Brent Nongbri provides an up-to-date introduction to the major collections of early Christian man... more Brent Nongbri provides an up-to-date introduction to the major collections of early Christian manuscripts and demonstrates that much of what we thought we knew about these books and fragments is mistaken. While biblical scholars have expended much effort in their study of the texts contained within our earliest Christian manuscripts, there has been a surprising lack of interest in thinking about these books as material objects with individual, unique histories. We have too often ignored the ways that the antiquities market obscures our knowledge of the origins of these manuscripts. Through painstaking archival research and detailed studies of our most important collections of early Christian manuscripts, Nongbri vividly shows how the earliest Christian books are more than just carriers of texts or samples of handwriting. They are three-dimensional archaeological artifacts with fascinating stories to tell, if we’re willing to listen.
For much of the past two centuries, religion has been understood as a universal phenomenon, a par... more For much of the past two centuries, religion has been understood as a universal phenomenon, a part of the “natural” human experience that is essentially the same across cultures and throughout history. Individual religions may vary through time and geographically, but there is an element, religion, that is to be found in all cultures during all time periods. Taking apart this assumption, Brent Nongbri shows that the idea of religion as a sphere of life distinct from politics, economics, or science is a recent development in European history—a development that has been projected outward in space and backward in time with the result that religion now appears to be a natural and necessary part of our world.
Examining a wide array of ancient writings, Nongbri demonstrates that in antiquity, there was no conceptual arena that could be designated as “religious” as opposed to “secular.” Surveying representative episodes from a two-thousand-year period, while constantly attending to the concrete social, political, and colonial contexts that shaped relevant works of philosophers, legal theorists, missionaries, and others, Nongbri offers a concise and readable account of the emergence of the concept of religion.
Disagreement about the trans-cultural applicability of the concept of religion has been a feature... more Disagreement about the trans-cultural applicability of the concept of religion has been a feature of the academic study of religion for decades. In a series of recent essays, Kevin Schilbrack has powerfully reframed these discussions as a debate between realist and antirealist philosophical orientations. Aligning himself with Critical Realism, Schilbrack argues that religion is a transcultural and transhistorical reality and that those who deny this are antirealists. As my own work is among his targets, this article engages Schilbrack's critique. The first part of the article challenges some of Schilbrack's readings of Before Religion. The second part queries Schilbrack's use of examples from the physical sciences as analogies for the relationship between concepts and the real things they are said to designate. The third part models an alternative use of examples from the natural sciences to think about historiography, concluding that the realist/antirealist dichotomy is not a useful tool. The physics of the last 150 years has shown that our most fundamental ideas about the universe – what we think the "real" character of the world might be – can change radically in short intervals of time. Historians should take heed and approach their own engagement with the traces of the past with due humility.
This article revisits the question of whether P65 (PSI XIV 1373) and P49 (P.Yale I 2 + II 86) sho... more This article revisits the question of whether P65 (PSI XIV 1373) and P49 (P.Yale I 2 + II 86) should be considered as parts of two different codices or part of a single codex containing a collection of Paul’s letters. While the similarity of the scripts of these two manuscripts has long been recognized, the two fragments have not been subjected to a thorough codicological comparison. This article examines the scripts of P65 and P49, selected scribal and codicological details of the fragments, and what can be known about the provenance of these papyri. The evidence examined points to the conclusion that these two fragmentary folia very probably came from the same single-quire codex containing a collection of Paul’s letters and should be listed as a single manuscript rather than two separate manuscripts in the various catalogs and databases.
Friedrich Max Müller (1823-1900), an expert in Sanskrit and the study of languages, is also gener... more Friedrich Max Müller (1823-1900), an expert in Sanskrit and the study of languages, is also generally regarded as an important founding figure in the academic study of religion. Müller’s presentation of the study of religion as a “science,” his emphasis on comparison, and the particular Christian viewpoint from which Müller approached the study of religion still cast a shadow over the academic study of religion in the twenty-first century.
