[B-Greek] Pempele

George F. Somsel gfsomsel at juno.com
Mon Jun 14 15:15:34 EDT 2004


On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 20:18:36 +0200 "Arie Dirkzwager"
<dirkzwager at pandora.be> writes:
> 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,

I'm not sure that this is even pertinent to your question.  I do
remember, however, reading about some MSS which were declared forgeries
back about the time you reference which resulted in the dealer's
committing suicide.  I seem to recall reading recently regarding some
thoughts that the authenticity of these MSS should be reconsidered.  The
problem is that the MSS have disappeared.  Whether this was the same
dealer and the same MSS is uncertain since I have been unable to find the
article regarding it so don't take this as applying to the material you
are considering unless you can substantiate it yourself.

gfsomsel



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