GREEK PAPYRI—METZGER 
signed the Greg.-Dob. number P®, 
contains a rather careless transcript of 
two portions of Acts (8: 26-32 and 
10: 26-31), neither of which consti- 
tutes a well-rounded and complete 
pericope. Apparently the — scribe 
wrote no more than this one sheet, 
folding it into a booklet of four pages. 
What was the purpose for which it 
was written and why were these por- 
tions of Acts chosen? After consider- 
ing various possible reasons for the 
selection of these two Scripture pas- 
sages—which are parts of the narra- 
tives of Philip and the Ethiopian 
Eunuch, and Peter and Cornelius— 
the editor, Carl H. Kraeling, con- 
cludes that perhaps it “was written 
in service of missionary or homiletic 
purposes or both. It may be the 
work of a Christian preacher culling 
from a New Testament codex—or for 
that matter a lectionary—amaterials 
for the instruction of his parishioners 
on the character and scope of Christian 
missions.” The editor dates the 
fragment in the middle of the fourth 
century. 
The Rylands Fragment of John’s Gospel 
From many points of view the small 
fragment designated by the symbol 
P* is of exceedingly great import. 
Measuring only 2}, by 3% inches 
and containing but a few verses from 
the Fourth Gospel (18: 31-33, 37-38), 
it is the oldest fragment of the New 
Testament which has been preserved 
(see pl. 7). Although it had ‘been 
acquired by Prof. Bernard P. Grenfell 
as long ago as 1920, it remained un- 
noticed among hundreds of similar 
shreds of Egyptian papyri until 1934. 
In that year C. H. Roberts, Fellow of 
St. John’s College, Oxford, while sort- 
ing over the unpublished papyri in 
the John Rylands Library of Man- 
chester, recognized that this scrap pre- 
served sentences from John’s Gospel. 
Without waiting to edit the fragment 
along with others of a miscellaneous 
25 “°P50, Two Selections from Acts,” 
Quantulacumque, Studies Presented to Kir- 
sopp Lake ..., p. 171, London, 1937. 
447 
nature, he immediately published a 
booklet setting forth a description of 
the fragment, its text, and a discus- 
sion of its significance.”® 
From the style of the script, Roberts 
dated the fragment in the first half of 
the second century.”’ It is, therefore, 
older by a century than the Chester 
Beatty papyrus of John and older by 
two centuries than the most ancient 
vellum codices, Hort’s “heavenly 
twins,’ Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. 
Although the papyrus is torn ver- 
tically so that more than half of the 
column of writing has perished, 
enough remains to enable scholars 
to restore with practically complete 
assurance the missing portion of each 
line. By comparing what remains 
with the printed text of the passage, 
it was soon discovered that each line 
had an average of 29 or 30 letters. 
One of the first questions asked when 
reference is made to P*? is, How does 
the text of this earliest fragment com- 
pare with what editors have been accus- 
tomed to regard as the true text of 
John? Of course the paleographer, 
unlike the paleontologist who recon- 
structs a prehistoric man from a few 
molars and a piece of shin bone, can- 
not answer for what he does not have, 
26 An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth 
Gospel in the John Rylands Library (Man- 
chester, 1935). After republishing the frag- 
ment with minor alterations in the following 
year in the Bulletin of the John Rylands 
Library, vol. 20, pp. 45-55, 1936, Roberts 
published it a third time in his Catalogue of 
the Greek and Latin Papyri in the John 
Rylands Library, Manchester, vol. 3, pp. 
1-3, Manchester, 1938, providing a bibliog- 
raphy of reviews and opinions expressed 
since the first publication of the papyrus. 
27 Although not quite all scholars are 
agreed that it can be dated within so narrow 
a range, Kenyon, W. Schubart, H. I. Bell, 
Deissmann, and W. H. P. Hatch have ex- 
pressed themselves as being in agreement 
with Roberts’ judgement. Indeed, Deiss- 
mann believes that it certainly was written 
within the reign of Hadrian (117-138) and 
may even date from the time of Trajan (died 
117); see his “Ein Evangelienblatt aus den 
Tagen Hadrians,” Deutsche allgemeine Zeit- 
ung, No. 564, Dec. 3, 1935, English transla- 
tion in the British Weekly, Dec. 12, 1935, 
jos VAS 
