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  • From: "David @ Comcast" <davidinglis2 AT comcast.net>
  • To: "Corpus-Paul" <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [Corpus-Paul] Re: Stichoi in P46
  • Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 11:39:22 -0800

Larry, thank you for your comments. See below for my comments on your
comments

>> 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.

I think this is exactly my point. What was the person who calculated the
stichoi shown in P46 actually counting? Actual lines, homeric lines, sense
lines, or something else?
>
>On your #2, it could be a mistranslation or miscopy; worth checking if
those
>numbers are the numbers on the papyrus page

Yes. If the number is actually 275 (for example) that would make sense.
Has anyone on the list got access to a good facsimile?

>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.

The lines counts given above are only (very) rough averages. I'm currently
engaged in counting the line lengths of every extant line in P46, and in
fact the variation both in number of lines and characters per line from page
to page is sometimes surprising. Although there is a general increasing
trend in lines/page, there are significant variations within this:

75r 27 (Contains the beginning of Eph)
75v 28
76r 29
76v 30
77r 28
77v 29
78r 29
78v 30

Why increase to 30 lines per page on 76v, only to drop back to 28 on the
very next page? Here are the average characters/line for 6 successive pages
in P46:

17v 33.7
17r 30.5
18v 34.4 (Rom 14.9 - 14.21)
18r 34.1 (Rom 14.22 - 15.11)
19v 29.3
19r 28.3

These variations are another thing that suggest to me that the scribe was
not a professional.

Dave Inglis
davidinglis2 AT comcast.net
3538 O'Connor Drive
Lafayette, CA, USA





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