ORE Open Research Exeter
TITLE
The Themes of 1 Peter: Insights from the Earliest Manuscripts (the Crosby-Schøyen Codex ms 193 and
the Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex containing P72)
AUTHORS
Horrell, David G.
JOURNAL
New Testament Studies
DEPOSITED IN ORE
29 September 2010
This version available at
http://hdl.handle.net/10036/112034
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The Themes of 1 Peter: Insights from the
Earliest Manuscripts (the Crosby-Schøyen
Codex ms 193 and the Bodmer Miscellaneous
Codex containing P
72
)*
DAVID G. HORRELL
Department of Theology and Religion, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4RJ, UK
email: D.G.Horrell@exeter.ac.uk
Recent developments in textual criticism have enco uraged NT scholars to reg ard the
various NT manuscripts not merely as sources of variant readings to enable a recon-
struction of the original text but as interpretative renderings with their own intrinsic
interest and as important material evidence for early Christianity. Taking up this
cue, this paper examines what the two (probably) earliest manuscripts of Peter
indicate about the status of this writing, and what early readers took to be its key
themes, given the other texts with which it is bound. In both cases, and with
some striking overlaps, Peter is regarded as a text focused on the Easter themes
of the suffering, martyrdom and vindication of Christ, and the related suffering
and hope of his faithful people in a hostile world. These two manuscripts also
call for some reconsideration of older scholarship, now widely rejected, which
saw Peter as a baptismal homily or paschal liturgy. While these remain unconvin-
cing views of Peter’s origins, they do rightly identify themes and connections
which the earliest editors and readers evidently also perceived.
Keywords: Peter, Bodmer Papyrus, Crosby-Schøyen, early NT manuscripts, themes
of Peter
. Introduction
Recent developments in textual criticism have significantly broadened the
range of insights to be gained from study of the NT manuscripts. While the efforts
* I would like to dedicate this essay, first presented as a paper in the month of his retirement after
thirty-six years at the University of Exeter, to my colleague Dr Alastair Logan, and to thank him
publicly for his warm collegiality (and fruitful discussions of the topic of this paper!). I would
also like to thank the following for their very helpful comments and suggestions: Peter
Williams, Peter Head, Stuart Macwilliam, Morwenna Ludlow and Lutz Doering. Research for
this essay has also been supported by a Small Research Grant from the British Academy, and
library facilities in Cambridge and Heidelberg, for which I would also like to express my
sincere thanks.
New Test. Stud. , pp. –. Printed in the United Kingdom © Cambridge University Press
doi:10.1017/S0028688509990038
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to weigh competin g readings and thus establish the earliest form of the text
remain crucial, recent studies have shown how the manuscripts (and their
variant readings) are themselves valuable embodiments of reception and
interpretation, crucial witnesses to early Christianity’s visual and material
culture.
My interest in this paper is in what are, as things currently stand, very likely the
two earliest manuscripts of Peter. Not only does their antiquity make them sig-
nificant, so also does the character and content of the manuscripts themselves.
I am not here concerned with the variant readings of Peter which these two
manuscripts present but with the ways in which, as collections of literature,
they offer insights into the early interpretation of Peter, the literary connections
made with it and what early transmitters of the text of Peter took to be its key
themes.
The two manuscripts are the Crosby-Schøyen Codex ms (hereafter C-S), in
Sahidic Coptic, and the Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex (hereafter BMC),
in Greek.
The Coptic manuscript, as a recently published translational version, has received
very little attention in treatments of the text of Peter.
The Bodmer Codex, pub-
lished in parts between and , is much better known, at least sofar as its
NT items are concerned: it includes Peter, Peter and Jude, known together as
P
. However, while the variant readings of P
have been carefully assessed,
the
significance of the manuscript context in which these NT texts appear has less
frequently been considered.
Both codices, it sho uld be noted, ‘derive from the same early Christian
library’,
a library of the Pachomian monastic Order, ‘discovered late in in
See, e.g., D. C. Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels (Cambridge: Cambridge University, );
B. D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological
Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (New York and Oxford: Oxford University,
); L. W. Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins
(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, ).
For this title for the codex, cf. T. Wasserman, ‘Papyrus and the Bodmer Miscellaneous
Codex’, NTS () –.
For the publication of the MS, see J. E. Goehring, ed., The Crosby-Schøyen Codex Ms in the
Schøyen Collection (CSCO ; Leuven: Peeters, ). Some of the most significant readings
of the text of Peter have been presented by a member of the team which edited the codex:
H.-G. Bethge, ‘Der Text des ersten Petrusbriefes im Crosby-Schøyen-Codex (Ms. Schøyen
Collection)’, ZNW () –.
See, e.g., É. Massaux, ‘Le Texte de la I
a
Petri du Papyrus Bodmer VIII (P
)’, ETL ()
–.
There have been some studies with this latter focus, most recently Wasserman, ‘Papyrus ’
and T. Nicklas and T. Wasserman, ‘Theologische Linien im Codex Bodmer Miscellani?’, New
Testament Manuscripts: Their Texts and Their World (ed. T. J. Kraus and T. Nicklas; Leiden:
Brill, ) –. These have, however, come mostly from those whose primary interest
and expertise is in the text-historical/text-critical areas.
W. H. Willis, ‘The Letter of Peter ( Peter)’, Crosby-Schøyen Codex, – ().
The Themes of Peter: Insights from the Earliest Manuscripts
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Upper Egypt near Dishna
’.
However, the codices almost certainly date from
before the foundation of the Order itself, as does ‘much of the material of the
highest quality in the collection’.
Moreover, their texts of Peter ‘appear to be
quite unrelated’.
The Greek Vorlage on which C-S depends was evidently quite
distinct from—and perhaps considerably older than—that presented in P
(see
below on dating).
