The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part 73

4933. COLLECTION OF BIBLICAL EXCERPTS

63 6B.71/H (1-5) (e) 5.1 x 10.1 cm Third/fourth century

Portion of a leaf, probably from a papyrus codex, with the remains of 18 lines on the down side and of 21 lines on the across side. The text contains excerpts from the Old Testament (testimonia collections of proof-texts), except for an unidentified text on the down side: Jeremiah 38:24-6, Amos 9:11-12 on the down side, and Psalm 17:1-12 on the across side. On the down side a lateral margin is extant to a maximum of 1.2 cm.

If we take down 8 as basis, we have 10 letters, which occupy 4.2 cm. Assuming an average of 33 letters per line, we would obtain 13.8 cm. Adding margins on a minimum assumption of 1.5 cm each, we would have a page width of 17.5 cm, which corresponds to many in Turner's Group 5 (The Typology of the Early Codex 16-18). These codices mostly have heights of 25-30 cm. If we assume 25 cm, and deduct a minimum of 3 cm for upper and lower margin, and given that the fragment gets 18-21 lines into a height of 11 cm, we could guess that originally the page had c. 40 lines. In any case we cannot determine with absolute certainty if this is a single leaf or belongs to a codex. However, on the down side the text is badly aligned on the left, which may suggest that the text was copied—with some difficulty—when the (assumed) codex was already bound; if so, this must be the inner edge, and the sequence of the two pages should be down then across (I adopt this sequence in the text).

The script is an upright semi-documentary hand, only roughly bilinear. On the down side letters are sometimes slightly enlarged at line-beginning (6 and 7), while on the across side some final letters are prolonged in an attempt to even the right-hand margin (15, 16, and 17). On the one hand, features typical of book-hand script can be distinguished in short sequences of letters, each of which is clear-cut and without ligatures with its neighbours (e.g., across 12). On the other hand, the presence of ligatures and the shape of certain letters recall documentary scripts. Therefore, the same letter can occur in two different shapes: N, for example, presents both the standard book-hand shape (e.g., across 10, in the standard abbreviation of the nomen sacrum sacred name, and 12), but also the documentary form in one movement with the central stroke approaching the horizontal (e.g., across 11). A good documentary parallel is P. Flor. I 36, AD 312 (see Scrivere libri e documenti, tav. CXXVIII); cf. also the hand of P. Bodm. VII (plate in ed. pr. before p. 13), X (plate in ed. pr. before p. 7), and XI (plate in ed. pr. before p. 47), parts of the miscellaneous codex vH 138 to be ascribed to the fourth century (cf. E. Crisci, Segno e testo 2 (2004) 122-6, esp. 124 nn. 56-7); P. Palau Rib. Lit. 4 (Aegyptus 66 (1986) 106-7, plate after p. 128), third/fourth century. I am inclined to assign the script of 4933 to the late third/early fourth century.

Organic diaeresis, in a ligatured form approximating an acute accent, appears in down 3 (first epsilon), 7 (first epsilon of the one), 11 (eta of the day), 13 (on epsilon of the nations), across 14 (first eta).