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New Testament manuscripts
papyri • uncials • minuscules • lectionaries

Papyrus 64
Sign	64
Text	Matthew 3; 5; 26
Date	Late 2nd/3rd century
Script	Greek
Found	Coptos, Egypt
Now at	Barcelona, Fundació Sant Lluc Evangelista, Inv. Nr. 1; Oxford, Magdalen College, Gr. 18
Type	Alexandrian text-type
Category	I

The "Magdalen" papyrus was purchased in Luxor, Egypt in 1901 by Reverend Charles Bousfield Huleatt (1863-1908), who identified the Greek fragments as portions of the Gospel of Matthew (Chapter 26:23 and 31) and presented them to Magdalen College, Oxford, where they are cataloged as P. Magdalen Greek 17 (Gregory-Aland ⁶⁴) and whence they have their name. When the fragments were finally published by Colin H. Roberts in 1953, illustrated with a photograph, the hand was characterized as "an early predecessor of the so-called 'Biblical Uncial'" which began to emerge towards the end of the 2nd century. The uncial style is epitomised by the later biblical Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. Comparative paleographical analysis has remained the methodological key for dating the manuscript: the consensus is, ca AD 200.

The fragments are written on both sides, conclusive proof that they came from a codex rather than a scroll. More fragments, published in 1956 by Ramon Roca-Puig, cataloged as P. Barc. Inv. 1 (Gregory-Aland ⁶⁷), were determined by Roca-Puig and Roberts to come from the same codex as the Magdalen fragements, a view which has remained the scholarly consensus.

Date

⁶⁴ was originally given a third century date by Charles Huleatt, the one who donated the Manuscript to Magdalen College, and then papyrologist A. S. Hunt studied the manuscript and dated it to the early fourth century. But in reaction to what he thought was far too late a dating for the manuscript, Colin Roberts published the manuscript and gave it a dating of ca. 200, which was confirmed by three other leading papyrologists: Harold Bell, T. C. Skeat and E. G. Turner ¹, and this has been the general accepted date of ⁶⁴ since.

But in late 1994, considerable publicity surrounded Carsten Peter Thiede's redating of the Magdalen papyrus to the last third of the 1st century, optimistically interpreted by journalists. His official article appeared in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik the following year. The text for the layman was cowritten with Matthew d'Ancona and presented as The Jesus Papyrus, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1996. Thiede's re-dating has generally been viewed with skepticism by established Biblical scholars.

Philip Comfort and David Barret in their book Text of the Earliest NT Greek Manuscripts argue for a more general date of 150-175 for the manuscript, and also for ⁴ and ⁶⁷, which they argue came from the same codex. ⁴ was used as stuffing for the binding of “a codex of Philo, written in the later third century and found in a jar which had been walled up in a house at Coptos [in 250].”². If ⁴ was part of this codex, then the codex may have been written roughly 100 year's prior or earlier.³ Comfort and Barret also show that ^4/64/67 has affinities with a number of late second century papyri.⁴

Comfort and Barret "tend to claim an earlier date for many manuscripts included in their volume than might be allowed by other palaeographers."⁵ The Novum Testamentum Graece, a standard reference for the Greek witnesses, lists ⁴ and ^64/67 separately giving the former a date of the 3rd century, while the latter is assigned ca. 200.⁶ Most recently Charlesworth has concluded 'that ⁶⁴⁺⁶⁷ and ⁴, though written by the same scribe, are not from the same ... codex.'⁷

See also

• List of New Testament papyri

Notes

References

• Charlesworth, SD (2007) T. C. Skeat, P64+67 and P4, and the Problem of Fibre Orientation in Codicological Reconstruction, New Test. Stud. Vol.53, pp. 582–604, doi:10.1017/S002868850700029X
• Skeat, T. C. (1997). "The Oldest Manuscript Of The Four Gospels?". New Testament Studies 43: 1–34. 
• Thiede, Carsten Peter (1995). "Papyrus Magdalen Greek 17 (Gregory–Aland P⁶⁴). A Reappraisal" (PDF). Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 105: 13–20, http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/ifa/zpe/downloads/1995/105pdf/105013.pdf. Retrieved on 13 December 2006. 

Images

• http://chrles.multiply.com/photos/album/64/Bible_Papyrus_p64#2
• http://chrles.multiply.com/photos/album/64/Bible_Papyrus_p64#3

External links

• Peter M. Head, "The date of the Magdalen Papyrus of Matthew: A Response to C.P. Thiede": published in Tyndale Bulletin 46 (1995) p.251-285; the article suggests that he has both over-estimated the amount of stylistic similarity between P64 and several Palestinian Greek manuscripts and under-estimated the strength of the scholarly consensus of a date around AD 200.
• University of Münster, New Testament Transcripts Prototype. Select P64/67 from 'manuscript descriptions' box

Wikipedia content modification information:

• This page was last modified on 5 November 2008, at 11:33.

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