Nash Papyrus

The Nash Papyrus is a sheet of papyrus from four fragments of about 200-100 BC, at the in Hebrew the Ten Commandments in a mixed form of Ex 20:2 ff and 5.6 ff Deuteronomy and the beginning of the Shema (Deut. 6, 4f) are listed. He was until 1947 as the oldest known Bible manuscript.

Dating

1902 bought W. L. Nash the sheet in Egypt and gave it to the University of Cambridge, in whose library it is today. 1903 published and commented Stanley A. Cook the Fund in an archaeological journal. He dated the papyrus to 100-200 AD

William Foxwell Albright, however, the archaeologist who examined him paläografisch and therefore dated him in 1937 in the time of Makkabäerkriege (about 170 BC). The Hebrew scholar Paul Kahle compared it with the previously known Scrolls from the Dead Sea and dated him in 1951 to the time before the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70

The other font Qumran discoveries until 1965, then confirmed the paläografischen evidence had been based on the Albright himself, so that his dating has prevailed today.

Text version

The text differs in some places from the 1000 years later formed Masoretic Text: In Einleitungsvers, the self- conception of YHWH, missing the phrase " from the house of slavery " for Egypt, which occurs in both biblical Dekalogfassungen. This is considered a possible clue to the origin of the text.

The commandment Do not break the marriage goes to the commandments of murders and robberies not unforeseeable, and the Shema Yisrael is initiated with an additional verse. Both differences are also known from manuscripts of the Septuagint, the first and from the writings of Philo of Alexandria, and from the New Testament. Since the text was written in Hebrew, however, and found in Egypt, it is believed that it is based on a Hebrew, not Greek text form that has been handed down regardless of the Masoretic text form and translated by the Septuagint.

Since the two texts follow each other directly on the sheet in Deuteronomy, the papyrus is not considered a remnant of a Codex, but as an excerpt to an educational or edifying purpose. It is believed that he was written off by a liturgical template. Because both the Jerusalem and the Babylonian Talmud taught the reading of the Ten Commandments in front of the scheme.