Subject: tc-list Re: Parker's Reply to the Reply to Parker's review

From: "Maurice A. Robinson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Sep 1999 02:22:48 -0400 (EDT)

One question regarding Parker's reply to C/B in regard to P5:

On Thu, 2 Sep 1999 12:29:09 GMT "DC PARKER" <[email-masked]>
writes:

[quoting Comfort]:

>> 15. For P5
>> 
>> In John 1:34, their text reads O UIOS TOU QU instead of O 
>>EKLEKTOS TOU QU  -- the only reading that fits the line length and 
>>the reading first proposed by Grenfell and Hunt (see also NA27)

[Parker responds]:

>Yes, this is a place where we put in the TR, and I think it's wrong.

My question is, why should EKLEKTOS be presupposed (in the lacuna) as
opposed to UIOS written plene? (P5 nowhere else has UIOS in any of its
forms, so there is no basis to assume a nomen sacrum for this word).
Since reconstruction within a lacuna is often hazardous at best, it seems
especially so in this case, since the "line length" argument cited above
by Comfort actually seems to favor UIOS.

Consider in P5 the line lengths of the seven lines beginning from the top
of the leaf (using Comfort and Barrett's reconstruction!) which precede
the line 8 EKLEKTOS / UIOS situation with the line lengths of the seven
lines following the EKLEKTOS / UIOS case:

Line length in letters of seven top lines:   24 25 26 25 27 28 25  =
Average 25.71 
Line length in letters of seven next lines: 27 23 28 29 27 27 27  =
Average 26.85

Length of line 8, reading UIOS = 25
Length of line 8, reading EKLEKTOS = 29

Although there is one line in the "lines following" section with an equal
29 letters, it seems that the line length with UIOS would be more likely
representative of the average pattern established for the lines preceding
and only slightly below the average for the lines following (as the data
shows, the scribe seemed  to slowly drift into slightly increasing line
lengths as the page went on). 

It thus would seem more likely that the scribe would have tended toward
the shorter rather than the longer line length at the point of line 8; if
so, this would favor UIOS over EKLEKTOS, though I would be non-dogmatic
about either reading, since both become a matter of speculative
reconstruction.

(Note that the fourth line following line with 29 letters also _could_ be
three letters shorter if the TOU ante QU happened to be omitted by
scribal oversight or phonetic homoioteleuton, and this also would better
fit the average pattern. Of course this variant also would lie in the
reconstructed portion and be singular as well, so no one will likely
actively propose such, even though this case is equally plausible and
quite parallel to the matter with UIOS or EKLEKTOS).

My own inclination is to be extremely wary regarding a hypothesized
EKLEKTOS in P5 since it would agree _only_ with Aleph* among all Greek
witnesses, and which may itself have been a mere accident (early
influence from Latin or Syriac witnesses would be unlikely to have caused
this, unless there were other readings within P5 which would tend to
support such a hypothesis). 

Had there been strong support from other Egyptian witnesses such as P66,
P75, B or even from other Greek witnesses, I would have less reluctance
in regard to EKLEKTOS, but as it stands, the UIOS reading seems far more
plausible to me, and I do not think the IGNTP volume erred in this
regard.

==============================================
Maurice A. Robinson
Professor of NT and Greek
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
Wake Forest, North Carolina

---

From: DC PARKER <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Sep 1999 11:36:53 -0400 (EDT)

Maurice Robinson wrote
> ...

> lines following the EKLEKTOS / UIOS case:
...

I'm grateful for the care which Maurice has taken, and agree that it's 
not as cut-and-dried as Comfort claimed, or as I accepted in my brief 
comment.  In fact,we started out with eklekto]S, and only moved to 
uio]S after several drafts.  However, I have to point out that because 
we have the ends of the lines on this leaf, we can reconstruct the 
number of letters missing BEFORE the extant part of the line, trying to 
allow for the straightness or not of the left margin on the basis of 
other parts of the codex, size of letters, and shape of the lacuna.  
When all that is done, uio]S still looks a bit short.  The next line has 20 
letters before the ], in a slightly longer space, so 19 with eklekto]S 
looks reasonable.  But if anybody wants to find better evidence in 
favour of the IGNTP version, don't let me stand in their way.

> plausible to me, and I do not think the IGNTP volume erred in this
That's an interesting point.  But the agreement of Old Latin (b e ff2*) 
and Old Syriac (s c) witnesses is surely significant, suggesting that 
this is a 2nd-3rd century Greek reading.  P5 would then be the oldest 
witness to it.  

It is so typical of the frustration of reading such MSS that with a few 
extra millimetres of line there would have been no problem in 
reconstructing it!

David Parker

DR DC PARKER
READER IN NEW TESTAMENT TEXTUAL CRITICISM AND PALAEOGRAPHY
DEPT OF THEOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
TEL. 0121-414 3613
FAX  0121-414 6866
E-MAIL D.C.PARKER@.BHAM.AC.UK