238 Notes to Chapter 10
- It may be noted that the fourth-century Coptic manuscript given the title Tripartite Tractate was so
named by modern scholars because “the text has already been divided into three different parts by means of
diples (>>>>>)” (Ismo Dunderberg, “The School of Valentinus,” in Antti Marjanen and Petri Luomanen, eds.,
A Companion to Second-Century Christian “Heretics,” Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 76 (Leiden: Brill,
2005), 86). - Noting that 405 contains “a quotation from St. Matthew iii. 16-7 describing the Baptism, which is
indicated by wedge-shaped signs in the margin similar to those employed for filling up short lines, e.g. in
Fr. (a) ll. 9 and 13,” Bernard P. Grenfell, Arthur S. Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part III (London: Egypt
Exploration Fund, 1903), 10. Here Grenfell and Hunt draw attention to another use of the diple, at least in
Christian manuscripts, as fillers in short lines. They astutely perceived that lines 10 and 14 (9 and 13 in the
original publication) of P.Oxy. 405 end with diplai, the very ends of which remain intact and discernable.
Clearer examples of the diple as line-filler are found, for example, in P.Oxy. 1 (Bodleian MS. Gr. Th. E7 (P)), a
fragment corresponding to sayings 26-29, 30 and 77 of the Gospel of Thomas, which uses a single diple at the
end of lines 3, 9, 17, 18 of the verso. A photo of the latter may be seen in Larry Hurtado, The Earliest Christian
Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 239, plate 7. Another example
may be seen in the photo of Codex Boernerianus (GP, 9th c.) in Aland and Aland, The Text of the New Testa-
ment, 111, at the end of Romans. - McNamee, Sigla, 7. The full quote is “If we leave aside the signs normally used to mark new sections
in an ancient text... and also the decorative space-fillers at the ends of lines, there are roughly three hundred
Greek literary papyri from Egypt in which sigla appear in the margin or between the lines.” - Three are from the third, one from the fifth, one from fifth-sixth, one from sixth-seventh, and one
from the seventh. McNamee is cataloguing texts found in Egypt. Across the Mediterranean in Hercula-
neum, she says, “The practice of scribes... diverges... in their very common use of the diple where we
are used to seeing paragraphi” and “in the presence of the double penstroke (//) to mark a citation... ”
(Sigla, 24–25). - Such as P.Oxy. 406 (van Haelst 1152; LDAB 3500), a third-century papyrus codex fragment of a theo-
logical text suggested to belong to Origen, - Cornelia Eva Römer, “7.64. Gemeinderbrief, Predict oder Homilie über den Menschen im Angesicht
des Jüngsten Gerichts,” in P. Michigan Koenen (= P. Mich. xviii): Michigan Texts Published in Honor of Ludwig
Koenen, ed. Cornelia E. Römer and Traianos Gagos, (Amsterdam: Gieben, 1996), 35–43. - My thanks to Malcom Choat, who informed me of this manuscript.
- The original edition by the discoverer (P. Scheil’s in Mémoires publiés par les membres de la Mission
Archéologique francaise au Caire 9.2 [Paris, 1893], v) dates it to the sixth century, but “little was then known
about the dating of Greek Papyrus mss,” as Roberts says (C. H. Roberts, Buried Books in Antiquity, Arundell
Esdaile Memorial Lecture 1962 [The Library Association, 1963], 12). Subsequent scholars, including A. S.
Hunt, Roberts, Turner, and Hurtado, date it to the third century. - Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit and De Sacrificiis Abelis et Caini.
- Roberts, Buried Books, 13. See also Larry Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and
Christian Origins (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 167. See Erik G. Turner, The Typology of the Early Codex
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977), 113 and the photograph of this document, plate 2.
Roberts, Buried Books, 12, says the text of the ms has marked affinities with other copies of Philo’s work pro-
duced in Caesarea. - Scheil, iv. Scheil says that at least two scribes produced the volumes.
- Possibly another text of Philo, P.Oxy. 1356, folio 10, a fragment of an unidentified work. Grenfell and
Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papryi, Part XI (London: Egypt Exploration Fund, 1915), 18, say, “A similar sign is
employed in 405 to mark a quotation, and possibly this is the meaning of the sign here.” But as only a single
word of the corresponding line survives, it is impossible to be sure if this is the significance of the mark, or to
know what, if anything, Philo might have been quoting. Against the possibility that it is a mark of quotation is
that, in another fragment of this codex, preserving a portion of De Ebrietate, there is a short quotation of Gen.
27:30 that is not marked; see Grenfell and Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papryi, Part IX (London: Egypt Exploration
Fund, 1912), 22. - The kurzgefasste Liste has it as “III/IV (?),” http://intf.uni-muenster.de/vmr/NTVMR/ListeHand-
schriften.php.