Chester Beatty Papyri - Old Testament Manuscripts

Old Testament Manuscripts

Originally, there were believed to be eight manuscripts in the Chester Beatty collection that contained portions of the Old Testament. However, what was believed to be two different manuscripts actually belonged to the same codex, resulting in a total of seven Old Testament manuscripts in the collection, all following the text of the septuagint.

• P. IV and V – Two manuscripts that contain portions of Genesis, one dated to the late 3rd century, and one the early 4th century. These manuscripts are significant because the next oldest Greek Old Testament texts of Vaticanus and Sinaiticus have extensive Lacunae in Genesis.
• P. VI – A manuscript of the Book of Numbers and Deuteronomy, consisting of around 50 partial leaves out of 108 and many very small fragment, dated to the first half of the 2nd century. It is the earliest manuscript in the collection, but is predated by two other less extensive Greek papyri manuscripts of these books, P. Fouad 266 and P. Rylands 458.
• P. VII – A manuscript of the Book of Isaiah, heavily deteriorated, with Coptic (Old Fayumic) marginal notes, dated to the 3rd century.
• P. VIII – Two fragmentary leaves from the Book of Jeremiah, c. 200
• P. IX/X – A manuscript of the Books of Ezekiel, Daniel, and Esther. What remains is 50 out of an original 118 leaves, 29 of which are in the Chester Beatty Library (8 of Ezekiel, 8 of Esther, and 13 of Daniel), and another 21 of Ezekiel are in the Princeton University Library. All of the manuscripts are the most substantial, early examples of the corresponding books. The bottom portion of the leaves are missing, and the manuscript is dated to the 3rd century. Ezekiel is written in a different handwriting than the other two books. Daniel was originally counted as X, because it was mistakenly attributing it to another manuscript. It was later decided that all three books belonged to the same codex. Daniel contains some significant variations regarding the ordering and omission of certain text (chapters 7-8 come before 5-6, and parts of chapters 4 and 5 are missing).
• P. XI – Two fragmentary leaves from Ecclesiastes, dated to the 4th century.