Charles E. Hill

Papias of Hierapolis

Despite many doubts surrounding the interpretation of the traditions he collected, the importance of Papias of Hierapolis remains high to this day. The fragments of his five-volume work, Exposition of the Dominical Oracles, written in the early second century, preserve valuable reflections of the significance of Jesus and the Gospels, and put us in touch with an even earlier generation of Christians.

Did the Scribe of P 52 use the Nomina Sacra ? Another Look

Recently, Christopher M. Tuckett offered in this journal a careful and incisive study of the question whether the scribe of P 52 (PRyl 457) employed the nomina sacra forms. The extant text contains no words that were commonly abbreviated as such, though missing portions of the fragment would have contained three instances (lines 2, 5, 7) of the name ‘Jesus’. Tuckett concluded with C. H. Robertss original opinion (later changed) that the abbreviations were probably not used in P 52 . Christopher M. Tuckett, ‘P 52 and Nomina Sacra ’, NTS 47 (2001) 544–8. I would like to call attention here to several factors which have a bearing on the question and which I believe balance the issue, or perhaps even tip the scales of probability a bit the other way.