Magdalen papyrus

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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 P⁶⁴) 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 P⁶⁷), 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.

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.

[edit] 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)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.
• `Abd ar-Rahman Robert Squires and M S M Saiful "Papyrus 64": bibliography

[edit] References

• 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. Retrieved on 2006-12-13.