Papyrus 45 (P. Chester Beatty I), designated by siglum𝔓45 in the Gregory-Aland numbering of New Testament manuscripts, is an early Greek New Testamentmanuscript written on papyrus, and is one of the manuscripts comprising the Chester Beatty Papyri, a group of early Christian manuscripts discovered in the 1930s, and purchased by business man and philanthropist, Alfred Chester Beatty.[1]Beatty purchased the manuscript in the 1930s from an Egyptian book dealer, and it was subsequently published in The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri, Descriptions and Texts of Twelve Manuscripts on Papyrus of the Greek Bible by palaeographer, biblical and classical scholar Frederic G. Kenyon in 1933.[1]: 121, 118 Manuscripts among the Chester Beatty Papyri have had several places of discovery associated with them, the most likely being the Faiyum in Egypt (the dry sands of Egypt have been a haven for finding very early manuscripts since the late 1800s).[2] Using the study of comparative writing styles (palaeography), it has been dated to the early 3rd century CE.[3] This therefore makes it the earliest example of not only the four Gospels contained in one volume, but also the Acts of the Apostles.[1]: 134 It contains verses in fragmentary form from the texts of Matthew chapters 20–21 and 25–26; Mark chapters 4–9 and 11–12; Luke chapters 6–7 and 9–14; John chapters 4–5 and 10–11; and Acts chapters 4–17.[4]: vii
The manuscript is heavily damaged and fragmented. The papyrus was bound in a codex (the forerunner to the modern book), which may have consisted of 220 pages, however only 30 survive (two of Matthew, six of Mark, seven of Luke, two of John, and thirteen of Acts).[7]: 54 It was made up of quires of two leaves (four pages) only, which were formed by folding a single sheet of papyrus in half, with the horizontal fibres (due to how papyrus is made from strips of the papyrus plant) facing each other on the inside pages, while the outsides had the vertical fibres. The order of fibres in the quire may thus be designated V-H-H-V, and this sequence is a vital factor in the reconstruction of the manuscript.[8] All of the pages have gaps, with very few lines complete.[7]: 54 The leaves of Matthew and John are only extant in small fragments, which have to be pieced together in order to make up a page.[7]: 54 The original pages were roughly 10 inches by 8 inches.[7]: 54 Unlike many of the other surviving manuscripts from the 3rd century which usually contained just the Gospels, or just the Catholic letters, or just the Pauline epistles, this manuscript possibly contained more than one grouping of New Testament texts.[7]: 54 This hypothesis is attributed to the use of gatherings of two leaves, known as a single-quire, whereas most other codices were made from multiple pages in a single quire (all pages put on top of each other, then folded in the middle to make a single block), or of multiple pages split into several quires (groups of 8–10 pages laid on top of each other, then folded in half to make separate blocks), which were then stitched together to make a full volume.[7]: 54, fn. 5 It is unknown whether the codex was enclosed in a leather cover or one of another material.[4]: vii
Despite the fragmentary nature, the codex has evidence of the following verses from the New Testament:
Because of the extent of the damage, determining the text's relationship to the standard text-type groups has been difficult for scholars (the text-types are groups of different manuscripts which share specific or generally related readings, which then differ from each other group, and thus the conflicting readings can separate out the groups, which are then used to determine the original text as published; there are three main groups with names: Alexandrian, Western, and Byzantine).[7]: 205–230 Kenyon identified the text of the Gospel of Mark in the manuscript as representing the Caesarean text-type, following the definition of the group by biblical scholar Burnett Hillman Streeter.[11]: 262 Reverend Hollis Huston criticized Kenyon's transcription of various partially surviving words, and concluded that chapters 6 and 11 of Mark in 𝔓45 could not neatly fit into one of the established textual groupings, especially not Caesarean, due to the manuscript predating the distinctive texts for each type from the 4th and 5th centuries.[11]: 265, 268, 270–271 This is due to the definition of a "text-type" being based on readings found in manuscripts dating to after the Edict of Milan (313) by the Emperor Constantine, which stopped the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire, thus allowing them to make copies of the New and Old Testaments freely, under the auspices of an official copying process.[6]: 55–56 Therefore, these manuscripts were made under a controlled setting, whereas the early papyri weren't, hence the specific text-type groups could be established.[12]
