Henry A. Sanders

A Fragment of the Acta Pauli in the Michigan Collection

THE fragment, P. Mich. 1317, is a damaged scrap of papyrus 19.8 by 6.3 cm. (7by 21 inches). It is much darkened with age and otherwise damaged by dirt, water, and wear. It is a portion of a leaf of a book written on both sides, which came into our collection classified as a bit of a lost Gospel, though it did not seem to me to conform to that designation. My first transcript of the text was shown to my colleague Professor Bonner, and by him to Dr. H. I. Bell of the British Museum and to Sir Frederic Kenyon. All agreed that these fragmentary remnants seem to have belonged to a homily. A transcript of the text was also sent to Professor Kirsopp Lake for suggestions on the probable authorship. Upon the publication of the Acta Pauli by Schmidt and Schubart he at once notified me of the identity in text and we both immediately thereafter established that the Michigan and Berlin fragments were parts of a single leaf. A page number, rc (= 86), is found just above the beginning of the first line on the side, where the outer margin is preserved. A similar page number on the opposite side of the leaf must have perished, as there only the ends of the lines are preserved. It is the part of the leaf next to the binding that is lost. The book form requires the lost number to have been re (= 85), since the left side of the leaf precedes the right. The order of the text in the Hamburg fragment of the Acta Pauli confirms this succession of pages. Page wc is on the verso of the papyrus, [re] on the recto. Now it is well known that papyrus quires, whether large or small, were generally so arranged that verso precedes recto in the first half of the quire, and recto precedes verso in the second half; compare Schubart, Das Buch bei den Griechern und Rtimern, p. 199 f., and Kenyon, Chester Beatty Papyri, I, 11. There are some exceptions to this general rule, but the probability remains that this fragment came from the second half of a quire.

Two Fragmentary Birth-Certificates from the Michigan Collection, and Some Papyrus Fragments from the Michigan Collection

one would not have expected to find i n such a place, a painted representation of Harpocrates and a S p h i n x of the type discussed most recent ly by Perdr izet , Tares cuites de la Collection Fouqv.et, p . 79. A few other wal l -paint ings , equally crude, are reproduced i n the plates and briefly descr ibed; but a l l such finds w i l l bo dea l t -wi th moro fully i n a la ter volume. Altogether , an excellent account, published i n a form wh ich one can handle w i t h comfort, of some of the resul ts of a most ins t ruc t ive excavat ion . C . C . E D G A R .

A Papyrus Manuscript of the Minor Prophets

Among the parchment and papyrus manuscripts and fragments brought to this country by the University of Michigan Expedition under Professor Francis W. Kelsey, only one is of paramount interest to the Biblical scholar. There are indeed lectionaries and parts of lectionaries dating from the eleventh century and later, and even a single papyrus fragment of a Psalm, but the former are uninteresting textually, and the latter is too small to give much evidence.