Papyrus 137: A Newly-Published Greek Fragment of The Gospel of Mark
Channel: Galen Currah
Date: 2018-11-15

Papyrus 137: A Newly-Published Greek Fragment of The Gospel of Mark (Updated)
An opinion of Doctor Galen Currah, November 2018
wordwatchers.currah.us

New Testament Greek Papyrus 137, published in 2018, apparently comes from a single-column codex having about 25 lines per column, an average of 28 letters per line, and a written area estimated at 9.4 × 12 cm on a size has been estimated at 12.4 × 16.6 cm.

Although the fragment contains only a few words of Mark 1:7-9 and 1:16-17, it helps scholars to confirm several points of interest:

● Copies of the Greek Gospel of Mark were already circulating internationally in the second and third centuries CE.
● In spite of minor transcriptional variations, the text substantiates that presented in better-preserved, fourth-century documents, such as Codex Sinaiticus.
● By the third century CE, New Testament scribes had begun employing abbreviations for sacred names (nomena sacra). 
● The Holy Spirit was already considered a divine Person whose title is abbreviated as a nomen sacrum.

Just as all authentic biblical manuscripts have proven subject to copyists’ errors, so, too,  this tiny scrap of Scripture contains some textual variants that help scholars to reconstruct the original wording of Mark’s Gospel. To wit:

● The title Holy Spirit at verse 8 is shortened from πνευματι to π̣̅ν̣̅ι as a nomen sacrum (divine name).
● The preposition εν ('in') is found neither before “water” nor before “Holy Spirit,” which terms occur in the dative case having the same function as εν.
● The name Jesus is omitted, although the verbs occur in their third person singular form, referring to Jesus in the preceding verses.