The manuscript has a great number of unique (known as singular) readings (this being words/phrases not found in other manuscripts of the New Testament in specific verses).[13] On the origin of these singular readings, E. C. Colwell comments:
"As an editor the scribe of 𝔓45 wielded a sharp axe. The most striking aspect of his style is its conciseness. The dispensable word is dispensed with. He omits adverbs, adjectives, nouns, participles, verbs, personal pronouns—without any compensating habit of addition. He frequently omits phrases and clauses. He prefers the simple to the compound word. In short, he favors brevity. He shortens the text in at least fifty places in singular readings alone. But he does not drop syllables or letters. His shortened text is readable."[14]
Textual relationship with other New Testament manuscripts
𝔓45 has a relatively close statistical relationship with Codex Washingtonianus (W) in Mark (this being their unique readings shared with each other, albeit not with other manuscripts), and to a lesser extent those manuscripts within the textual-family group Family 13. Citing biblical scholar Larry Hurtado's study, Text-Critical Methodology and the Pre-Caesarean Text: Codex W in the Gospel of Mark,[15] text-critic Eldon Jay Epp has agreed that there is no connection to a Caesarean or pre-Caesarean text in Mark. There is also no strong connection to the Alexandrian text as seen in Codex Vaticanus (B), the Western text as evidenced by Codex Bezae (D), or the Byzantine text as witnessed by the Textus Receptus.[16] Another hypothesis is that 𝔓45 comes from the Alexandrian tradition, but has many readings intended to "improve" the text stylistically, and a number of harmonizations. While still difficult to place historically in a category of texts, contrary to Kenyon, including 𝔓45 as a representative of the Caesarean text-type has been undermined.[17]
The textual relationship of the manuscript varies from book to book. In Mark, an analysis of the various readings noted in the textual apparatus of the United Bible Society's Greek New Testament (4th ed.) (a critical edition of the Greek New Testament which has, based on scientific principles, attempted to reconstruct the original text from available ancient manuscripts),[18] places 𝔓45 in a group which includes W (for chapters 5-16), Codex Koridethi (Θ), textual group Family 1, and the minuscules 28, 205, 565; the Sinaitic Syriac manuscript, Armenian manuscripts of the New Testament, and Georgian manuscript versions of the New Testament; and the quotations of the New Testament found in early church writer Origen's works.[19] This group corresponds to what Streeter called an "Eastern type" of the text.[20]: 27, 108 In Luke, an eleven-way PAM partition (a specific analytical-method) based on Greek manuscript data, associated with the Institute for New Testament Textual Research's (INTF) Parallel Pericopes volume[21] places the manuscript in a group with Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (C), Codex Regius (L), Codex Zacynthius (Ξ), and the minuscules 33, 892, and 1241.[22] In Acts the Alexandrian text-type is its closest textual relationship.
Below are some readings of the manuscript which agree or disagree with variant readings in other Greek manuscripts, or with varying ancient translations of the New Testament. See the main article Textual variants in the New Testament.
^ abcNongbri, Brent (2018). God's Library: The Archaeology of the Earliest Christian Manuscripts. New Haven; London: Yale University Press. pp. 116–122. ISBN978-0-300-21541-0.
^Kenyon, Frederic G. (1933). The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri, Descriptions and Texts of Twelve Manuscripts on Papyrus of the Greek Bible, Fasciculus I, General Introduction. Emery Walker Ltd. p. x.
^ abcKenyon, Frederic G. (1933). The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri, Descriptions and Texts of Twelve Manuscripts on Papyrus of the Greek Bible, Fasciculus II, The Gospels and Acts, Text. Emery Walker Ltd.
