Wednesday, April 27, 2005

The Number of the Beast: 616 and Oxyrhynchus

On Ralph the Sacred River, Ed Cook draws attention to the National Geographic article on the Oxyrhynchus Papyri also discussed in Paleojudaica (and I really share their annoyance at Revelations). The National Geographic article writes:
The latest volume includes details of fragments showing third- and fourth-century versions of the Book of Revelations. Intriguingly, the number assigned to "the Beast" of Revelations isn't the usual 666, but 616.
and Ed comments:
My copy of Nestle-Aland (27th ed.) at Revelation 13:18 lists for the variant reading "616" only "C; Ir mss" (the 5th century uncial manuscript C and some manuscripts cited by Irenaeus). A 3rd or 4th century papyrus containing this reading would be extremely significant, although probably not enough to outweigh the many witnesses for "666."
The relevant article here is the following:

David C. Parker, "A New Oxyrhynchus Papyrus of Revelation: P115 (P.Oxy 4499)", NTS 46 (2000): 159-74

There is a very brief discussion of the variant in question on 169.
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5 comments:

  1. Anonymous27 April 2005 at 20:35

    Funnily enough, if you were one to believe in the association of "666" with Caesar Nero, you could still justify it for the manuscripts with "616"! I found that very interesting!

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  2. Peter M. Head28 April 2005 at 04:43

    This is also discussed in my paper: Peter M. Head, ‘Some Recently Published NT Papyri from Oxyrhynchus: An Overview and Preliminary Assessment’, published in Tyndale Bulletin 51 (2000), pp. 1-16 [see on-line version: http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Tyndale/staff/Head/NTOxyPap.htm; scroll down]

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  3. Anonymous3 May 2005 at 16:51

    Damn. Now all those Iron Maiden songs are no good.

    -Matty

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  4. geoffhudson.blogspot.com12 August 2009 at 10:24

    Nero is misrepresented by a later writer. He was not the type of person we have been led to believe by Flavian historians who rubbished everything and everybody before Vespasian.

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  5. geoffhudson.blogspot.com12 August 2009 at 10:42

    In fact, it seems that a later writer used the same technique in the Oxyrhnchus papyrus to rubbish Gaius. You see, there is another way of looking at this.

    ReplyDelete