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June 9, 2006
Exodus Fragments Associated with the Gospel of Judas
Wieland Willker writes on the "Textual Criticism of the Bible" news list,
As you probably know, the Gospel of Judas book find did not consist of the Gospel of Judas alone, but also of other books, including Exodus in Greek and Colossians in Coptic.Some of the Exodus fragments have now been published:
"Seven papyrus fragments of a Greek manuscript of Exodus"
Desilva, David A.; Adams, Marcus P.
Vetus Testamentum 56 (2006) 143-170
Perhaps the first thing that should be said is that while this will be of interest to the specialist or to someone with abnormal interests there is almost certainly nothing here that will change minds on any of the middle sized to big issues. The one fragment that is publicly available supports what I have just said.
Willker has also prepared a transcription and photograph of one of the Greek Exodus fragments Exodus 3:21-4:3) in which he shows the complete text of the passage according to Rahifs' LXX text and the variants in the papyrus fragment.
While I am very far from having even rudimentary knowledge in text criticism in general and LXX text criticism in particular a couple of things did strike me as I looked at the variants seen on this fragment. First, σκυλευσατε is a known variant from the more common σκυλευσετε (until now only known in Codex Vaticanus). As far as I can tell, none of the other variants occurs in any of the major LXX manuscripts. I am only relying of Rahifs' notes, I have not done a collation. Second, and perhaps more important (but still of very little consequence), the density of the variants seems quite high to me. Of the 42 (or 43 depending on how one counts a "missing" word) complete or partial words on the fragment, 4, or just short of 10%, are variants from Rahifs's text and 3 reflect readings apparently not found in Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus or Codex Alexandrinus, the big three LXX sources. I can think of four possibilities; 1) I am wrong and this density of variants is not all that unusual; 2) the sample size is too small to say much of anything; 3) this fragment represents a different manuscript tradition than the big three; 4) this fragment reflects a different translation tradition than the big three; 5) it is a paraphrase of some LXX manuscript that, in the represented passages, remains fairly close to its origins.
It looks like I need to take a look at Vetus Testamentum next time I'm at the library.
Thanks to Jim West and Jim Davila for pointing this out.
Posted by Duane Smith at June 9, 2006 12:39 PM | Read more on Hebrew Bible |
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