^"Liste Handschriften". Münster: Institute for New Testament Textual Research. Retrieved 26 August 2011.
^ abAland, Kurt; Aland, Barbara (1989). The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism. Erroll F. Rhodes (trans.). Stuttgart: Eerdmans. ISBN3-438-06011-6.
^ abSkeat, Theodore Creesy (2004). "A Codicological Analysis of the Chester Beatty Papyrus Codex of Gospels and Acts (𝔓45)". In Elliot, James Keith (ed.). The Collected Biblical Writings of T. C. Skeat. Leiden; Boston: Brill. p. 147. ISBN9004139206.
^Gerstinger, Hans (1933). "Ein Fragment des Chester Beatty-Evangelienkodex in der Papyrussammlung der National Bibliothek in Wien (Pap. gr. Vindob 31974)". Aegyptus. 13 (1): 67–72. JSTOR41214242.
^Skeat, Theodore Creasy; McGing, Brian C. (1991). "Notes on Chester Beatty Biblical Papyrus I (Gospels and Acts)". Hermathena (150): 21–25. JSTOR23040950.
^ abHuston, Hollis W (1955). "Mark 6 and 11 in P45 and in the Caesarean Text". Journal of Biblical Literature. 74 (4): 262–271. doi:10.2307/3261672. JSTOR3261672.
^Hill, Charles E.; Kruger, Michael J., eds. (2012). The Early Text of the New Testament. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 6–7. ISBN978-0-19-956636-5.
^Aland, Barbara (2004). "The Significance of the Chester Beatty in Early Church History". In Horton, Charles (ed.). The Earliest Gospels. London: T&T Clark. p. 110.
^Colwell, Ernest Cadman (1965). "Scribal Habits in the Early Papyri: A Study in the Corruption of the Text". In Hyatt, J. P. (ed.). The Bible in Modern Scholarship. New York: Abingdon Press. p. 383.
^Hurtado, Larry W. (1981). Text-Critical Methodology and the Pre-Caesarean Text: Codex W in the Gospel of Mark. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans. ISBN0-8028-1872-2.
^Epp, Eldon Jay (September 1974). "The Twentieth Century Interlude in New Testament Textual Criticism". Journal of Biblical Literature. 93 (3): 395. doi:10.2307/3263386. JSTOR3263386.
^Wasserman, Tommy (2015). "𝔓45 and Codex W in Mark Revisited". In Keith, Chris; Roth, Dieter T. (eds.). Mark, Manuscripts, And Monotheism: Essays in Honor of Larry W. Hurtado. London, UK; New York, USA: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. p. 154. ISBN978-0-56765-594-3.
^Streeter, Burnett Hillman (1924). The Four Gospels, A Study of Origins: Treating of the Manuscript Tradition, Sources, Authorship, and Dates. London: Macmillan.
^Strutwolf, Holger; Wachtel, Klaus, eds. (2011). Novum Testamentum Graecum: Editio Critica Maior: Parallel Pericopes: Special Volume Regarding the Synoptic Gospels. Stuttgart: German Bible Society. ISBN978-3438056085.
^PAM (partitioning around medoids) is a multivariate analysis technique. For a description, see Timothy J. Finney. "Views of New Testament Textual Space". Retrieved 16 March 2013.
Hurtado, Larry W. (2004). "P45 and the Textual History of the Gospel of Mark". In Horton, Charles (ed.). The Earliest Gospels: The Origins and Transmission of the Earliest Christian Gospels – The Contribution of the Chester Beatty Gospel Codex P45. London: T&T Clark International. pp. 132–48. ISBN0-567-08389-6.
Ayuso, El texto cesariense del papiro de Chester Beatty en ela Evangelio de San Marcos, EB. IV (1934), 268–281.
Comfort, Philip W.; Barrett, David P. (2001). The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts. Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers. pp. 155–201. ISBN978-0-8423-5265-9.
