Museum Pieces
Wilbur N. Pickering, ThM PhD
Persecuted people have neither the leisure nor the means to work on museum
pieces. During the first three centuries the true ChrisƟans were an unpopular
minority, both with the Roman Empire and the Jewish Establishment. OŌen the
persecuƟon was overt. Once ChrisƟanity became a state religion, rulers would have
the means to cover the cost.
Consider the ‘purple MSS’, of which there are four of any size: GA 022, 023, 042 and
043. The parchment (leather) was stained purple and the text was wriƩen with
silver ink. Now then, such documents were not prepared for ordinary use, because
ordinary use would wear them out. For ordinary use you use ordinary materials. So
why would someone contract the producƟon of a ‘purple MS’? Might a ruler think
that thereby he could curry favor with God? Or might it be a symbol of the state
religion? And who would be called upon to do the work? It would certainly be an
arƟsan, not a textual scholar. An arƟsan would know nothing about textual quality;
he would simply use whatever exemplar was handy, or was handed to him. If he
made mistakes, no one would ever noƟce them. I consider the purple MSS to be
museum pieces. They were not part of the normal transmission.
Now consider the MSS with fancy and expensive artwork. Again, such documents
were not being prepared for ordinary use. In 2014 I spent nine days on the Mt.
Athos peninsula, with its twenty independent monasteries. I visited five of them. I
talked with the librarian of three of them. I was taken to the treasury of two of
them. The only MSS that are in the treasuries are those with fancy and expensive
artwork; the quality of text is simply not a factor. When talking with the librarians I
raised the maƩer of lines of textual transmission in the MSS and was met with a
blank look; they had no idea what I was talking about (their life is governed by
tradiƟon). But why was that artwork created? Why were elaborate cathedrals
constructed? I suppose it was their way of honoring God. Monks in monasteries all
have a work assignment: some work in the kitchen, some work in the garden, some
copy manuscripts and some do artwork; it is their religious duty. The arƟst doing the
artwork would know nothing about the quality of the text that his work was
decoraƟng. Some of the ink colors may have been almost as precious as gold or
silver, not easy to come by. Decorated MSS were not for ordinary use and thus had a
chance to survive. They were museum pieces.
Now consider the number of columns of text per page. About 10% of the papyri
have two columns, the rest have one column. As for the uncials: one has four
columns, GA 01 (aleph); three have three columns, GA 03 (B), 048 and 053; around
55% have two columns, and the rest have one. As for the minuscules: GA 460 has
three columns; less than 15% have two columns, and the rest have one. For ease of
reading, one column is best and two is alright; three and four are inferior. Codex
2
Aleph (SinaiƟcus) is a curiosity: its text is clearly fabricated, not belonging to any
known line of transmission. With four columns it evidently was not intended for
public reading or ordinary use. Codex B (VaƟcanus) is also a curiosity: its text is also
clearly fabricated, not belonging to any known line of transmission. Besides having
three columns, it is wriƩen on very fine vellum, and therefore was not intended for
public reading or ordinary use. I would say that those two MSS, along with A, D, W
and others, survived because they were not used, and they were not used because
the quality of their text was too poor to be used. They are museum pieces.
I believe that from the very beginning the ChrisƟans used books, not scrolls, to make
copies of the NT wriƟngs. A book is more efficient and pracƟcal. With a book you
can easily find the place you are looking for; with a scroll it is far more difficult. A
book is wriƩen on both sides of the sheet, while a scroll is wriƩen on only one side,
so a scroll wastes half of the available space. With the need to proliferate copies,
the ChrisƟans could not afford to waste that space. And what material could they
use? Before the invenƟon of paper, there was just papyrus and parchment. Papyrus
would be far more plenƟful and less expensive than parchment (leather). Further,
papyrus is simply not an adequate material for making scrolls; it is more suited for
making books.
However, there is definitely a down-side to using papyrus. It is fragile. It is made
with strips of pith from the stem of the papyrus plant. If it gets wet, it falls apart.
Although it is vegetable, it is impervious; ink does not sink in, but dries as a crust on
the surface. If you flex the sheet, the ink may fly off, leaving no trace on the papyrus.
A book on papyrus sent from congregaƟon to congregaƟon would probably be
falling apart before it got to the twenƟeth one. To survive for seventeen or eighteen
centuries a manuscript on papyrus would have to be buried in desert sand without
having been used. Our oldest papyrus manuscript of any size, P66, has an average of
two mistakes per verse, stupid mistakes, nonsensical mistakes. It would be
psychologically impossible to use it for devoƟonal reading or study, so it was buried
in desert sand. P45,46,47,75 are all bad, and they survived because they were buried in
desert sand, without having been used. (Personally, the only value that I ascribe to
those early papyri is that they prove that any reading that they contain is early—
veritable museum pieces.)
So, what is my point; why did I write this arƟcle? My point is that ‘museum pieces’
were not prepared in order to preserve a pure text; they were prepared for other
reasons. It follows that we should not expect to find a good text in museum pieces,
and therefore they should not be depended upon as we work to idenƟfy the original
wording of the Text. Any and all MSS need to be placed in a line of transmission; a
copy that is not part of a line of transmission is a fabricated copy, not an honest one.
From the very beginning, the vast majority of copies of the NT wriƟngs were made
by honest people, people sincerely trying to make faithful copies. Those copies were
made to be used, and therefore were worn out and could not survive, the more so if
3
made on papyrus. That is why there are no ‘ByzanƟne’ MSS from the earliest
centuries. The earliest MSS that are even parƟally ByzanƟne are usually dated to the
fiŌh century. However, before 1881, the academic world, including WestcoƩ himself
(!), held that the Syriac PeshiƩa was produced in the second century, and it is
heavily ‘ByzanƟne’. The LaƟn tradiƟon is more ByzanƟne than anything else. Even
the CopƟc tradiƟon is half ByzanƟne. Whoever produced P66 had a second century
ByzanƟne exemplar, because he alternated freely between ‘ByzanƟne’ and
‘Alexandrian’ readings. It follows that the ByzanƟne text certainly existed in the
second century. I hold that Family 35 was the core of the ByzanƟne tradiƟon.
