BEATTY, CHESTER, papiri. - A group of 12 lots of Greek papyri, purchased in 1930 and 1931 in Egypt by A. Chester B., coming perhaps from the ruins of an unidentified local Christian monastery, preserved in B.'s collection in London and published in the years 1933-37 by Frederic George Kenyon of the British Museum. The discovery of these papyri was the most sensational of the discoveries of ancient biblical texts after that of the Codex Sinaiticus.
The contents are as follows: New Testament. - Pap. I (siglum: P 45): 30 consecutive leaves of the 4 Gospels and of Acts, surviving from a codex of 110 leaves or 220 numbered pages, written perhaps in the first half of the 3rd century and containing the 4 Gospels and Acts. Another leaf of this codex is in Vienna, published in 1933 by H. Gerstinger.
Pap. II (siglum P 46): 86 leaves in excellent condition with the majority of the following epistles of St. Paul: Rom., Hebr., I and II Cor., Eph., Gal., Phil., Col., I Thess. Of these 86 leaves, 56 leaves are in London in the collection of Ch. B. and 30 leaves in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan, published in 1935 by H. A. Sanders. The codex of which these leaves remain, written in the first half of the 3rd century, had 104 leaves and contained all the Pauline letters, with the exception, it seems, of the pastoral letters.
Pap. III (siglum: P 47): 10 leaves of a codex of the 3rd century, containing Apoc.
Old Testament. - Pap. IV (siglum: 961): leaves of a codex of 66 leaves of the 4th century, containing Gen.
Pap. V (siglum: 962): 22 leaves of a codex of 84 leaves of the 3rd century, also containing Gen. These two manuscripts of Gen. are of special importance, because the greater part of Gen. is missing in the great Vatican (B) and Sinaitic (S) codices.
Pap. VI (siglum: 963): substantial parts of 33 leaves, and identified fragments of another 22 leaves of a codex of 108 leaves of the 2nd century, containing Num. and Deut. This papyrus is the oldest of the entire collection.
Pap. VII (siglum: 965): fragments of 33 leaves of a codex of 104 leaves of the first half of the 3rd century, containing Is.
Pap. VIII (siglum: 966): fragments of 2 leaves of a codex of the end of the 2nd century and the beginning of the 3rd century, containing Ier.
Pap. IX and X: Of a codex of perhaps 118 leaves of the first half of the 3rd century there survive 29 leaves of Ez. and 8 leaves of Eith. and 13 mutilated leaves of Dan. (siglum: 968), 8 of the 29 leaves of Ez. are Ch. B.'s and 21 of J. H. Scheide, being deposited at the University of Princeton and published in 1938 by Johnson, Gehman and Kase. The papyrus of Dan. is of quite special importance, because it is contrary to all the other Greek codices and to the Vulgate; it does not give us the version made by Theodotion, but the version of the Septuagint preserved only in a Greek codex of the 10th century and in a Syriac version.
Pap. XI (siglum: 964): 1 and a half leaves of the 4th century, containing Eccl.
Pap. XII: 8 leaves (of Ch. B.) and 6 leaves (of the University of Michigan) are from a codex of the 4th or 5th century, containing the apocryphal book of Henoch, very popular in antiquity and cited in the canonical epistle of Jude, and a homily of Melito of Sardis (2nd century).
The importance of these papyri is very great: a) because of their bulk, generally quite ample, and in general because of their excellent state of preservation; b) because of the form they have, not of a roll, but of a quire or codex, which seems proper to Christians; c) because of the abbreviations of the nominis sacra which appear to have already been in use at the time of Hadrian; d) because of their age, which for the majority of the papyri goes back to the 3rd century, and for papyrus VI even to the 2nd century. They make known to us the condition in which the sacred text
Ida F. G. Kenyon, The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri, London 1932, fasc. I, rev. IV
BEATTY, CHESTER, papyri - Papyrus IV, Gen. 29, 15-27 (4th century), British Museum.
was a century before the oldest Vatican (B) and Sinaitic (S) Codices.
Bibliography14 works
Lit., 63 (1944), pp. 379-96; A. Allecier, Die Ch. B.-Papyr zum Pentateuch, Paderborn 1938; H. C. Hoskier, Appendix to an Article on the Ch. B.-Papyrus of the Pauline Epistles, Oxford 1937; id., A Commentary on the Various Readings in the Text of the Epistle to the Hebrews in the Ch. B. Papyrus P. 46 (ca. 200 A. D.), London 1938; C. C. Tarelli, The Ch. B. Papyrus and the Western and Byzantine Texts, in Journ. Theol. Stud., 41 (1940), pp. 253-60; id., Some further linguistic aspects of the Ch. B. Papyrus of the Gospels, ibid., 43 (1942), pp. 19-25; H. F. D. Sparks, The Order of the Epistles in P. 46, ibid., 42 (1941), p. 180; G. D. Kilpatrick, The Ch. B. Papyrus P. 46 and Hebrews 11, ibid., 41 (1940), p. 68; id., Western Text and Original Text in the Gospels and Acts, ibid., 44 (1943), pp. 24-36.
Ernesto Vogt - Aristide Calderini