Chester Beatty Papyri

The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri or simply the Chester Beatty Papyri are a group of early papyrus manuscripts of biblical texts. The manuscripts are in Greek and are of Christian origin. There are eleven manuscripts in the group, seven consisting of portions of Old Testament books, three consisting of portions of the New Testament (Gregory-Aland no. , , and ), and one consisting of portions of the Book of Enoch and an unidentified Christian homily. Most are dated to the 3rd century. They are housed in part at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, Ireland, and in part at the University of Michigan, among a few other locations.

The papyri were most likely first obtained by dealers in illegal antiquities. Because of this, the exact circumstances of the find are not clear. One account states that the manuscripts were in jars in a Coptic graveyard near the ruins of the ancient city of Aphroditopolis. Other theories have proposed that the collection was found near the Fayum instead of Aphroditopolis, or that the location was a Christian church or monastery instead of a graveyard. Most of the papyri were bought from a dealer by Alfred Chester Beatty, after whom the manuscripts are named, although some leaves and fragments were acquired by the University of Michigan and a few other collectors and institutions.

The papyri were first announced on November 19, 1931, although more leaves were acquired over the next decade. Frederic G. Kenyon published the manuscripts in ''The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri: Descriptions and Texts of Twelve Manuscripts on Papyrus of the Greek Bible'', in an 8-volume work that spanned 1933–58. The papyri are usually catalogued as ''P. Chester Beatty'' followed by a corresponding Roman numeral between I-XII, one for each manuscript.

The term ''Chester Beatty Papyri'' can also generally refer to the collection of manuscripts that Alfred Chester Beatty acquired over his lifetime, which include non-Biblical papyri such as the Chester Beatty Medical Papyrus.

Character of the collection

All of the manuscripts are codices, which was surprising to the first scholars who examined the texts because it was believed that the papyrus codex was not extensively used by Christians until the 4th century. Most of the manuscripts dated to the 3rd century, with some as early as the 2nd. The manuscripts also helped scholars understand the construction of papyrus codices. There is significant variation between the construction of each manuscript. Page size ranges from about 14 by 24.2 cm (P. III) to 18 by 33 cm (P. VI). Some of the manuscripts were constructed of a single gathering (quire) of papyrus sheets (Pap. II, VII, IX + X), while in others the gathering varies from a single sheet (I) to five (V) or seven (VII). The largest codex (P. IX/X) is believed to have contained roughly 236 pages.

The manuscripts employ '' nomina sacra''. Kenyon, Frederic. G. “Nomina Sacra in the Chester Beatty Papyri.” Aegyptus, vol. 13, no. 1/2, 1933
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Accessed 18 Dec. 2020. One notable example is in P. VI which contains portions of the Old Testament. The name Joshua which relates linguistically to Jesus was considered a sacred name and abbreviated as such.

Since all but two (P. XI, XII) of the eleven manuscripts are dated before the 4th century, they present significant textual evidence for the Greek Bible as it existed in Egypt prior to the Diocletian persecutions, where Christian books are said to have been destroyed and a century or more earlier than the Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209">Codex Vaticanus