Studies seeking to elucidate the Synoptic Problem, the issue of literary dependence among the Syn... more Studies seeking to elucidate the Synoptic Problem, the issue of literary dependence among the Synoptic Gospels, often proceed by making close comparisons among the Synoptic Gospels that rely on the idea that the text of each of these Gospels is fixed. Yet, when one turns to the actual manuscripts preserving the Gospels, one finds instead fluid texts with significant variation. Textual critics of the New Testament have attempted to sort through these variations and determine the earliest recoverable text of each of the Gospels, and in doing so, they often adopt a particular approach to the Synoptic Problem. At the same time, one’s approach to the Synoptic Problem is determined by the analysis of the editions established by textual critics. This chapter explores the implications of this circularity by examining a series of parallel passages in different printed synopses and in individual manuscripts.
Codex Sinaiticus is generally described as one of ‘the great fourth century majuscule Bibles’, an... more Codex Sinaiticus is generally described as one of ‘the great fourth century majuscule Bibles’, and its construction is often assigned to a more precise date in the middle of the fourth century. This essay surveys the evidence for the date of production of the codex and concludes that it could have been produced at any point from the early fourth century to the early fifth century. This time span may seem uncomfortably wide, but this particular range of dates makes Codex Sinaiticus an ideal candidate for AMS radiocarbon analysis. The shape of the radiocarbon calibration curve during this period means that a well-executed radiocarbon analysis of the codex should have the potential to shed further light on the date the codex was produced.
The surviving portion of the papyrus codex of the letters of Paul split between the Chester Beatt... more The surviving portion of the papyrus codex of the letters of Paul split between the Chester Beatty Library and the University of Michigan (𝔓46) consists of a well preserved but damaged single quire containing parts of nine of Paul’s letters. Because the pages of the codex are numbered, scholars have believed that it is possible to reconstruct the original size of the quire, which turns out to be too small for the traditional Pauline corpus of fourteen letters. Many scholars have taken this to mean that the codex did not contain the Pastoral letters (1–2 Timothy and Titus). Jeremy Duff has argued that the copyist increased the number of letters per page in the second half of the codex and intended to add extra leaves in order to produce a codex with all of the fourteen letters found in the majority of undamaged Greek manuscripts of Paul’s letters. While Duff ’s hypothesis has been critically engaged on other grounds, this article assesses Duff ’s proposed ancient comparanda for the addition of extra folia to the end of a single-quire codex and revisits the problem of the contents of this codex in light of the construction techniques of better preserved single-quire codices.
The surviving manuscripts of Paul’s letters usually play only a secondary role in biographies of ... more The surviving manuscripts of Paul’s letters usually play only a secondary role in biographies of the apostle. The manuscripts contribute an immaterial text of the individual letters that can be used to construct the printed eclectic text that the biographer can then interpret. Yet, access to Paul’s individual letters comes only through the surviving collections in our manuscripts, and thus the “historical Paul” produced by the process of critically reading the letters attributed to him is always mediated by the interests of the collectors of his letters and the copyists who transmitted the letter collections. This chapter explores the ways in which the surviving manuscripts of collections of Paul’s letters complicate the use of the individual letters as biographical sources, paying special attention to the role of the collectors and copyists of the letters as curators of what we should remember about Paul and also what we should forget.
Seven animal hide scrolls with Hebrew and Aramaic writing were sold in Jerusalem in 1947. Additio... more Seven animal hide scrolls with Hebrew and Aramaic writing were sold in Jerusalem in 1947. Additional smaller fragments of similar scrolls were sold from 1948 to 1950. Within a few years of their appearance, these “Jerusalem Scrolls” as they were then known, became “the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran Cave 1.” While this change of names may seem trivial, it glosses over some difficult questions about the provenance of these materials. What we now call “Cave 1Q” or “Qumran Cave 1” was excavated in 1949, but scholarship reveals considerable confusion concerning which purchased scrolls can be materially connected to fragments that were excavated by archaeologists under controlled conditions in Cave 1. Furthermore, Cave 1 is often treated as if it was a sealed context rather than the highly contaminated site that it actually was at the time of its excavation by archaeologists. For these reasons, it is not completely clear whether all the scrolls usually assigned to Cave 1 actually originated at this site. This article is an attempt to sort through the evidence to determine exactly which scrolls and fragments attributed to Cave 1 were purchased, when and from whom such pieces were purchased, and what can actually be known with confidence about the connection of these “Jerusalem Scrolls” with the site we now call Qumran Cave 1.
