New Manuscripts: P119-P122
Since it was New Year’s Eve, I did what everybody else does on this great holiday. I went to the library (at DTS) and did some research. I was looking at the new books (I always do) and saw a new volume of the Oxyrhynchus papyri had been published. I took a gander and saw that it had four new papyri in it. Major cool...
All four papyri are from the gospel of John. Images can be viewed here. The manuscripts are as follows:
- P119: John 1:21-28, 38-44 (3rd century)
- P120: John 1:25-28, 33-38, 42-44 (4th century)
- P121: John 19:17-18, 25-26 (3rd century)
- P122: John 21:11-14, 22-14 (4th/5th century)
The most interesting variant I’ve noticed so far is the υιος or εκλεκτος in John 1:34. P120 has the former, which is the most common of the two by far. The NET Bible sides with εκλεκτος, but υιος is normally the reading taken. I am at this point undecided. With υιος the text is "And I have seen and have borne witness that this man is the Son of God." With the other it is "And I have seen and have borne witness that this man is the Chosen One of God." I haven’t even had time to look through all of the Oxyrhynchus volume or to collate the text. Maybe something else significant will be found. More later if I see anything.
Of course, if I were not a few days behind on my blog reading I would have noticed this on the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog. Oh well. Maybe they’ll pick this up and discuss it.