The shared geographical provenance of these two codices
means that we should be wary of taking them as two entirely unrelated witnesses
to the ways in which early Christians collected and interpreted their writings.
Nonetheless, the two codices do give us two distinct glimpses into the early recep-
tion of Peter. I shall consider each in turn, before drawing some comparative
and broader conclusions; I begin with C-S.
. Crosby-Schøyen Codex ms
C-S comprises a codex which originally had pages, though these were
not numbered sequentially throughout. Each page measures approximately ×
cm.
The date of C-S cann ot be precisely determined, and opinions range
from late second to early fifth century,
but William Willis, the editor and trans-
lator of its text of Peter, concludes ‘that it may be dated with some confidence to
the middle of the III century’.
The Greek Vorlage from which the Coptic trans-
lation was made—at a stage prior to the productio n of C-S itself—must have been
older still, quite probably older than the text of P
.
And whatever its precise
date, C-S is undoubtedly an important witness to the early history of the letter.
It is interest ing first to note the inscriptio with which Peter begins in C-S
(repeated as the subscript):
tepistolh mpetros = ἡἐπιστολὴ (τοῦ) Πέτρου.
The author of this text, then, and probably the author of the Greek Vorlage too,
seems likely to have known—or at least, to have accepted—only this one letter
J. M. Robinson, ‘The Manuscript’s History and Codicology’, Crosby-Schøyen Codex (ed.
Goehring) xvii–xlvii (xxvii, cf. also xxxv).
J. M. Robinson, ‘The Pachomian Monastic Library at the Chester Beatty Library and the
Bibliothèque Bodmer’, Manuscripts of the Middle East (–) – ().
Willis, ‘Letter of Peter’, .
‘The Crosby-Schøyen text agrees with only one of the unique significant readings of P
’
(Willis, ‘Letter of Peter’, ).
See Robinson, ‘The Manuscript’s History’, xvii–xlvii, xliii–lxiv.
See Robinson, ‘The Manuscript’s History’, xxxiii. K. Aland and B. Aland, Der Text des Neuen
Testaments (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, nd ed. ) , suggest ‘wahrscheinlich
wohl um ’, though with there giving arguments for this date.
Willis, ‘Letter of Peter’, , citing support from C. H. Roberts for an early dating in n. ;
Bethge, ‘Crosby-Schøyen-Codex’, –.
Willis, ‘Letter of Peter’, , notes that since C-S is evidently a ‘copy of a copy’, not itself a
direct translation from the Greek, ‘the original translation on which it is based must be
pushed back to A.D. , perhaps even earlier’.
DAVID G
.
HORRELL
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of Peter.
Moreover, in C-S, Peter does not form part of a collection of NT texts,
but a more diverse collection. The texts in their order in the codex, with the likely
original pagination, are as follows:
Melito of Sardis, On the Passover –
Maccabees .–. –
Peter –
Jonah –
Unidentified Text [pagination missing]
Despite the discontinuous pagination, it is evidently all the work of one scribe,
though it seems likely that the very fragmentary final homily was added at a later
stage (but still by the same scribe).
The collection of texts evidently makes no
distinction between ‘canonical’ texts and others.
Melito’s
Π
1
ρὶ Πάσχα—of which only §§– are preserved in C-S, the
opening sections being lost —focuses on the story of the Passover lamb as a pre-
figuration of the redemptive sufferings of Christ. Also notable in combination with
the Passover lamb motif is the use of the Isaianic suffering servant material, par-
ticularly its sheep/lamb imagery (quoted explicitly in §; see also, e.g., §§, , ,
). The deliverance purchased for the members of the Church—‘from slavery to
freedom, from death to life, from tyranny to everlasting kingdom’ (§§ –
[C-S]
)—gives them a new identity which is described in terms drawn again
from OT texts in Exodus (.) and Isaiah (.): ‘he made us a new priesthood
and a chosen people and an eterna l kingdom’ (§ [C-S]).
This is also a striking
and precise parallel to Pet ..
Willis, ‘Letter of Peter’, ; Bethge, ‘Crosby-Schøyen-Codex’, . Eusebius clearly knows of
both letters attributed to Peter, but refers to ‘the letter of Peter’, which should be accepted (
τὴν
Πέτρου κυρωτέον ἐπιστολήν
), contrasted with the second letter of Peter (Πέτρου δ
1
υτέρα
ἐπιστολή
) which is among the disputed books (HE ..–). I am grateful to Peter Head for
alerting me to this point.
There may possibly have been a brief opening tractate, but since the opening pages of the
codex are missing, it is impossible to know what, if anything, might have filled these
opening pages. The extant pagination for Melito (which begins only at p. , the previous
pages being mostly lost), suggests a separately paginated six-page section at the beginning
of the codex. See Robinson, ‘The Manuscript’s History’, xlvi; J. E. Goehring and W. H.
Willis, ‘On the Passover by Melito of Sardis’, Crosby-Schøyen Codex (ed. Goehring) – ().
However, the text of Jonah begins, prior to p. , on the same page (p. ) as the ending of
Peter (see plate in Goehring, ed., Crosby-Schøyen Codex).
See J. E. Goehring, ‘The Manuscript’s Language and Orthography’, Crosby-Schøyen Codex (ed.
Goehring) xlix–lxii.
J. E. Goehring, ‘Unidentified Text’, Crosby-Schøyen Codex (ed. Goehring) – ().
ET from Goehring and Willis, ‘On the Passover’, .
These words are missing from the text of Melito in the Bodmer Papyrus, on which see below,
and fall within a lacuna in the Latin text. See O. Perler, Méliton de Sardes: sur la Pâque,
The Themes of Peter: Insights from the Earliest Manuscripts