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Diplai in P.Bodmer II (P66)

5/13/2013

17 Comments

 
Last week, I was reading through the Gospel of John’s story about the washing of the disciples’ feet in Greek (chapter 13) and came across a variant I thought I would check in the original manuscript. In John 13:5, the NA28 prints νιπτῆρα as the “basin” in which Jesus pours the water with which he will wash the disciples’ feet. There is a variant here that is read, apparently, only by P.Bodmer II (P66) and a few proto-Bohairic versions: ποδονιπτῆρα (“foot-basin”). I took a look at my facsimile of P.Bodmer II and realized that there is a curious little mark interrupting the letters of the word ποδονιπτῆρα. It is graphically represented as ποδονι > πτηρα. Here is what it looks like in the actual manuscript:
Picture
This looks exactly like a diple and I cannot help but wonder if the scribe is using it to signify that the reading is spurious, that there is a variant, etc. I looked a little more and realized that the scribe uses this diple-like sign several times. It became evident that the sign is most often employed where there is a variant. Here are a few examples:

1:38: αυτοις > τι                      variant τινα
2:7/8: ανα > και                       variant omit και
4:24: αλη>θια                          variant αληθειας
10:29: μου > ο                         variant omit μου
11:28: εφωνησεν > Μαριαμ    variant Μαριαν

By no means is this an exhaustive list of the occurrences of this critical mark in P.Bodmer II; I have taken only a cursory glance at the facsimile. My question is this: are these diple an indication that the scribe knew of a variant reading? In a few places, the diple occurs besides words where there is no variant (e.g., 10:25 εργα > α), so the answer may be that it is not used in this manner. Moreover, the insertion of it within the text is odd. Normally, diplai are inserted in the margin and are used for a variety of purposes, such as to signify a quotation, refer to a commentary, etc. But if it is not being used to signal a variant, then what is its function? It is surely not a line-filler since the scribe consistently uses apostrophe-like marks for this purpose and line-fillers occur at the end of a line—they are not inserted in the middle of the text so as to interrupt a word. I have not looked at any of the literature on P.Bodmer II for this, but does anyone else know if R. Kasser, V. Martin, G. Fee, J. Royse or others say anything about these little diplai within the text of P.Bodmer II? Surely someone has said something about these diplai and offered a reasonable explanation. I would be grateful if someone could provide a reference to a discussion of these marks.  
17 Comments
Timothy Mitchell link
5/10/2013 01:26:34 am

Mr. Jones
Excellent observation on these 'diploi'! Do you think it is possible that the use of the 'diploi' in words that have no variant perhaps reveal that a scribe knew of a variant then that is lost to us today? The manner in which they are written with in the words reveals that it was the scribe of P66 who made these markings. And that the words were carried over from the exemplar even though the scribe saw them as suspect. This is interesting to me because it show that at least the scribe of P66 was concerned with faithfully reproducing the text from the vorlage as he saw it. This means too that the punctuation markings that are throughout the codex were very likely transcribed from the exemplar as well.
Thank you
Tim

Reply
Brice C. Jones link
5/10/2013 03:39:32 am

Dear Tim,
Yes, it is possible that the scribe knew of a variant (transposition, omission, addition, replacements, etc.) unknown to us. For example, we can take the example from 10:25 I mentioned above, where the diple occurs where there is no known variant. The NA28 reads τὰ ἔργα ἅ. The diple in P.Bodmer II occurs in between ἔργα and ἅ. This could mean that instead of the neuter plural relative another MS repeated the neuter plural article τά, a common construction that would produce the same meaning. I am hoping that someone who knows more about the scribal habits of this MS will be able to tell us more about these diplai (note that the ending is the plural feminine ai and not oi). Thanks for your comments, Tim!

Reply
pete head
5/10/2013 03:39:33 am

I've looked at these a few times from different angles and have never come up with a convincing general explanation. I don't see variant marker as particularly likely either. My default explanation isn't very convincing either - accidental inclusions of line fillers in the exemplar.
I've seen them noted somewhere in the literature, and one of my students wrote something about them. If you email him at stpetersmw@aol.com (his church address) it would probably get through.

Reply
Brice C. Jones link
5/10/2013 04:02:19 am

Dear Peter,
I don't think the accidental line-filler explanation is convincing. The scribe of P.Bodmer II uses line-fillers consistently and even if these diplai stood in the exemplar as line-fillers, the scribe of P.Bodmer II surely would not have been careless enough to insert these marks within the text! Moreover, it does not seem coincidental that in every occurrence of these diplai (that I have found based on a cursory glance) there is a variant.

Reply
Brice C. Jones link
5/10/2013 04:04:14 am

And thank you for the e-mail of your student. Perhaps we can invite him to comment here.

