Papyrus Fouad 266

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Papyrus Fouad 266 (No. 847, 848, 942 according to Rahlfs ) is the name given to a large number of papyrus fragments palaeographically dating back to the 2nd or 1st century BC. To be dated. They contain parts from the 1st and 5th book of Moses in Greek .

The papyri are among the oldest known fragments of biblical texts in the Greek language ( Septuagint ). They are now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo .

history

The fragments were found in the Fayyum Basin in Egypt in 1939 . After P. Jouget had acquired the bundle for the Société Fouad Ier de Papyrologie in 1943 , WG Waddell arranged for the first publication. According to Waddell, the fragments can be dated to the first or even second century BC. After the first identification, the fragments were given the common Rahlfs no. 942.

The first edition was obtained by Françoise Dunand in 1966. It consists of 115 fragments of a roll of originally around 88 columns at around 15 meters, which is said to have contained the entire Pentateuch . The following edition by Zaki Aly and Ludwig Koenen now differentiated three roles with biblical text and fragments of a fourth role, not yet identified. In accordance with this finding, each of the three roles was assigned its own Rahlfs number. (942, 847, 848) too.

Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls , the fragments of the Papyrus Rylands 458 ( Rahlfs No. 957 ) and Fouad 266 were the only known pre-Christian papyri of the Septuagint .

content

The fragments are a copy of the Septuagint in uncial script , which is part of the Proto-Lucian text type . Rahlf's No. 942 contains parts of Genesis 4; 7 and 37f. The fragments belonging to Rahlf's nos. 847 and 848 contain parts of Deuteronomy 10f. and 17-33.

It is noticeable that the tetragram » YHWH « is reproduced in square letters in the Greek text. The writer of the Greek text initially left a gap for this, which was later filled by the tetragram. It is controversial whether this is the original practice in Greek manuscripts or whether it is already an expression of an “archaic and Hebrew revision of the old translation instead of Kyrios”.

meaning

The fragments are of particular importance due to their age: "We have before us a Greek Bible text which offers the text of the Septuagint in a more reliable form than the Codex Vaticanus and which was also written more than 400 years before the Vaticanus." The name of God written in a special form can also be found in the Greek fragments of the scroll of the Twelve prophets from Nachal Chever from the Judean desert .

Paul Kahle concluded: “In all Greek translations of the Bible made by Jews for Jews in pre-Christian times, the Tetragrammaton in Hebrew characters must have been used as the name of God and not [Kyrios] ... or abbreviations of it, as we see them in the Christian [copies of the Septuagint] ... find. "

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ WG Wadell: The Tetragrammaton in the LXX. With a plate. In: Journal of Theological Studies 45 (1944), pp. 158-161.
  2. ^ Françoise Dunand: Papyrus Grecs Bibliques (Papyrus F. Inv. 266). Volumina de la Genèse et du Deutéronome. 1966.
  3. ↑ Cf. Alfred Rahlfs: Septuagint - Vetus testamentum Graecum. Vol. 1/1 - The tradition up to the 8th century. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2004.
  4. ^ Natalio Fernández Marcos: The Septuagint in Context. Boston: Brill 2001, p. 71.
  5. ↑ Albert Pietersma: Proto-Lucian and the Greek Psalter. In: VT 28 (1978), pp. 66-77.
  6. ↑ Ernst Würthwein: The text of the Old Testament. An introduction to the Biblia Hebraica. Stuttgart 5 1988, p. 194.
  7. ^ Paul E. Kahle: The Cairo Genisa. Research into the history of the Hebrew Bible text and its translations. Berlin 1962, p. 233.
  8. ^ Paul E. Kahle: The Greek Bible Manuscripts used by Origen. In: Journal of Biblical Literature 79 (1960), pp. 111-118.

literature

  • Zaki Aly: Three Rolls of the Early Septuagint. Genesis and Deuteronomy. A Photographic Edition Prepared in Collaboration with the International Photographic Archive of the Association Internationale de Papyrologues. With Preface, Introduction, and Notes by Ludwig Koenen. Papyrological texts and treatises 27. Bonn 1980. ISBN 3-7749-1417-6
  • Françoise Dunand: Papyrus Grecs Bibliques (Papyrus F. Inv. 266). Volumina de la Genèse et du Deutéronome. L'Institut Francais d'Archéologie Orientale. Recherches d'archéologie, de philologie, et d'histoire 27 (1966).
  • Alfred Rahlfs: Septuagint - Vetus testamentum Graecum. Vol. 1/1 - The tradition up to the 8th century. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004. ISBN 3-525-53447-7
  • Natalio Fernández Marcos: The Septuagint in Context . Brill Verlag, Boston 2001. ISBN 90-04-11574-9