Digital Manuscript Library
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Nash Papyrus
Historical Overview
The Nash Papyrus is one of the oldest surviving Hebrew biblical manuscripts, preserving the Ten Commandments and the opening of the Shema. Before the 1947 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it was the oldest known Hebrew manuscript containing biblical text.
Discovery
Acquired in Egypt in 1898 by Walter Llewellyn Nash, secretary of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, reportedly from the Fayum region.
Dating
Stanley A. Cook's original 1903 publication dated it to the 2nd century AD; later paleographic reappraisal, especially after the Dead Sea Scrolls gave scholars a far wider comparison set, moved the date back to roughly 150-100 BC.
Physical Description
Written in a Jewish square script typical of the Hellenistic-era Hebrew scribal tradition, running right to left as in standard Hebrew practice.
Biblical Contents
The Ten Commandments (Decalogue) followed by the opening of the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4).
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Interactive Line-by-Line Edition
Literal Translation
This follows the Hebrew word order closely. Brackets mark text lost to damage, restored by F. C. Burkitt from surviving letters, expected line length, and the wording of Exodus and Deuteronomy.
Readable Translation
Read straight through, without brackets, the papyrus gives this version of the Ten Commandments and the start of the Shema.
Biblical Passage
For comparison, here is Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 6:4-5 in the King James Version (1611, public domain). The papyrus does not copy either passage exactly; it blends both.
Notes
The Nash Papyrus mixes wording from Exodus and Deuteronomy, so it never quite matches either printed text. The most unusual feature is that the text runs straight from the last commandment into the Shema with no break at all.
Variants
Compared to the Masoretic Text, the Nash Papyrus has a few notable differences, several matching the Greek Septuagint instead, including phrases from Deuteronomy inserted into the Exodus-based Sabbath and honor-parents commandments.
Nomina Sacra
The divine name Yahweh appears several times, written plainly in the same script as the rest of the text, with no special marking, unlike later Christian nomina sacra conventions.
Scribal Habits
The Decalogue runs straight into the Shema with no heading or break of any kind, suggesting the scribe was copying a devotional text rather than a portion of a Torah scroll.
Paleography
The script is the Jewish square hand used for Hebrew manuscripts of the Hellenistic and early Hasmonean periods, the same broad family later found at Qumran.
Codicology
The papyrus survives as four fragments now mounted together, measuring about 7.5 by 12.5 cm, small enough to fold or roll.
Dating Notes
Cook dated the papyrus to the 2nd century AD in 1903. After the 1947 discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls gave scholars far more comparison material, it was re-dated to roughly 150 to 100 BC.
Cross References
Related passages: Exodus 20:1-17, Deuteronomy 5:6-21, and Deuteronomy 6:4-5. See also Mishnah Tamid 5:1 for the Temple practice of reciting the Decalogue and Shema together.
Bibliography
Related Infographic
Manuscript Infographics →Papyrus 52 (𝔓⁵²)
Historical Overview
Rylands Library Papyrus P52 is a small papyrus fragment written on both sides in Greek, preserving a handful of verses from the Gospel of John. It is widely regarded as the earliest surviving fragment of any New Testament text.
Discovery
The fragment was acquired on the Egyptian antiquities market in 1920 by papyrologist Bernard Grenfell, and sat unidentified in the John Rylands Library for over a decade before Colin H. Roberts recognized its content and published it in 1935.
Dating
Roberts dated the handwriting to the first half of the second century (roughly AD 100-150). Brent Nongbri (2005) later argued the evidence permits a wider range extending into the later second or early third century.
Physical Description
The fragment measures 8.9 by 6.0 cm, written in an informal Greek uncial book-hand. It was originally part of a codex rather than a scroll.
Biblical Contents
John 18:31-33 (recto) and John 18:37-38 (verso).
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Editorial Note: The Visible Greek reproduces only the surviving letters preserved on the papyrus. The Reconstructed Greek supplies missing text using the consensus of major scholarly editions.
Interactive Line-by-Line Edition
Literal Translation
Only isolated words and letter groups survive on the papyrus itself. The rest is reconstructed from letter spacing, expected line length, and the standard Greek text.
Readable Translation
Read together, the surviving portions preserve two moments from Jesus's trial before Pilate: the Jews' statement that they lack authority to execute, and Jesus's declaration that he came to bear witness to the truth.
Biblical Passage
For comparison, here is John 18:31-33 and 18:37-38 in the King James Version (1611, public domain). The papyrus preserves only scattered letters within this range.
