Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Oxyrhynchos'

The purpose of this thesis is to publish and so make available for scholars and others interested in Roman and Byzantine Egypt 32 documentary papyri, dated from 107 AD to the early 7th century, which are part of the Oxyrhynchus collection belonging to the Egypt Exploration Society. The papyri cover a range of subjects. The summonses (03 to 09) and declarations of uninundated or artificially irrigated land (010 to 014) are documents of which many examples have already been published; they confirm, clarify and expand information gleaned from other documents. Contracts between private individuals for irrigation works (01) and leasing a workshop and mill (02) are more unusual, as is the agreement under which town councillors share out their liturgical duties (017). A letter concerning the corn dole (015) and a complete list of Oxyrhynchite praepositi pagorum (016) also relate to Oxyrhynchite administration. Three circus programmes (018 to 020) double the number of such documents known and include a number of words not previously attested in papyri. The last twelve papyri relate to aspects of administration and life on the large estates of Byzantine Egypt, mainly those of the well-attested Apion family; they include contracts of employment of a door-keeper and a rent-collector (021 and 022) and documents relating to the collection of rents (023 and 024) and payment for wine (025). 026 to 031 concern monasteries, two of which, Abba Petros and Abba Castor, are previously unattested; the latter is also listed as a payer in 032. All contribute to the picture of social and economic conditions in Roman and Byzantine Egypt built up by previous scholarship. The conventions used are those required for publication in the P. Oxy. series, although the commentaries which follow are much more detailed than is usual in such volumes.

This thesis presents an edition of eighteen previously unedited texts from the papyri excavated at Oxyrhynchus by Grenfell and Hunt. All are documentary and range in date from AD 55 to 387. The subject matter of these documents covers a range of activities which ostensibly reflect the day-to-day business of town and country, but on closer inspection give a deeper insight into broader topics concerning Roman and Byzantine Egypt. Although the documents seem diverse, the theme which links them is that which Lewis called “the silent majority, the men, women and children in the middle and bottom strata of society in their daily lives.” It reveals that which constitutes ‘the ordinary’ in this society and the everyday challenges faced by them: people find themselves in financial difficulty and take out a loan (001 and 013, both eranos loan contracts, a rarely attested type); a male and a female slave are sold to yet another master (002 and 012); an abandoned child is given a reprieve (007); two slaves are emancipated (003 and 006, the latter being the only Greek example of the payment of tax on a manumissio inter amicos); farmers hope for a good inundation (004 and 009); and ship-owners and skippers receive and transport tax grain along the Nile (010 and 014-018). All the documents present philological and prosopographical information which is new or can serve to consolidate or amend previous theories. The thesis contains a number of appendices which amend or update currently available information on a number of topics (e.g. Appendix III, Alexandrian Phyle-Deme pairings) and highlight some new thoughts on previously held opinions (e.g. Appendix VIII, Neo-natal Exposition in Roman Egypt).

