I. THEOLOGICAL

840. FRAGMENT OF AN UNCANONICAL GOSPEL.

THIS fragment consists of a single vellum leaf, practically complete except at one of the lower corners, and here most of the lacunae admit of a satisfactory restoration. The book to which the leaf belonged was of remarkably modest dimensions, but though the written surface only slightly exceeds two inches square the scribe has succeeded in compressing forty-five lines into the two pages. He used a small and not very regular uncial a majuscule or capital-like script hand, round and upright, of a type pointing, we think, to a fourth rather than a fifth century date. A later date than the fifth century, to which most of the papyri found with 840 belonged, is out of the question. A peculiarity is the employment of red ink to outline and bring into greater prominence the dots of punctuation (in the middle position), initial letters of sentences, strokes of abbreviation, and even accents, of which two examples occur (ll. 23 and 36). Longer pauses are marked not only by dots but also by short blank spaces, and the following letter, besides being sometimes ornamented with red, is rather enlarged. Of the abbreviations usual in theological MSS. manuscripts, ANOS man (anthropos), DD David, and SWR savior (soter) are found. Nu at the end of a line, in order to save space, is sometimes written as a horizontal stroke above the preceding vowel; and there is one apparent instance (l. 9) of the use of the common angular sign to complete a line shorter than its neighbours. In three cases words originally omitted have been supplied, all these interlineations most probably being by the original hand. The scribe apparently was particularly liable to omission, and in one or two other places supplements seem to be required; cf. l. 1 and notes on ll. 3-7 and 40.

The bulk of the fragment is concerned with a conversation between Jesus and a chief priest, which takes place in the Temple at Jerusalem, the episode,