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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 August 2011
In 1932 Vitelli and Norsa published a substantial fragment of the Greek Jonah, the remains of a parchment codex, consisting of the final leaf of an initial quaternion and two other complete quaternions, in all seventeen consecutive folios or thirty-four pages. The text covers 1.11b–4.10a. The fourteen missing pages of the first quaternion and five additional pages beyond the present end of the codex would suffice to complete the text. The quaternions are so arranged that each begins and ends with a recto, and within the quaternion verso always confronts verso, recto always confronts recto. Each page bears one column of ten lines, and the lines contain as few as six and as many as fourteen letters, but commonly eight to eleven letters. Vitelli and Norsa give the size of the columns as 4 × 4.5 cm., but this is probably a mean estimate since a measurement taken on the facsimile yields 4 × 4.8 cm. for the columns of writing on pp. 12 and 13 of the third quaternion. The codex is 5.5 cm. broad and 6 cm. high. The unusually small format is noteworthy. The editors have assigned the manuscript to the fourth century A.D. It was acquired by purchase and its provenience is unknown.
1 Jonah is preserved entire in a papyrus codex of the 3rd cent. A.D. published by Sanders, Minor Prophets, Mich. Stud., Human. Ser., 21, 1927.
2 P(ubblicazioni della) S(ocietà) I(taliana), Papiri greci e latini, 10, 1164, facs. pl. 1.
3 Ibid.: “una media di dieci lettere per rigo.”
4 Ibid.: “Non ci sovviene di codici membranacei di formato altrettanto piccolo.” For codices almost as small see Stegmüller, Berl(iner) Sept(uagintafragmente), Berl. Klassikertexte, 8, 1939, p. 66; Worrell, Coptic Mss., Mich. Stud., Human. Ser., 10, 1923, xi ff.; Husselman, Coptic Texts, Mich. Stud., Human. Ser., 46, 1942, p. 7.
5 Stegmüller, Berl. Sept. 18.
6 Ibid.: “sehr viel Ähnlichkeit.”
7 Cavalieri and Lietzmann, Specim. cod. graec., 1910, pl. 2.
8 Berl. Sept., pp. 55, 66.
9 Ibid., p. 55: “unten ein wenig vom Rand erhalten scheint.”
10 Sanders suggests late 4th–early 5th as a possible date for both fragments.
11 Swete, Old Testament in Greek, 4th ed.
12 Read ἑπορεύετο.
13 ε[ξ] Stegmüller, but the restoration is unnecessary if Vitelli and Norsa read correctly the first doubtful traces in their manuscript.
14 Vitelli and Norsa indicate a lacuna of only 2 letters, and εμ may have been omitted.
15 Read βάλετε.