P.Ryl. III.457, a papyrus fragment of the gospel of John known to New Testament scholars as P52, ... more P.Ryl. III.457, a papyrus fragment of the gospel of John known to New Testament scholars as P52, is regularly publicized as the earliest extant Christian manuscript and forms a central part of the Rylands collection. Yet the date generally assigned to the fragment (‘about 125 AD’) is based entirely on palaeography, or analysis of handwriting, which cannot provide such a precise date. The present article introduces new details about the acquisition of P52, engages the most recent scholarship on the date of the fragment and argues that the range of possible palaeographic dates for P52 extends into the third century.
It is often said that palaeographic analysis of Greek literary manuscripts from the Roman era has... more It is often said that palaeographic analysis of Greek literary manuscripts from the Roman era has progressed from an aesthetic judgment to more of a science, thanks largely to increased data (in the form of newly discovered papyri and parchments from Egypt) and to more sophisticated ways of describing similarity and difference in handwriting. This progress is frequently taken to mean that we may now use the analysis of handwriting to assign dates to undated manuscripts with much greater precision and accuracy than was possible a century ago. This article questions this conclusion by focusing on neglected methodological points that specifically relate to the problem of palaeographic dating of codices, namely the size and character of the corpus of securely datable samples to which the handwriting of undated codices is compared. This problem is especially relevant for early Christian books, the surviving examples of which tend to be copied in the codex format.
As part of the efforts of the Bodmer Lab to digitize and catalog the ancient papyrus and parchmen... more As part of the efforts of the Bodmer Lab to digitize and catalog the ancient papyrus and parchment items at the Fondation Martin Bodmer, I have recently had occasion to thoroughly re-examine the published data about the construction of P.Bodm. 2 (LDAB 2777), the well known papyrus codex containing the Gospel according to John in Greek.2 In the course of this reassessment, some previously overlooked features of the codex came to light. To summarize as concisely as possible: I found that one fragmentary page of P.Bodm. 2 (page 149, a codicological recto) appears to have an unusually small amount of text and an unusually large lower margin. This page also happens to contain the conclusion to chapter 20 of John’s Gospel. Chapter 21 begins at the top of the next page (page 150, a codicological verso), which contains a more normal amount of text and has a more normal lower margin. It has for some time been recognized that the copyist of P.Bodm. 2 made an initial copy of an exemplar and then adjusted and corrected the copied text against a different exemplar with different textual affinities. This paper raises the possibility that the first exemplar of P.Bodm. 2 lacked chapter 21. If this hypothesis is correct, P.Bodm. 2 would provide the first piece of material evidence for the circulation of a copy of the Gospel according to John that ended after chapter 20.
Based on autopsy inspection of the fragmentary leaves of P.Bodmer II (P66), this article assesses... more Based on autopsy inspection of the fragmentary leaves of P.Bodmer II (P66), this article assesses previous efforts to properly position the fragments of P.Bodmer II that were left unplaced in the initial publication of the codex and offers new suggestions for placements.
