Papyrus London 37
The Papyrus 37 (also Fragmenta Londinensia , siglum U according Rahlfs ) is a fragment of a Papyrus handwriting from the 7th Century. It contains the text of Psalm 11 (10), 2–19 (18), 6 and 21 (20), 14–35 (34), 6 in Greek ( Septuagint ). 32 leaves have been preserved.
The writing is irregular, the accents are set arbitrarily, the text is continuous without interruption at the end of a psalm. It was apparently written by an inexperienced scribe. The text is very similar to the Sahitic Psalter.
The text was written in Upper Egypt and, along with the Leipzig 39 papyrus, is one of the two surviving examples of an Upper Egyptian version of the Psalter in Greek.
The English physicist Edward Hogg allegedly found them in a monastery in Thebes in 1832 . In 1836 he gave them to the British Museum in London . The fragments were the first known papyrus with a biblical text. Konstantin von Tischendorf and Paul de Lagarde considered it the oldest known Greek manuscript of the Old Testament. Contemporary palaeographic studies, however, show a likely date of origin in the 7th century.
The manuscript is now in the British Library in London ( call number P. Inv. No. 37 or Ms. pap. 37 ).
Text output
- Konstantin von Tischendorf : Monumenta sacra inedita. Nova collectio I. JC Hinrichs, Leipzig 1855.
- Gregor Emmenegger: The text of the Coptic Psalter from al-Mudil. A contribution to the text history of the Septuagint and the textual criticism of Coptic Bible manuscripts, with the critical new edition of Papyrus 37 of the British Library London (U) and Papyrus 39 of the Leipzig University Library (2013) (= texts and studies on the history of early Christian literature. Volume 159) . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2007, pp. 259–327.
literature
- Henry Barclay Swete: An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek. Revised by RR Ottley, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1914, p. 143 ( online ).
- Frederic G. Kenyon : Our Bible and the ancient manuscripts. 4th edition, Eyre & Spottiswoode, London 1939, p. 148 ( online ).