The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part 66

After "here" most manuscripts have "do not go out or follow". 𝔓⁷⁵ B f¹³ and the Sahidic omit "go out or"; f¹, supported by the Harclean Syriac margin, reads "do not believe"; 579 pc read "do not go out". The trace surviving after "do not" is too slight to be decisive.

W. E. H. COCKLE

4496. ACTS OF THE APOSTLES XXVI 31-32; XXVII 6-7

100/126(a) 5.2 × 5.2 cm Fifth century
𝔓¹¹² Plates I–II

A fragment of a papyrus codex containing parts of four verses from chapters 26 and 27 of Acts. The hand is a large and carefully executed Biblical Majuscule a formal, upright, rounded script style; see on this script G. Cavallo, Ricerche sulla maiuscola biblica Research on Biblical Majuscule (1967). Although somewhat reminiscent of fourth-century hands, for example Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, it is heavier and more mannered, with marked chiaroscuro strong contrast between light and dark ink strokes, and is thus closer to several hands assigned to the fifth century, for example, Cavallo and Maehler, GBEBP (1987) 18a, 18b, 24a, and Codex Alexandrinus. On the other hand, the shading is less extreme, and the finials on horizontal elements less marked, than in the Vienna Dioscorides, which can be dated c. AD 513.

On the recto front side the papyrus has 17–20 letters per line and on the verso back side 19–23 if the restorations are correct. If we assume a normal text, some 515 letters will have been lost between the two sides or approximately 26 lines. This would give a page of some 34 lines, assuming that we have a fragment of a single-column codex. The average line height is just over 7 mm and a typical line would have been 12 cm wide, judging by the size of the surviving letters. If we allow 3 cm for margins on all sides, a single-column page would have measured approximately 18 × 31 cm. This fits reasonably well into Turner’s Group 5, which includes many 4th- and 5th-century papyri along with a 6th- or 7th-century codex of Acts (𝔓⁷⁴ = P. Bodmer XVII). A double-column codex in which the fragment occupied the outer column would have measured approximately 33 × 31 cm. This very broad format is unlikely but not impossible; a few examples in Turner’s Group 2 have somewhat similar dimensions.

If this was a single-column codex, a typical page would have held about 120 words. Consequently, about 160 pages would have been required for Acts alone or about 220 pages for Acts and the Catholic Epistles. Both of these are plausible (𝔓⁴⁵ is estimated to have had some 220 pages). A combination such as Gospels + Acts can be ruled out by the enormity of the number of pages required (even if we suppose a two-column codex). The combination Pauline Epistles + Acts is also too great if the codex had only a single column.

There is one nomen sacrum abbreviation, "man" (recto 4), a stop which stands at two-thirds letter-height (verso 3), and one instance of diaeresis two dots over a vowel to indicate it is sounded separately (verso 4). There are no accents. 4496 is the earliest Greek witness to an addition at the end of verse 32.