Two manuscripts of the Iliad acquired in the middle of the nineteenth century by Anthony Charles ... more Two manuscripts of the Iliad acquired in the middle of the nineteenth century by Anthony Charles Harris, the famous “Harris Homers,” are usually said to have been discovered in Egypt in “the Crocodile Pit at Maabdeh.” The British Museum eventually bought both manuscripts. Yet, the details of both Harris’s acquisition of the manuscripts and their sale to the British Museum are murky. The earliest relevant sources, which seem to have been lost to scholarship, contradict each other as well as later accounts. This article reviews what can be known about the provenance and collection history of the manuscripts and introduces new evidence in the form of unpublished letters of Florence Nightingale that mention the sale of Harris’s collection of Egyptian antiquities.
This article presents some new material on the Greek text of Melito. Nongbri describes the redisc... more This article presents some new material on the Greek text of Melito. Nongbri describes the rediscovery of the first leaf of the Greek copy of Melito’s Peri Pascha in the Bodmer collection and discusses its place in the codex of which it is a part. Nongbri and Hall then jointly present a transcript of the text, supplemented where it is damaged with material from other sources and the published critical text. A new critical text follows, with notes in explanation. Finally we offer a new translation of the sections concerned.
This brief response contextualizes Robert A. Segal's review of Before Religion in the journal Rel... more This brief response contextualizes Robert A. Segal's review of Before Religion in the journal Religion & Theology.
The construction of the so-called Bodmer Composite or Miscellaneous codex has been an ongoing pro... more The construction of the so-called Bodmer Composite or Miscellaneous codex has been an ongoing problem since the publication of its constituent parts began in the 1950s. A recent inspection of high resolution digital images of P.Bodmer VIII shows compellingly that this portion of the codex had more than one phase of use, was originally part of a separate codex, and was only later removed and joined to the other sections of the Bodmer “composite” codex. The New Testament manuscript known as P72 (P.Bodmer VII + P.Bodmer VIII) is thus a codicological unity only in a secondary sense.
This piece is a response to two recent articles on the discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices (Good... more This piece is a response to two recent articles on the discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices (Goodacre 2013 and Denzey Lewis & Blount 2014). I try to pinpoint more precisely what exactly has been said about the alleged find-spot of the codices and to suggest we should be suspicious of reports that Christian books were found buried with bodies in Egypt.
Papyrus Bodmer XIV–XV (P75), a well-preserved Greek papyrus codex containing the Gospels of Luke ... more Papyrus Bodmer XIV–XV (P75), a well-preserved Greek papyrus codex containing the Gospels of Luke and John, has been called the most significant New Testament papyrus so far discovered. The reason for this high estimation is the combination of the early date assigned to the manuscript on the basis of paleography (ca. 175–225 CE) and its close agreement with the text of Codex Vaticanus, which is thought to provide evidence that the “B text” of Vaticanus was produced as early as the second century and was very carefully transmitted. The evidence gathered in the present essay calls these conclusions into question by showing that both paleographically and codicologically, P.Bodm. XIV–XV fits comfortably in a fourth century context, along with the bulk of the other “Bodmer papyri” with which it was apparently discovered. These observations, combined with the fact that the text of P.Bodm. XIV–XV so closely matches that of Vaticanus—a codex widely acknowledged to be a product of the fourth century—suggest that P.Bodm. XIV–XV was also itself produced in the fourth century. Thus, a number of previous arguments that relied on a second- or early-third-century date for P.Bodm. XIV–XV will need to be reconsidered.
Brent Nongbri provides an up-to-date introduction to the major collections of early Christian man... more Brent Nongbri provides an up-to-date introduction to the major collections of early Christian manuscripts and demonstrates that much of what we thought we knew about these books and fragments is mistaken. While biblical scholars have expended much effort in their study of the texts contained within our earliest Christian manuscripts, there has been a surprising lack of interest in thinking about these books as material objects with individual, unique histories. We have too often ignored the ways that the antiquities market obscures our knowledge of the origins of these manuscripts. Through painstaking archival research and detailed studies of our most important collections of early Christian manuscripts, Nongbri vividly shows how the earliest Christian books are more than just carriers of texts or samples of handwriting. They are three-dimensional archaeological artifacts with fascinating stories to tell, if we’re willing to listen.
