Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

corpus-paul - Re: [Corpus-Paul] Re: Stichoi in P46

corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Corpus-Paul

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Larry Swain" <theswain AT operamail.com>
  • To: "Corpus-Paul" <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Re: Stichoi in P46
  • Date: Wed, 03 Mar 2004 21:12:59 +0100



> 1) Why are the stichoi for Romans, Hebrews, and 2 Cor (600, which isn't
> shown in Bob's table) multiples of 100, while the rest are not?
> 2) Why are the stichoi for Eph and Gal the 'wrong way round'? (basically,
> why is the value for Gal given as 375 (it should be less than the 316 given
> for Eph).

Remember that stichos means "line", but doesn't necessarily mean
"line"...that is, was the scribe counting literally lines per page, or rather
was he basing it on the standard Homeric line of 35-50 characters, and 6
"feet", or is a line, like in Epic poetry, a thought unit? Which is the
scribe counting? I'm sure someone has done the comparison.

On your #2, it could be a mistranslation or miscopy; worth checking if those
numbers are the numbers on the papyrus page

If they are different, it could be scribal error, see below.



> These two points both still suggest to me that the stichoi in P46 did not
> originate with the scribe of P46.

Not necessarily, but I do agree. The copyist of P46 is likely copying the
stichoi notations of his exemplar. Stranger things have happened with
inattentive scribes.


> Interestingly, dividing the 'common' stichoi values by the number of
> characters in each of the Paulines epistles gives a remarkably constant
> result: between 37.1 and 38.6 characters per stichoi for all the Epistles
> except 2 Tim (34.1) and Phlm (41.4). This suggests to me that stichoi (for
> the Paulines epistles at least) were in fact generally tied to a fairly
> standard line length (of around 38 characters) rather than a particular
> number of syllables.

As I recall about P46, the lines are fairly standard on the page: 28 then 30
then 32 as the scribe/copyist realizes that the amount he is copying isn't
going to fit in the quire. And line length at least in a single work tends
to be fairly consistent as well, so I can't say that I'm surprised, but I
wouldn't go so far as to say that it was standardized, or even generally
standard. One can say that this scribe's standard was approx. so many
letters to the line, so many lines to the page, and that's about all.
Further, if the stichoi of P46 are not original to P46 but reflect a previous
scribe's work, then their probity on the question seems to me to be limited.

Larry Swain
--
_____________________________________________________________
Web-based SMS services available at http://www.operamail.com.
>From your mailbox to local or overseas cell phones.

Powered by Outblaze




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page