Notes
So little of the papyrus survives that scholars cannot point to any variant of real weight. What is left agrees closely with the text found in modern critical editions like the NA28.
Variants
P52 is too small to preserve any variant of real theological weight. What survives agrees closely with the Alexandrian text family that underlies most modern critical editions.
Nomina Sacra
The word Jesus would have appeared in a damaged part of the papyrus, so nobody can see how it was written; whether it used a nomen sacrum abbreviation remains a subject of scholarly debate.
Scribal Habits
Roberts described the handwriting as a careful, upright hand with documentary roots. The same hand appears on both the recto and verso.
Paleography
Roberts dated the handwriting by comparing individual letterforms against a set of dated documentary papyri. Later scholars have pointed to documents from later in the second century that match just as well.
Codicology
Writing on both sides of the leaf shows this came from a codex rather than a scroll, among the earliest known examples of a literary text copied into codex form.
Dating Notes
Roberts dated the papyrus to roughly AD 100 to 150. Brent Nongbri's 2005 critique argued the popular figure of about AD 125 states more certainty than the evidence allows. What is not disputed is that P52 is a second-century copy, among the oldest surviving New Testament fragments.
Cross References
Related passages: the Synoptic accounts of the same trial scene (Matthew 27:11, Mark 15:2, Luke 23:3). The verso's theme of truth echoes John 1:14, 14:6, and 17:17.
Bibliography
Related Manuscripts
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Manuscript Infographics →Papyrus 9 (𝔓9)
Historical Overview
Papyrus 9 is a small, badly worn papyrus leaf preserving a handful of verses from the First Epistle of John. It was found at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt and first published in 1903. Only two of its four sides survive with readable text: the recto carries part of 1 John 4:11-12, and the verso carries part of 4:14-17.
It is not a showpiece manuscript. The handwriting is described by its editors as crude and careless, the work of an ordinary copyist rather than a trained scribe. Its importance comes from its age and rarity rather than its craftsmanship: very few papyri of any of the Catholic Epistles survive from this early, which makes even a small, roughly written scrap like this one worth preserving.
Discovery
Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt excavated the fragment at Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, as part of their long running search through the town's ancient rubbish mounds. They published it in 1903 in the third volume of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, as text number 402.
The Egypt Exploration Fund, which sponsored the excavations, distributed many of the papyri it published to museums and institutions that supported its work. Harvard's Semitic Museum received a group of Oxyrhynchus papyri this way in the early 1900s, and this fragment was among them. The papyri stayed at the Semitic Museum for decades before being transferred to Houghton Library in 1960, where this piece is now held under the shelfmark MS Gr SM3736.
Dating
Like most literary papyri, this fragment carries no date of its own, so its age is estimated from the style of the handwriting. Comfort and Barrett place it in the early third century, around AD 200 to 225, and that figure is the one most often repeated.
Other manuscript databases give somewhat different ranges, some extending later into the third century. This kind of disagreement is common for undated literary hands, where paleography can narrow a manuscript to a century or so but rarely to an exact decade. What is not in real dispute is that this is a third century copy, making it one of the older surviving witnesses to 1 John.
Physical Description
The surviving piece measures about 8 by 5.2 cm, though the complete leaf it came from is estimated at roughly 11 by 15 cm. Writing on both sides shows it came from a codex, a bound book, rather than a scroll.
The handwriting is plain and somewhat uneven, with a few unusual spellings, consistent with a copyist who was literate but not formally trained as a scribe. The text runs together without spaces between words, the normal practice for Greek manuscripts of this period.
Biblical Contents
1 John 4:11-12 (recto) and 1 John 4:14-17 (verso). Verses 13 and part of 14 are lost where the leaf is damaged.
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Editorial Note: The Visible Greek reproduces only the letters that actually survive on the papyrus. The Reconstructed Greek supplies the rest from the standard critical text, following Comfort and Barrett's edition. Where the papyrus itself is physically missing, as in the gap between 1 John 4:12 and 4:14, no reconstruction is offered. That gap is marked as lost text rather than filled in, since nothing of it survives on the leaf to transcribe.
Interactive Line-by-Line Edition
Literal Translation
This follows the Greek word order as reconstructed from the surviving letters. Only isolated words and phrases actually survive on the papyrus itself; the rest is supplied from the standard critical text. See the line by line transcription above for exactly which letters are visible and which are restored.