For much of the past two centuries, religion has been understood as a universal phenomenon, a par... more For much of the past two centuries, religion has been understood as a universal phenomenon, a part of the “natural” human experience that is essentially the same across cultures and throughout history. Individual religions may vary through time and geographically, but there is an element, religion, that is to be found in all cultures during all time periods. Taking apart this assumption, Brent Nongbri shows that the idea of religion as a sphere of life distinct from politics, economics, or science is a recent development in European history—a development that has been projected outward in space and backward in time with the result that religion now appears to be a natural and necessary part of our world.
Examining a wide array of ancient writings, Nongbri demonstrates that in antiquity, there was no conceptual arena that could be designated as “religious” as opposed to “secular.” Surveying representative episodes from a two-thousand-year period, while constantly attending to the concrete social, political, and colonial contexts that shaped relevant works of philosophers, legal theorists, missionaries, and others, Nongbri offers a concise and readable account of the emergence of the concept of religion.
Disagreement about the trans-cultural applicability of the concept of religion has been a feature... more Disagreement about the trans-cultural applicability of the concept of religion has been a feature of the academic study of religion for decades. In a series of recent essays, Kevin Schilbrack has powerfully reframed these discussions as a debate between realist and antirealist philosophical orientations. Aligning himself with Critical Realism, Schilbrack argues that religion is a transcultural and transhistorical reality and that those who deny this are antirealists. As my own work is among his targets, this article engages Schilbrack's critique. The first part of the article challenges some of Schilbrack's readings of Before Religion. The second part queries Schilbrack's use of examples from the physical sciences as analogies for the relationship between concepts and the real things they are said to designate. The third part models an alternative use of examples from the natural sciences to think about historiography, concluding that the realist/antirealist dichotomy is not a useful tool. The physics of the last 150 years has shown that our most fundamental ideas about the universe – what we think the "real" character of the world might be – can change radically in short intervals of time. Historians should take heed and approach their own engagement with the traces of the past with due humility.
This article revisits the question of whether P65 (PSI XIV 1373) and P49 (P.Yale I 2 + II 86) sho... more This article revisits the question of whether P65 (PSI XIV 1373) and P49 (P.Yale I 2 + II 86) should be considered as parts of two different codices or part of a single codex containing a collection of Paul’s letters. While the similarity of the scripts of these two manuscripts has long been recognized, the two fragments have not been subjected to a thorough codicological comparison. This article examines the scripts of P65 and P49, selected scribal and codicological details of the fragments, and what can be known about the provenance of these papyri. The evidence examined points to the conclusion that these two fragmentary folia very probably came from the same single-quire codex containing a collection of Paul’s letters and should be listed as a single manuscript rather than two separate manuscripts in the various catalogs and databases.
Friedrich Max Müller (1823-1900), an expert in Sanskrit and the study of languages, is also gener... more Friedrich Max Müller (1823-1900), an expert in Sanskrit and the study of languages, is also generally regarded as an important founding figure in the academic study of religion. Müller’s presentation of the study of religion as a “science,” his emphasis on comparison, and the particular Christian viewpoint from which Müller approached the study of religion still cast a shadow over the academic study of religion in the twenty-first century.
Studies seeking to elucidate the Synoptic Problem, the issue of literary dependence among the Syn... more Studies seeking to elucidate the Synoptic Problem, the issue of literary dependence among the Synoptic Gospels, often proceed by making close comparisons among the Synoptic Gospels that rely on the idea that the text of each of these Gospels is fixed. Yet, when one turns to the actual manuscripts preserving the Gospels, one finds instead fluid texts with significant variation. Textual critics of the New Testament have attempted to sort through these variations and determine the earliest recoverable text of each of the Gospels, and in doing so, they often adopt a particular approach to the Synoptic Problem. At the same time, one’s approach to the Synoptic Problem is determined by the analysis of the editions established by textual critics. This chapter explores the implications of this circularity by examining a series of parallel passages in different printed synopses and in individual manuscripts.
