The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part 13

"gave" original: "ἔδωκεν": so Sinaiticus, Bezae and some others; "distributed" original: "διέδωκεν" Alexandrinus, Vaticanus and most MSS.
23. "and": so Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, Vaticanus and most MSS.; "but and" original: "δὲ καί" Bezae, etc.
40. "And it was already dark": so Alexandrinus, Vaticanus and most MSS.; "but the darkness overtook them" original: "κατέλαβεν δὲ αὐτοὺς ἡ σκοτία" Sinaiticus, Bezae.
40-1. "Jesus had not come to them": "Jesus had not yet come to them" Sinaiticus; "Jesus had not yet come to them" Vaticanus; "Jesus had not come to them" Alexandrinus. There is not room for "yet" original: "οὔπω" here.
41. "and" original: "τε": so most MSS.; "but" original: "δέ" Bezae, etc.
42. "was stirred up" original: "διεγείρετο": so Vaticanus etc.; "was being stirred up" original: "διηγείρετο" Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, Bezae, etc.
43. "as" original: "ὡς": so Sinaiticus, Vaticanus and most MSS.; "about" original: "ὡσεί" Alexandrinus, Bezae, etc.; omitted by a few MSS.
"stades": so Sinaiticus (a or b), Alexandrinus, Vaticanus and most MSS.; "stadiums" original: "στάδια" Sinaiticus original, Bezae.
43-4. "see": the supplement in l. 43 is rather long; and possibly "they behold" original: "ὁρῶσιν" occurred, though no such variant is known here. Before "Jesus," the MSS. insert "the," but there is certainly not room for "the" original: "τόν" here.
46. "But He": so all Greek MSS. except Sinaiticus, which has "and."
47. "to fear" original: "φοβεῖσθαι": (error for "fear ye" original: "φοβεῖσθε").
49. "upon the land": so Sinaiticus (c), Alexandrinus, Bezae, Vaticanus and most MSS.; "upon the earth" original: "ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν" Sinaiticus original, etc.
"[were going]": so all MSS. except Sinaiticus original, which has "met." That reading is possible here, for the supplement (13 letters) is 3 or 4 letters shorter than would be expected, but there may well have been a considerable space before "the next day," which begins a new section.
51. "saw": so Sinaiticus, Bezae, etc.; "they saw" original: "εἶδον" Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, etc.; "seeing" original: "ἰδών" some MSS.

1597. ACTS OF THE APOSTLES xxvi.

This scrap from the bottom of a leaf of a papyrus codex is tantalizing, for it belongs to an abnormal recension of Acts. The script is a good-sized, somewhat irregular uncial, which is certainly not later than the fourth century and may belong to the latter part of the third. M has the middle brought down below the side strokes; the top stroke of Ξ is curved and the middle of ω is slurred. God theos is contracted, as usual. Whether stops were employed is uncertain. All that survives is 7-10 letters from the beginnings or ends of 10 fairly long lines which covered xxvi. 7-8 and 20, and the reconstructions of the lacunae are in several places doubtful; but enough remains to show that the text presented many novelties. In ch. xxvi Codex Bezae (D), the principal rival of the current text, is defective; but in ll. 3 and 8 there are strong indications of agreements between 1597 and some of the variants preserved in Old Latin MSS., so that the fragment seems to represent a very ancient Greek text akin to the ‘Western’, apparently avoiding some of the difficulties of construction and sense presented by the current text in this chapter. That a piece of the ‘Western’ text of Acts should make its appearance in Egypt is an interesting circumstance, but perhaps not very surprising. The reading of Bezae in Matt. iii. 16-17 occurred in the Oxyrhynchus Irenaeus fragment (405;