Papyrus 967
Summary
The oldest substantial Greek copy of Ezekiel, Daniel and Esther, written about a century before the great codices.
- Copied Third century AD, dated by the handwriting..
- Written in greek (koine) on papyrus.
- Kept at Chester Beatty Library Dublin; University of Cologne; Fundacion Pastor Madrid; Abadia de Montserrat Barcelona.
- Contains Ezekiel, Daniel, Esther.
What it is
Papyrus 967 is a Greek papyrus codex of Ezekiel, Daniel and Esther, copied in Egypt in the third century AD. Its leaves were split between collections after their discovery, and they are now kept in Dublin, Cologne, Madrid and Barcelona.
It matters because it carries the Greek Old Testament in a book people read, a hundred years or more before Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. In Daniel it preserves the Old Greek text and an order of chapters that differs from the later Greek version, which is the clearest surviving evidence for how the Greek Daniel was transmitted.
Manuscript details
- Date
- Third century AD, dated by the handwriting.
- Language
- Greek (Koine)
- Script
- Uncial
- Material
- Papyrus
- Held at
- Chester Beatty Library Dublin; University of Cologne; Fundacion Pastor Madrid; Abadia de Montserrat Barcelona
- Found at
- Egypt, probably the Fayum
- Contains
- Ezekiel · Daniel · Esther
Why it matters
The passages the manuscripts argue over
The words used here: uncial, Koine, papyrus, codex
- uncial
- a book hand of Greek capital letters, used for the oldest whole Bibles.
- Koine
- the everyday Greek spoken across the eastern Mediterranean in the centuries around Christ.
- papyrus
- paper made from reed, the cheap writing material of Egypt.
- codex
- a book with leaves and a spine, the form that replaced the scroll.
The places where the manuscripts differ, the ending of Mark, the woman caught in adultery, the three heavenly witnesses, with the case each way.