Codex Sinaiticus is generally described as one of ‘the great fourth century majuscule Bibles’, an... more Codex Sinaiticus is generally described as one of ‘the great fourth century majuscule Bibles’, and its construction is often assigned to a more precise date in the middle of the fourth century. This essay surveys the evidence for the date of production of the codex and concludes that it could have been produced at any point from the early fourth century to the early fifth century. This time span may seem uncomfortably wide, but this particular range of dates makes Codex Sinaiticus an ideal candidate for AMS radiocarbon analysis. The shape of the radiocarbon calibration curve during this period means that a well-executed radiocarbon analysis of the codex should have the potential to shed further light on the date the codex was produced.
The surviving portion of the papyrus codex of the letters of Paul split between the Chester Beatt... more The surviving portion of the papyrus codex of the letters of Paul split between the Chester Beatty Library and the University of Michigan (𝔓46) consists of a well preserved but damaged single quire containing parts of nine of Paul’s letters. Because the pages of the codex are numbered, scholars have believed that it is possible to reconstruct the original size of the quire, which turns out to be too small for the traditional Pauline corpus of fourteen letters. Many scholars have taken this to mean that the codex did not contain the Pastoral letters (1–2 Timothy and Titus). Jeremy Duff has argued that the copyist increased the number of letters per page in the second half of the codex and intended to add extra leaves in order to produce a codex with all of the fourteen letters found in the majority of undamaged Greek manuscripts of Paul’s letters. While Duff ’s hypothesis has been critically engaged on other grounds, this article assesses Duff ’s proposed ancient comparanda for the addition of extra folia to the end of a single-quire codex and revisits the problem of the contents of this codex in light of the construction techniques of better preserved single-quire codices.
The surviving manuscripts of Paul’s letters usually play only a secondary role in biographies of ... more The surviving manuscripts of Paul’s letters usually play only a secondary role in biographies of the apostle. The manuscripts contribute an immaterial text of the individual letters that can be used to construct the printed eclectic text that the biographer can then interpret. Yet, access to Paul’s individual letters comes only through the surviving collections in our manuscripts, and thus the “historical Paul” produced by the process of critically reading the letters attributed to him is always mediated by the interests of the collectors of his letters and the copyists who transmitted the letter collections. This chapter explores the ways in which the surviving manuscripts of collections of Paul’s letters complicate the use of the individual letters as biographical sources, paying special attention to the role of the collectors and copyists of the letters as curators of what we should remember about Paul and also what we should forget.
Seven animal hide scrolls with Hebrew and Aramaic writing were sold in Jerusalem in 1947. Additio... more Seven animal hide scrolls with Hebrew and Aramaic writing were sold in Jerusalem in 1947. Additional smaller fragments of similar scrolls were sold from 1948 to 1950. Within a few years of their appearance, these “Jerusalem Scrolls” as they were then known, became “the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran Cave 1.” While this change of names may seem trivial, it glosses over some difficult questions about the provenance of these materials. What we now call “Cave 1Q” or “Qumran Cave 1” was excavated in 1949, but scholarship reveals considerable confusion concerning which purchased scrolls can be materially connected to fragments that were excavated by archaeologists under controlled conditions in Cave 1. Furthermore, Cave 1 is often treated as if it was a sealed context rather than the highly contaminated site that it actually was at the time of its excavation by archaeologists. For these reasons, it is not completely clear whether all the scrolls usually assigned to Cave 1 actually originated at this site. This article is an attempt to sort through the evidence to determine exactly which scrolls and fragments attributed to Cave 1 were purchased, when and from whom such pieces were purchased, and what can actually be known with confidence about the connection of these “Jerusalem Scrolls” with the site we now call Qumran Cave 1.
