek literary codices becoming
prevalent a century later. Thiede does not call for,
nor address, the implications of his findings for
codicology. Should Turner's dates for codices be
lowered? Thiede does not say.
* Thiede concludes his argumentation with a discussion of
nomina sacra. He argues that Kim's
lowered dating of {P}46, which has clear
nomina sacra , supports Roberts's speculation
that nomina sacra were used in the
first century c.e. Roberts did not redate his list of
early papyri to support his contention, however.
[Source is C. H. Roberts, Manuscript, Society
and Belief in Earliest Christian Europe,
Oxford Univ. Press, 1979.] This material is included
because Roberts (1953) and Thiede (1995) both
reconstruct nomina sacra] in unclear
or missing portions ofthe fragments of {P}64. Whereas
Roberts (1953) is methodologically within bounds in
reconstructing nomina sacra for a
manuscript of ca. 200 c.e., because a fair amount of
other evidence exists to support the practice, Thiede
(1995) is methodologically less secure in
reconstructing nomina sacra for a
date around 70 c.e., since he relies on their plain
existence only in Kim's redating of {P}46 (Bodmer II).
Both the media presentation of I above, and Thiede's article in
ZPE depend on the perception of nomina sacra
in the text of these fragments of Matthew 26, and specifically
on the nomen sacrum IS for IHSOUS.
III ASSESSING THIEDE'S ARGUMENT
Thiede contributes greater precision to the specification of
{P}64, as P. Magdalen Gr. 17, rather than Gr. 18. He notes
Roberts's (1962) changed reading of GALEGLAIAN to GALIGLAIAN,
or perhaps GALEILAIAN, which is helpful, as the source is not
widely available. However, he still reads GALEGLAIAN in his own
transcription. While he notes the relationship with the
fragments in Barcelona, he did not obtain photos and include
them in his argument. He also provides no reason for dropping
{P}4 - the Paris Luke fragment which Roberts (1979) assigned to
the same ms.
His redating on paleographical grounds is seriously flawed in
four ways. First, he does not indicate how four great
paleographers could all concur on a lowered redating of the
Matthew fragments to a date ca. 200 and still be in error.
Second, he compares letters in these fragments from Egypt
[Luxor is purchase place, hand compares with {P}4, from Philo
codex binding] with material from Herculaneum in Italy (that
may be from ca. 40 b.c.e. on provenance grounds, with a
terminus ad quem of 79 c.e.) and from Qumran in The Land, and
from elsewhere in the wilderness of the Dead Sea (Naxal Xever).
Third, he compares individual letters without an appreciation
of the characteristics of their formation or the hands of which
they are a part. Fourth, his assembly of mss for comparisons is
not a coherent set, and was apparently chosen primarily as a
group of mss which COULD be dated in the first century c.e.,
regardless of their other features.
Thiede does not recognize that a two-column codex such as {P}
64 --Magdalen Gr. 17 -- has no similarly-constructed examples
with which to be compared. He also does not recognize the need
to provide some explanation for the appearance of a two-column
codex at least a century earlier than all other examples of
two-column codices. See Turner, op. cit.
Finally, Thiede (1995) and Roberts (1953) both transcribed the
fragments as though they contained nomina sacra
, and as though the use of nomina sacra was not
restricted to KURIOS, KURIE, or QEOS, QEOU, but rather extended
to abbreviations of IHSOUS. However, and I must state this
emphatically, there is NO VISIBLE SUPPORT
for reconstructing nomina sacra of IS or IH.
That is to say, almost no ink-papyrus combination exists for
the areas where these have been indicated. In working out the
stichometry, using the available text of Matthew 26 in the
relevant verses, I was able to supply alternative lines in
every case where Thiede proposed abbreviation or suspension
(use of first and last letters), except for the proposed use of
letters instead of a word to signify the number 12. There, I
agree, the stichometry (line length) is such that IB (Greek
letters standing for 12) must be read. This was also Roberts's
(1953) transcription.
Specifically, in the case of Fr. 2, verso (Mt 26.10), Thiede
reconstructs a first line as [oISeipenau]t[o]i[sti]
-- which gives a 16-letter stich.
There are at least two problems with this reconstruction.
First, the column is missing both beginning letters and ending
letters. Second, there are no letters on papyrus for this line.
At most, there are two dots, which might be the bottoms of
letters, and if they are the bottoms of letters, those letters
just might be the indicated t and i of Thiede's line 1.
In the case of Fr. 3, recto (Mt 26.22-23) both Thiede and
Roberts reconstruct a line with KE, for KURIE of "Is it I,
Lord." Thiede shows [imei]KEod[eapokri] for a
15-letter stich.
That there is a line of text here in the papyrus is apparent.
What it might contain is not at all clear. The only clear line
follows, with both beginning and end of the stich missing. The
possibilities for reconstruction are numerous; Thiede's line is
not supported by the miscellaneous ink in various spots on the
line.
In the case of Fr. 1, recto (Mt 26.31) many might argue that
the name IHSOUS *must* be suspended, using IH, or abbreviated,
using IS, in order for the line lengths to come out right. I
would point out that we have a line clearly beginning
autoiso . . . . and a following line that is 16 letters
long, (Thiede counted 17) consisting of one word,
skandalisqhsesqe , with the words following in the text
appearing on the line below. The text we now have suggests that
the first line would read autoisoiesouspanteshumeis
for an impossible 25 letters.
Thiede suggested autoiso[ISpantes] at 15
letters. I suggest that autoiso[iesouspantes
at 19 letters is possible. This possibility exists because the
word autois extends into the margin by one
letter, and the next five letters occupy the space taken by
only four in the following line. This would mean that a line of
19 letters would come out no longer than a line of 16 or 17
letters, yet could still contain the name IHSOUS written out.
Something has to be done to fit the first line into the column.
That it has to be done using an abbreviation or suspension of
IHSOUS is not automatically the case. It is a plausible
solution, however, for a manuscript considered in relationship
with other two-column codices and other manuscripts containing
nomina sacra , which Thiede does not do.
IV SUMMATION
Thiede's 1995 article suggests a lowered date for {P}64 -- P.
Magdalen Gr.17 -- by arguments which are methodologically
unsound. His further argument that there are nomina
sacra used in place of IHSOUS and KURIE is an
extremely flimsy one. These fragments of papyrus do not witness
directly to the reconstructions with recognizable inked letters
on physical papyrus. The layout of visible letters in one case
supports Thiede's (and Roberts's) observation that the text
contains Greek letters which represent the numeral 12, rather
than the Greek word for 12. In the other cases, other plausible
reconstructions of the lines are also possible. In the absence
of more data, such as the Barcelona fragments might provide,
these fragments do not provide any firm evidence for the
existence of nomina sacra in either
Roberts's date of ca. 200, or Thiede's 1st century dating.