Papyrus 72

Three Letters, Complete

P72 is unusual among early papyri in that nothing is missing. It carries 1 Peter, 2 Peter and Jude entire, and it is the earliest known manuscript of all three. For letters whose place in the canon was debated longer than almost any others — 2 Peter especially — that is a substantial fact: they were being copied out in full, by one hand, in Egypt, in the third or fourth century.

The scribe wrote all three, and he was not a professional. T. Wasserman's study of the codex describes "the informal and personal character of the scribe's hand, and the many errors and irregularities in his text", and concludes that "at least these parts of the codex were probably produced for private, rather than liturgical, use". This is somebody's own book, not a church's lectern copy — which makes it a rarer and more interesting kind of witness than a fine display Bible.

The pages are now in two countries. Jude, as Papyrus Bodmer VII, stayed with the Fondation Martin Bodmer in Cologny; 1 and 2 Peter, as Papyrus Bodmer VIII, are in the Vatican Library, which digitises them under that shelfmark. How they got there began as a gesture: the Fondation records that in 1969, for the visit of Pope Paul VI to Geneva, Martin Bodmer presented him with "four papyrus sheets from a codex bearing the two Epistles of Peter", with the dedication "That the letters of Peter may return to Peter's house." The whole Petrine portion is in Rome now; the Fondation's account covers only that first gift.

What Else Is in the Book

Wasserman opens his study by naming what gets left out: "Unfortunately, NT scholars have tended to focus only on the text of P72, disregarding the rest of the codex." The volume the three letters sit in contains, in order, the Protevangelium, a second-century story of Mary's birth and childhood, the apocryphal correspondence between Paul and the Corinthians known as 3 Corinthians, the eleventh Ode of Solomon, the letter of Jude, Melito of Sardis's homily On the Passover, a hymn fragment, the Apology of Phileas, Psalms 33 and 34 in Greek, and finally 1 and 2 Peter.

Nothing here is a canon list and nothing here is a heresy. It is what one Christian household or small congregation in Egypt actually had bound together: two letters attributed to Peter and one to Jude, next to a devotional legend about Mary, next to a letter nobody now thinks Paul wrote, next to a genuine second-century Passover sermon by a bishop of Sardis. Reading it as a New Testament misreads it; reading it as evidence that early Christians could not tell the difference misreads it too. It is a reader's shelf, bound.

How the book was assembled is itself a subject. Its pages carry several separate ancient numbering sequences, which means smaller booklets were joined into one volume at some point. T. Wasserman, correcting an earlier reconstruction by checking the fibre direction against the facsimile, found that "another text, now lost, probably followed 2 Peter" — so even the contents list above is incomplete. Whether the Apology of Phileas and the Psalms belonged to this codex at all has recently been questioned by B. Nongbri, on the grounds that those leaves are a slightly different shape and lack the distinctive pattern of holes shared by the rest.

What Held It Together, and Why the Answer Matters for the Date

Scholars have proposed several unifying themes: V. Martin thought the collection apologetic; K. Haines-Eitzen singled out the body; Wasserman argued for a high Christology, pointing among other things to the scribe's reading at Jude 5; D. Horrell counted pages and found that most of the surviving codex concerns the suffering of Christ and of his people. Wasserman is the most cautious, and his caution is the honest position: "Since the final codex is probably made up of earlier collections, an identification of one single pervasive theme seems problematic." A book assembled out of booklets does not have to have had a single idea behind it, and a reader should be suspicious of any account that finds one too easily.

There is a live terminological argument alongside it — whether to call this a "miscellany", implying a designed collection, or a "composite" codex, implying accretion. E. G. Turner thought scribes simply did not waste writing material and filled up spare pages; B. C. Jones concluded that "The term composite, in my opinion, better represents these codices for what they are — multi-text codices with no common theme." That is not a quarrel about words. It is a disagreement about whether an early Christian sat down and chose these texts, or whether the book grew.

It also bears on the date. The usual figure for P72 is the third or fourth century, and one reason the later end is preferred is that the Apology of Phileas describes a trial that took place between AD 303 and 307, so the codex as a whole cannot be earlier. But if Nongbri is right that the Phileas leaves were never part of this book, that anchor comes loose and the codex could be earlier than usually said. Nothing here changes the text of the three letters; it does mean the confident date printed in reference works rests on an assumption currently under review.

Scripture references

• 1 Peter 1:1 — The letter is preserved complete here, its earliest full copy
• 2 Peter 1:1 — Also complete — earlier than any other surviving copy
• Jude 1:3 — Jude stands earlier in the codex, between an Ode of Solomon and Melito's sermon
• Jude 1:5 — The verse whose reading in this manuscript is cited in arguments about its scribe's theology

Sources

• Holding institutionBiblioteca Apostolica Vaticana: Pap.Bodmer.VIII, DigiVatLib — Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana · The Vatican's digitisation of the 1 and 2 Peter portion, free to view. Its IIIF manifest publishes the shelfmark as given here and covers pages 2-36, which is exactly the Petrine page-numbering sequence; the library holds no manifest for the other Bodmer numbers in this codex, which is consistent with their remaining in Geneva. The viewer's rights notice restricts free use to personal or study purposes, so the images are linked here and not reproducedSupports: The shelfmark, and that only the Petrine part is in Rome
• ScholarshipT. Wasserman, "Papyrus 72 and the Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex" — Tommy Wasserman · New Testament Studies 51:1 (2005), 137-154; DOI 10.1017/S0028688505000081. The author's accepted manuscript, deposited openly by Lund University and read in full for this article. Source of the codex contents and order, the split holding, the scribe's character, the lost text after 2 Peter, and the caution about a single unifying themeSupports: Everything in the second section, and Wasserman's own conclusions in his own words
• ScholarshipB. C. Jones, "The Bodmer 'Miscellaneous' Codex and the Crosby-Schoyen Codex MS 193: A New Proposal" — Brice C. Jones · Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism 8 (2011-12), 9-20; open access. Surveys the proposed unifying themes (Martin, Haines-Eitzen, Wasserman, Horrell) and argues for "composite" over "miscellany". The proposals of Martin, Haines-Eitzen and Horrell are reported here from Jones's survey rather than from their own publications, which were not openedSupports: The range of proposed themes, and the composite-versus-miscellany argument
• Holding institutionFondation Martin Bodmer: Martin Bodmer — Fondation Martin Bodmer, Cologny-Geneva · The Fondation's own page on its founder, which records the 1969 presentation to Pope Paul VI of papyrus sheets from the codex bearing the two letters of Peter, with the dedication quoted in this articleSupports: How the Petrine leaves came to be in Rome
• EncyclopediaWikipedia: Papyrus 72

Further reading

• Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana: Pap.Bodmer.VIII
• T. Wasserman, "Papyrus 72 and the Bodmer Miscellaneous Codex"
• Wikipedia: Papyrus 72

Reflect

This book grew, booklet by booklet, into whatever its owner ended up with: two letters of Peter and one of Jude, next to a story about Mary's childhood and a sermon on the Passover. What is actually on your shelf, and what does it say about you?