P.Oxy. 840 is a fragment of a lost Gospel that was published by Grenfell & Hunt in 1908. Prima facie P.Oxy. 840 contains a controversy dialogue between Jesus and a high priest regarding purity set within the temple of Jerusalem. The research history shows that the most controversial aspects of P.Oxy. 840 are its historical plausibility, what inter-texts relate to it, how the text is to be reconstructed, and what kind of Christianity lies behind P.Oxy. 840. This dissertation attempts to classify the Christianity of P.Oxy. 840. In the past three trajectories have been proposed in answer to this problem: orthodoxy, Gnosis and Jewish Christianity. This study attempts to answer this research problem by means of a comparative analysis of P.Oxy. 840's inter-texts. A comparative key for analysing texts is designed in accordance with Smith's comparative approach to religions. 22 Representative texts from the three trajectories are compared with P.Oxy. 840 that show comparable theological positions regarding purity and anti-Judaism, and that utilize the same form (chria). The three trajectories, Gnosis, Jewish Christianity and Proto-Orthodoxy are then described as proper taxonomies that can help us classify texts according to their trajectory. The dissertation's classificatory approach understands the various trajectories descriptively in terms of each other, instead of right or wrong (orthodox or heterodox). At the same time the study is informed by a historical conscience, sensitive to the development of theology within the second century. Chapter 4 is the articulation of the author's reading of P.Oxy. 840. Two theological positions emerge: Firstly, P.Oxy. 840 contains strong anti-Jewish polemic, accusing its opponents of lust. Secondly, P.Oxy. 840 motivates the supersession of immersion by baptism ("living water"). Chapter 5 looks at Gnostic inter-texts comparable to P.Oxy. 840. It emerges that Gnostics had the same symbolic understanding of purity as the Proto-Orthodox had. Bovon's idea of a typical Gnostic anti-baptism is undermined. Bovon underestimates the metaphorical reference of "baptism." The similarities between P.Oxy. 840 and the CMC is judged to be circumstantial. Similar logical methodology and a shared literary canon can account for this. Anti-Jewish polemic is not that common in Gnostic literature. Chapter 6 analyses Jewish-Christian inter-texts comparable to P.Oxy. 840. Problems in Kruger's identification of P.Oxy. 840 with the Nazarene community are shown. By looking at Jewish Christian literature it becomes evident that P.Oxy. 840's argumentation is entirely different. P.Oxy. 840 undermines the whole law, while this literature is at pains to uphold it. P.Oxy. 840 appears ignorant of Jewish theology. Chapter 7 examines Proto-Orthodox inter-texts (or at least inter-texts later absorbed by Proto-Orthodoxy) comparable to P.Oxy. 840. Of all the trajectories anti-Judaism plays the biggest role with the Proto-Orthodox. The accusation of Jewish lust becomes characteristic of the emerging Orthodox movement. In the literature of the Proto-Orthodox (both that written by them and that appropriated by them later on) it becomes ever more important to distance oneself from Jewish institutions. Supersessionism becomes an important tool to do this. One of these institutions that is superseded is purificatory immersion by baptism. This idea develops on a trajectory that can be expressed as Q-Mark-John-Hebrews-Barnabas- Justin/P.Oxy. 840. While Justin makes his point through the invention of abstract Christian philosophy, P.Oxy. 840 is an institutional dinosaur that utilizes the chria (attached to the genre of Gospel) to make its point.
Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2016.
New Testament Studies
PhD
Unrestricted

This doctoral thesis is an editio princeps with transcriptions, translations and commentaries of twenty-two previously unedited papyrus Greek texts from Oxyrhynchus in Middle Egypt, all edited or assigned to the Roman Period, namely from the first century B. C. to the fourth A. D. It offers a balanced mixture of assorted Literary, Subliterary texts and Documents. Specifically, on the literary side, Homer and Demosthenes, the most popular authors in Egypt, are represented with one and five pieces respectively. All these texts are interesting with respect to the textual tradition of these particular authors. The rest of the literary and subliterary pieces are `new texts', including Scholia Minora to Iliad 1, Commentary on Odyssey 3, a fragment of the lost author Dictys Cretensis, historical and oratorical prose, and two very short fragments. An eclectic collection of nine documents is edited in the second part of the thesis: five official, namely two declarations of sheep and a census-return of early date, a petition and an order to summons, and four private documents, that is an acknowledgement of indebtedness, a sale of land, and two letters. All these documents are of interest, since they provide information regarding economy, admimistration, legal system, prosopography, literacy, language and other aspects of a hellenised provincial society under Roman rule.

This thesis presents twenty-one unpublished Greek literary and documentary texts from Oxyrhynchus kept in the Sackler Library, Oxford. Each papyrus is identified, transcribed, and edited with a detailed introduction and notes largely in accordance with the conventions and format of presentation of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (London 1898–). The literary texts are diverse in content. The item of especial interest is a new fragment from Sophocles’ Tereus, which joins a quotation from Stobaeus’ Anthologium. It provides new information on the play’s dramatis personae and the long vexed question of where the quotation is to be located in the play. Another new text is the remains of an unknown hexameter poem on a mythical subject which refers to the Lapiths and Centaurs. From the known texts, a minute fragment of Polybius’ Historiae, a fragment Plutarch’s Alexander and two fragments of Plato’s Philebus stand out due to the rarity of these texts. The documentary texts illustrate a variety of matters tending on social, economic, fiscal, and legal aspects of life in Roman and late antique Oxyrhynchus. Of the texts from the Roman period, a text dealing with the execution of a testamentary bequest and another text concerning a summons to the prefect’s conventus are notable for the information which they provide on the functioning of testamentary bequests and the practice of litigation respectively. Of the four texts from the Byzantine period, an Oxyrhynchite lease of land is of special importance due to the comparative rarity of documents of this kind from Oxyrhynchus and because it exhibits a number of points of interest, not least that the lessee is a colonus adscripticius. A ‘sale on delivery of wine’ also involves a colonus adscripticius. The other document of special interest is a large private letter which concerns various matters of business from a man who claims to be in a precarious situation.