Reply
Timothy Mitchell link
5/10/2013 04:12:00 am

Mr. Jones,
You are right about my mistake in writing 'diploi' instead of 'diplai' it is my inexperience showing there (I did not notice it until after I submitted my post)! I am very interested in these scribal markings, annotations, etc. After reading Johnson's "Book Rolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus" I am more aware of these markings being much older than the manuscript that contains them. I wounder how many such confusing textual features in manuscripts are actually carried over from the exemplar faithfully. Even 'singular' readings or other errors of haplography etc, that these occur because the scribes copied them from the manuscript and did not necessarily commit the 'error' (singular reading). Thank you for the feedback!
Tim

Reply
Brice C. Jones link
5/10/2013 04:27:30 am

Tim,
You raise a very good point about copying over punctuation and other markings from an exemplar, and Johnson's study is an excellent source for this (Johnson's study is important for many issues, actually). It is always difficult to know with certainty the extent to which features are inherited from an exemplar. These diplai could have been inherited, but this of course does not help us understand their function.

Reply
Mike Warren
5/16/2013 09:25:56 am

Hi Brice
Pete Head supervised my BA & MA dissertations, the latter being on singular readings in P66. More recently, and with advice from Pete and Dirk Jongkind, I wrote a paper on extra-textual marks in P66.
As you will have noticed, there are not only diplai, but ektheses, double dots, apostrophes & midpoints (for want of better descriptors).
Each of the 12 extant ektheses coincide with either a paragraph break or a full stop in NA27. So these appear to be text delimitation (or punctuation) marks. Of the 19 double dots ( : ) only three do not coincide with punctuation in NA27 (9 = paragraph; 6 = full stop; 1 = semi colon/question mark). One (9:14) makes no sense as a delimitation mark. Apostrophes & midpoints are pretty random compared to punctuation in NA27 - some coincide, others don't.
When it comes to the 14 extant diplai, 9 are nonsense as text delimiters (with 2 appearing in the middle of words 2:9 & 7:41). Of the 5 which do make sense, 2:7 coincides with a full stop in NA27, 1:38 with a midpoint, 11:48 & 11:57 with commas and 2:14 has no coincidental punctuation in NA. It seems unlikely, therefore, that they are text delimitation/punctuation marks.
Another possibility might be payment marks, but they're far too irregular for this.
My conclusion? The purpose of the diplai remains a mystery. And after all that I'm not much help to you!
If you'd like to see a copy of my paper, I'd be happy to email it to you.

Reply
Brice C. Jones link
5/21/2013 07:46:24 am

Thanks very much for your comments, Mike! Yes, I would love to see your paper. And I have counted more than 14 of these diplai-like marks in P.Bodmer II. Did you at all entertain the possibility that these marks were being used by the scribe to signal variants?

Reply
Brice C. Jones link
5/20/2013 10:55:54 am

Thanks so much for your comments, Mike. I would love to see a copy of your paper. I have counted more than 14 occurrences of this diple-like mark in P.Bodmer II. Did you at all entertain the possibility that they were being used alongside variants?

Reply
Brice C. Jones link
5/20/2013 10:59:38 am

Thanks so much for your comments, Mike. I would love to see your paper. And I have counted more than 14 of these diple-like marks in P.Bodmer II. Did you at all entertain the possibility that these marks are being used to signal variants?

Reply
Brice C. Jones link
5/21/2013 07:42:54 am

Thanks very much for your comments, Mike. Yes, I would love to see your paper. And I have counted more than 14 of these diplai-like marks in P.Bodmer II. Did you at all entertain the possibility that these marks were being used by the scribe to signal variants?

Reply
David Race
12/1/2013 03:02:12 pm

I have no professional credentials, but am interested in textual issues with respect to the text of the New Testament. I was wondering if anyone knows about the slash marks at John 7:52 (p66)? It looks like it might indicate knowledge of a variant where the word order was different.

Could a single dot(midpoint?) indicate a quotation, end of story, or possibly an omission?

Any info is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Reply
Brice C. Jones link
12/1/2013 03:37:18 pm

Hi David, those "slash marks" do indeed indicate a change in word order of the phrase εκ της γαλιλαιας ο προφητης. The middle dot that you see at the end of εγιρεται [sic] is simply marking the end of a sense unit.

Reply
Timothy Mitchell link
9/14/2014 02:46:37 am

Dear Brice Jones,
I wanted to let you know that I linked to this excellent article as a reference from the text of my blog post (http://thetextualmechanic.blogspot.com/2014/09/eusebius-and-new-testament-textual_13.html). I am not sure what kind of "blogging edicate" there is, but I thought you might want to know.
Thank you,
Tim

Reply
Brice C. Jones link
9/14/2014 02:56:45 am

Thanks for the notification. And nice page photo on your blog!

Reply
Timothy Mitchell link
9/14/2014 12:37:55 pm

Thank you Brice.


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