P.Ryl. III.457, a papyrus fragment of the gospel of John known to New Testament scholars as P52, ... more P.Ryl. III.457, a papyrus fragment of the gospel of John known to New Testament scholars as P52, is regularly publicized as the earliest extant Christian manuscript and forms a central part of the Rylands collection. Yet the date generally assigned to the fragment (‘about 125 AD’) is based entirely on palaeography, or analysis of handwriting, which cannot provide such a precise date. The present article introduces new details about the acquisition of P52, engages the most recent scholarship on the date of the fragment and argues that the range of possible palaeographic dates for P52 extends into the third century.
It is often said that palaeographic analysis of Greek literary manuscripts from the Roman era has... more It is often said that palaeographic analysis of Greek literary manuscripts from the Roman era has progressed from an aesthetic judgment to more of a science, thanks largely to increased data (in the form of newly discovered papyri and parchments from Egypt) and to more sophisticated ways of describing similarity and difference in handwriting. This progress is frequently taken to mean that we may now use the analysis of handwriting to assign dates to undated manuscripts with much greater precision and accuracy than was possible a century ago. This article questions this conclusion by focusing on neglected methodological points that specifically relate to the problem of palaeographic dating of codices, namely the size and character of the corpus of securely datable samples to which the handwriting of undated codices is compared. This problem is especially relevant for early Christian books, the surviving examples of which tend to be copied in the codex format.
As part of the efforts of the Bodmer Lab to digitize and catalog the ancient papyrus and parchmen... more As part of the efforts of the Bodmer Lab to digitize and catalog the ancient papyrus and parchment items at the Fondation Martin Bodmer, I have recently had occasion to thoroughly re-examine the published data about the construction of P.Bodm. 2 (LDAB 2777), the well known papyrus codex containing the Gospel according to John in Greek.2 In the course of this reassessment, some previously overlooked features of the codex came to light. To summarize as concisely as possible: I found that one fragmentary page of P.Bodm. 2 (page 149, a codicological recto) appears to have an unusually small amount of text and an unusually large lower margin. This page also happens to contain the conclusion to chapter 20 of John’s Gospel. Chapter 21 begins at the top of the next page (page 150, a codicological verso), which contains a more normal amount of text and has a more normal lower margin. It has for some time been recognized that the copyist of P.Bodm. 2 made an initial copy of an exemplar and then adjusted and corrected the copied text against a different exemplar with different textual affinities. This paper raises the possibility that the first exemplar of P.Bodm. 2 lacked chapter 21. If this hypothesis is correct, P.Bodm. 2 would provide the first piece of material evidence for the circulation of a copy of the Gospel according to John that ended after chapter 20.
Based on autopsy inspection of the fragmentary leaves of P.Bodmer II (P66), this article assesses... more Based on autopsy inspection of the fragmentary leaves of P.Bodmer II (P66), this article assesses previous efforts to properly position the fragments of P.Bodmer II that were left unplaced in the initial publication of the codex and offers new suggestions for placements.
Two manuscripts of the Iliad acquired in the middle of the nineteenth century by Anthony Charles ... more Two manuscripts of the Iliad acquired in the middle of the nineteenth century by Anthony Charles Harris, the famous “Harris Homers,” are usually said to have been discovered in Egypt in “the Crocodile Pit at Maabdeh.” The British Museum eventually bought both manuscripts. Yet, the details of both Harris’s acquisition of the manuscripts and their sale to the British Museum are murky. The earliest relevant sources, which seem to have been lost to scholarship, contradict each other as well as later accounts. This article reviews what can be known about the provenance and collection history of the manuscripts and introduces new evidence in the form of unpublished letters of Florence Nightingale that mention the sale of Harris’s collection of Egyptian antiquities.
This article presents some new material on the Greek text of Melito. Nongbri describes the redisc... more This article presents some new material on the Greek text of Melito. Nongbri describes the rediscovery of the first leaf of the Greek copy of Melito’s Peri Pascha in the Bodmer collection and discusses its place in the codex of which it is a part. Nongbri and Hall then jointly present a transcript of the text, supplemented where it is damaged with material from other sources and the published critical text. A new critical text follows, with notes in explanation. Finally we offer a new translation of the sections concerned.