The Gospel According to Thomas is found in the second manuscript of codex II of a set of texts found in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, collectively referred to today as the Coptic Gnostic Library. This gospel was readily identified as Thomas due to fragments of a Greek version of the text having already been discovered and identified in the 1890s at Oxyrhynchus, Egypt. However, the discovery near Nag Hammadi in 1945 C.E. was not of fragments, but it actually contained the entire text of Thomas. Thus, the finding of the entire text in Nag Hammadi brought about a set of questions that had not yet surfaced from the fragments of Thomas previously found at Oxyrhynchus, Egypt. For example, was Thomas actually written by Didymus Jude Thomas? If Thomas did not write it, then by whom was it written, and why did the actual author claim it to be written by Thomas?

La thèse comporte 417 pages. Son sujet est la collection des 20 Lettres attribuées à Saint Antoine-le-Grand dans la tradition copte-arabe, et de faire une analyse comparative entre le deuxième recueil de cette collection (Lettres 8-20) avec les Lettres parallèles d’Ammonas dans les autres versions (syriaque, grec, géorgien); La thèse se compose de 3 parties. La première traite du milieu culturel du monachisme primitif en Egypte, la culture d’Antoine et son héritage dans le domaine copte-arabe. La deuxième traite l’Histoire du texte et la détermination de l’original, l’authenticité, l’auteur de chaque Lettre, l’identité d’Ammonas comme évêque d’Oxyrynque et de Paphnuce, les citations de Chenoute et Bêsa, le discours d’Étienne le Thébain, l’influence d’Ammonas sur les grands ermites syriaques. La troisième est consacrée à l’analyse des 13 Lettres, et une comparaison de la doctrine d’Antoine et d’Ammonas comme, l’origénisme et la gnose d’Antoine par rapport à la non-philosophie d’Ammonas
The thesis comprises 417 pages, regarding the collection of the 20 Letters attributed to St. Anthony the Great in the Coptic-Arabic tradition, and performs a comparative analysis between the second group of Letters in this collection (8-20) with the parallel Letters of Ammonas in the other versions (Syriac, Greek, Georgian). The thesis consists of 3 parts. The first addresses the Egyptian cultural of the primitive monasticism, the education of Antony and his heritage in the Coptic-Arabic Tradition; The second addresses the text history and works on determining the original text, authenticity, the author of every Letter, the identity of Ammonas as bishop of Oxyrhynchus and Paphnutius, the quotations taken by Shenoute and Besa and Stephen of Thebes discourse, The third part is dedicated to the analysis of the 13 Letters, and a comparison of the doctrine of Antony and Ammonas, such as the Origenism and gnosis of Antony compared to the non-philosophical narrative of Ammonas

Η Μοιχαλίς ή Μοιχεύτρια αποτελεί ένα από τα δεκαέξι παπυρικά αποσπάσματα ανώνυμων λαϊκών Μίμων που σώζονται από την ύστερη αρχαιότητα. Η σύνθεσή της χρονολογείται στον 2ο αι. μ.Χ. και θεωρείται σύγχρονη με την γραφή του παπύρου (P. Oxy. 413verso). Πρόκειται για κείμενο πεζό, γραμμένο στην ελληνιστική κοινή. Σκοπός της εργασίας είναι να αναδείξει τις λογοτεχνικές αξιώσεις που εγείρει ο υπό πραγμάτευση Μίμος είτε μέσω της ανάδειξης των γλωσσικών και δομικών αρετών του είτε μέσω της επισήμανσης των σχέσεων του, θεματολογικών κυρίως αλλά και γλωσσικών, με λογοτεχνικά κείμενα, ιδίως δε με την Ζηλότυπο του Ηρώδα. Περιέχεται εισαγωγή, κείμενο με κριτικό υπόμνημα, μετάφραση και ερμηνευτικό υπόμνημα.
Moicheutria (Adulteress) or Giftmischermimus is one of the sixteen papyrus fragments of anonymous ‘non-literary’ Mimes dating from late antiquity. Composition of Moicheutria is held to be contemporary with the manuscript (P. Oxy. 413verso) dating from second century A.D. The piece is written in prose and in hellenistic κοινή. In this work emphasis is laid on the literary claims of Moicheutria by pointing out either its lingual and structural merits or the analogies, thematic as well as lingual, it bears with literary texts, especially with the Fifth Mimiamb of Herodas (The Jealous Woman). Contents: Introduction, text with critical apparatus, translation in Greek and commentary.