The Two-Volume Archetype of the Pauline Corpus

Abstract

ABSTRACT An extremely ancient edition of the Pauline corpus collecting 14 epistles into a pair of rolls, with Hebrews heading the second roll, arguably underlies the text and numbering in Codex Vaticanus. For such an arrangement, a plausible rationale is apparent, mainly involving considerations of length (perhaps further influenced by inclusion of 2 Peter as an epilogue). Furthermore, this lost two-volume edition can explain many difficulties surrounding the early evolution of the corpus. Transitioning to the single-volume codex format motivated the segregation of Hebrews from the public epistles into a distinct group alongside the four pastorals, with Galatians left still before the slightly longer Ephesians, and the resulting well-attested edition and its derivatives account for nearly all witnesses of the corpus. The exceptional 𝔭46 stems from an imperfect attempt to replicate this edition from a two-roll exemplar, while several distinctive features of Marcion’s Apostolicon derived independently from the two-volume edition. Both the titles of the epistles and the “in Ephesus” in Ephesians were absent in the original two-volume edition but were supplied when its contents were incorporated into a larger New Testament compilation. From this two-volume edition, likely assembled by Luke, all subsequent collections of Paul’s epistles have arguably descended.