Recto (1 John 4:11-12): “God loved us, and we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us.”
Verso (1 John 4:14-16): “...God has sent the Son as the Savior of the world. If anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he abides in God. And we have come to know and have believed the love that God has...”
Readable Translation
Read together, the surviving portions preserve two connected statements about God's love.
Recto: “God loved us, and we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love has been perfected in us.”
Verso: “...God has sent the Son as the Savior of the world. If anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have come to know and have believed the love that God has...”
The leaf is broken between these two sections, so 1 John 4:13 and the opening of 4:14 do not survive on the papyrus, even though they fall between the recto and verso in the biblical text.
Biblical Passage
For comparison, here is 1 John 4:11-12 and 4:14-17 in the King James Version (1611, public domain). The papyrus preserves only part of this range; verse 13 and the opening of verse 14 are lost where the leaf is damaged.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. 12 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. 15 Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. 16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. 17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.
Notes
Where the papyrus survives, its wording matches the standard text closely enough that the King James translation above can stand in directly for what the papyrus itself would have said.
The one point worth flagging is the gap between the recto and the verso. The bottom of the leaf broke off after the end of verse 12, and the next surviving text does not pick up until partway through verse 14. Verse 13 and the first part of 14 are not missing from the Bible, only from this particular papyrus, and this page does not fill that gap in with reconstructed wording.
The fragment is too small and too worn to show any variant reading of real significance. What survives agrees with the text found in modern critical editions like the NA28.
Variants
No textual variant of real significance has been identified in this fragment. What survives, on both the recto and the verso, agrees with the wording found in modern critical editions such as the NA28.
This is typical of very small papyri covering only a few verses: there simply is not enough text preserved to show meaningful disagreement with, or support for, any particular variant reading.
Nomina Sacra
Nomina sacra are the abbreviated forms early Christian scribes used for sacred names, usually shortened to a few letters with a line drawn above them.
This scribe used them consistently. Θεός (“God”) appears contracted as ΘΣ, ΘΝ, or ΘῩ depending on its grammatical form, and Ἰησοῦς (“Jesus”) and υἱός (“Son”) both appear contracted as well, as ΙΣ or ΙΥΣ and ΥΣ. Each survives with the supralinear stroke intact wherever the papyrus is not damaged at that point.
This is standard practice for the period, and this fragment is a small but clear example of how thoroughly the convention had spread by the third century.
Scribal Habits
Grenfell and Hunt, and later Comfort and Barrett, both describe the handwriting as crude and careless, the work of a copyist who could write but had no formal training as a scribe. A few spellings on the fragment are nonstandard.
The text runs together without spaces between words, called scriptio continua, which was the normal practice for Greek writing of this period rather than a shortcut taken by this particular scribe. Sacred names are consistently abbreviated as nomina sacra even though the surrounding hand is unpolished, showing that this convention was followed regardless of a scribe's skill level.
Paleography
Since the fragment carries no date of its own, its age is estimated from the style of its letters. Comfort and Barrett's paleographic comparison places it in the early third century, around AD 200 to 225.
As with most undated literary hands, other manuscript databases place it slightly differently, with some estimates running later into the third century. The handwriting itself is informal rather than a trained literary bookhand, which makes precise dating by letterforms alone harder than it would be for a more calligraphic manuscript.
Codicology
Writing on both sides of the leaf shows this came from a codex, a bound book, rather than a scroll. The surviving fragment measures about 8 by 5.2 cm, and Comfort and Barrett reconstruct the complete leaf at roughly 11 by 15 cm, with the original page holding somewhere in the range of 15 to 16 lines of text.
Nothing survives to indicate how large the complete codex was or whether it contained only 1 John or other books alongside it.
Dating Notes
The most frequently cited date for this papyrus is the early third century, around AD 200 to 225, following Comfort and Barrett's paleographic assessment. This is the figure most commonly repeated in reference works.
Other manuscript databases list somewhat different ranges, some extending further into the third century. This kind of spread is ordinary for an undated literary hand assessed by different scholars using different comparison methods, and it does not amount to a serious dispute. “Third century” is the safe, well supported description.
Cross References
Related passages: 1 John 4:7-10, where John first introduces the theme that God's love for believers is the basis of their love for one another, and 1 John 4:19, “We love him, because he first loved us.”
The statement that “no one has ever seen God” also appears in John 1:18, part of the broader Johannine theme connecting God's invisibility to his presence made known through Christ and through believers' love.