This brief response contextualizes Robert A. Segal's review of Before Religion in the journal Rel... more This brief response contextualizes Robert A. Segal's review of Before Religion in the journal Religion & Theology.
The construction of the so-called Bodmer Composite or Miscellaneous codex has been an ongoing pro... more The construction of the so-called Bodmer Composite or Miscellaneous codex has been an ongoing problem since the publication of its constituent parts began in the 1950s. A recent inspection of high resolution digital images of P.Bodmer VIII shows compellingly that this portion of the codex had more than one phase of use, was originally part of a separate codex, and was only later removed and joined to the other sections of the Bodmer “composite” codex. The New Testament manuscript known as P72 (P.Bodmer VII + P.Bodmer VIII) is thus a codicological unity only in a secondary sense.
This piece is a response to two recent articles on the discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices (Good... more This piece is a response to two recent articles on the discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices (Goodacre 2013 and Denzey Lewis & Blount 2014). I try to pinpoint more precisely what exactly has been said about the alleged find-spot of the codices and to suggest we should be suspicious of reports that Christian books were found buried with bodies in Egypt.
Papyrus Bodmer XIV–XV (P75), a well-preserved Greek papyrus codex containing the Gospels of Luke ... more Papyrus Bodmer XIV–XV (P75), a well-preserved Greek papyrus codex containing the Gospels of Luke and John, has been called the most significant New Testament papyrus so far discovered. The reason for this high estimation is the combination of the early date assigned to the manuscript on the basis of paleography (ca. 175–225 CE) and its close agreement with the text of Codex Vaticanus, which is thought to provide evidence that the “B text” of Vaticanus was produced as early as the second century and was very carefully transmitted. The evidence gathered in the present essay calls these conclusions into question by showing that both paleographically and codicologically, P.Bodm. XIV–XV fits comfortably in a fourth century context, along with the bulk of the other “Bodmer papyri” with which it was apparently discovered. These observations, combined with the fact that the text of P.Bodm. XIV–XV so closely matches that of Vaticanus—a codex widely acknowledged to be a product of the fourth century—suggest that P.Bodm. XIV–XV was also itself produced in the fourth century. Thus, a number of previous arguments that relied on a second- or early-third-century date for P.Bodm. XIV–XV will need to be reconsidered.
This brief report describes recent work clarifying the construction of the so-called Bodmer "Misc... more This brief report describes recent work clarifying the construction of the so-called Bodmer "Miscellaneous" or "Composite" codex (LDAB 2565 + 220465), namely the rediscovery of a lost leaf of P.Bodmer XIII (Melito's περι πασχα) and the proper formation of the quires containing P.Bodmer XX, P.Bodmer IX, and P.Bodmer VIII.
Uploads
Books by Brent Nongbri
Examining a wide array of ancient writings, Nongbri demonstrates that in antiquity, there was no conceptual arena that could be designated as “religious” as opposed to “secular.” Surveying representative episodes from a two-thousand-year period, while constantly attending to the concrete social, political, and colonial contexts that shaped relevant works of philosophers, legal theorists, missionaries, and others, Nongbri offers a concise and readable account of the emergence of the concept of religion.
Papers by Brent Nongbri
Examining a wide array of ancient writings, Nongbri demonstrates that in antiquity, there was no conceptual arena that could be designated as “religious” as opposed to “secular.” Surveying representative episodes from a two-thousand-year period, while constantly attending to the concrete social, political, and colonial contexts that shaped relevant works of philosophers, legal theorists, missionaries, and others, Nongbri offers a concise and readable account of the emergence of the concept of religion.
or "Composite" codex (LDAB 2565 + 220465), namely the rediscovery of a lost leaf of P.Bodmer XIII (Melito's περι πασχα) and the proper formation of the quires containing P.Bodmer XX, P.Bodmer IX, and P.Bodmer VIII.