Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 17.3- 4 (1980) PP 155- 165
THE OXYRHYNCHUS PAPYRUS OF PHILO
Among the papyri discovered at Oxyrhynchus are the remains
of a codex which contained a selection of works of Philo of
Alexandria. These fragments, published as P.Oxy. IX 1173, P.Oxy.
XI 1356, PSI XI 1207, P.Oxy. XVIII 2158, and P.Haun. 8, are of
importance for Philonic studies in the first place because they
provide a control on the medieval manuscripts, all of which appear
to derive from a fourth century exemplar at Caesarea.' Furthermore, the papyrus preserves fragments from at least one of the
lost works of Philo, considerable portions of whose corpus either
have disappeared entirely or exist only in Greek fragments or the
ancient Armenian and Latin versions. Despite the codex's mutilated condition, moreover, enough evidence is available to permit
a reconstruction of the arrangement of its original contents as well
as an identification of the lost works which survive here in part.
The papyrus, which dates from the third century, consists of
fifteen folios and five small fragments.2 The codex was paginated,
I See Leopold Cohn and Paul Wendland, Philonis Alexandrini opera quae supersunt
(6 volumes; Berlin 1896-1915) vol. I, III-IV. The only other known papyrus of
Philo is Parisinus suppl. gr. 1120, which contains Heres and Sacr. (The works of
Philo are cited here by the abbreviations in Studia Philonica 1 [1972] 92.) Cf. Joseph
van Haelst, Catalogue des papyrus litterairesjuifs et chretiens (Paris 1976) no. 695.
2 Van Haelst, Catalogue no. 696 says that Vitelli (in PSI XI) assigns the papyrus
to the second century. But this "assignment" was simply a typographical error, as is
noted on p.ix of the edition (cf. also p.viii), where the date is given as the "IIP"
century, that is, the latter part of the third century. Moreover, van Haelst cites only
fourteen folios, since he counts as one folio the double sheet of PSI 1207; but six
of the other folios are also parts of such double sheets.
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