[B-Greek] Pempele
Arie Dirkzwager
dirkzwager at pandora.be
Mon Jun 14 14:18:36 EDT 2004
Dear Listmembers,
I have a question about a matter of textual criticism. As tc-list does not
function regularly, I venture to put it here. Professor Conrad will, I
think, react, if the subject cannot be discussed here.
I possess an article in a Dutch newspaper (Trouw/Kwartet 24-8-1974) by the
late Professor H. Mulder (NT, Protestant Faculty Brussels). Mulder reports
about a collection of Greek manuscripts. Henry Stobart brought them in
1852-3 and 1856 from Egypt to England. A part of the collection was bought
by the British Museum. Another part was bought by Joseph Mayer from
Liverpool.
In 1860 Constantine Simonides saw the Liverpool manuscripts and concluded
that there were 8 fragments of New Testament texts.
Very interesting, but Simonides, who was an expert on manuscripts, had
falsified some manuscripts according to some people. So the NT fragments are
considered as dubious and therefore they are not used in editions of the
Greek NT. Mulder however argues that it is possible to falsify vellum
manuscripts, but not papyri.
So he thinks that it is possible that the Mayer collection contains genuine
fragments of the Greek NT. The papyri are dated to the *first* century (A.D.
of course). It is curious that one fragment has a name for the wife of
Pilatus: Pempele. The newspaper adds a picture of about 20 lines of the
fragment with that name.
My questions are:
- Does anyone know where Mulder could have read this story?
- Does anyone know of articles about the NT fragments in the Mayer
collection?
- If there are no articles known, wouldn't it be right to consider the case
afresh? The times of hypercriticism are passed, I think.
Arie
Dr. A. Dirkzwager
Hoeselt, Belgium
e-mail dirkzwager at pandora.be
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