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July 01, 2005

From the Chester Beatty Archives

Wieland Willker reports on a memorandum in the Chester Beatty archives concerning the discovery of the Chester Beatty Papyri. It contains information on the circumstances of the discovery and their contents.

The Papyri in question were found in three earthenware jars about 1928-1930 by some Arabs that were digging near the monastery [here the text is followed by blank spaces]. The jars [ ... ] were found a few feet below the surface in the sand. They were on top of a wooden coffin [ ... ] in approximately the position shown in the sketch below [ ... ]

The jars were about 14 to 15 [inches] high and about 8-10 [inches] wide [ ... ] One of the jars contained the Papyri in more or less dust. I understand that a few fragments were picked out but broadly speaking this jar yielded practically nothing.

The other two jars contained papyri in fairly good condition. They were placed upright in the jars. They were shoved in rather loosely and there were no bindings. The leaves, however. were held together in some cases by binding cord, the holes of which are shown in the margins of many of the papyri leaves. There are a series of pages from the New Testament that seem to have had originally about 26 lines and they were in pretty good condition, the bottom margin and a few lines being missing. These apparently were found in one of the jars.

The other jar contained a portion of the Old Testament on very long sheets of papyri. These had been bent double and put in the jar [ ... ] These were taken out of the jar and placed in moist (Berseem) [Egyptian clover] which made the papyri moist enough to straighten out. This was done. These pages are still in the hands of the Egyptian. A few have been photographed and before photographing
they were shown to a bishop of the Greek Church who pronounced them Third Century and stated that they were portions of the Prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah. I have seen fifteen leaves and I understand he has a number more but he will not state how many. They are in fine condition (outside of being slightly damaged in the centre where they were bent.)

The coffin on which the three jars were found was of wood and broken, and close to the coffin a glass lamp was found. Plain glass (not colored) with date of glass on the outside of the lamp.

You might want to read the commentary on this memorandum on the Text Criticism group site. You can look at two of these Papyri at the Chester Beatty Library website. One is from Paul's Letter to the Romans c. CE 180-200 and the other is from The Book of Revelation c.CE 250. In case any one is interested, the oldest surviving fragment from the Christian New Testament is P52 from the John Rylands Library. It contains fragmentary portions of John 18:31-33 and 37-38.

Via PaleoJudaica

Posted by DuaneSmith at July 1, 2005 09:30 AM | Read more on Archaeology |

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