NASH PAPYRUS. — A Hebrew papyrus purchased in four fragments from Egypt around 1902 by C. W. L. Nash (secretary of the Society of Biblical Archaeology). He donated it to the Library of the University of Cambridge, where it is still kept under the shelfmark Ms. Orient. 233. In 1903, St. A. Cook identified and published II. When the fragments are arranged in their original position, the papyrus measures 4.6 by 12.6 cm. It is written on one side only. It does not appear ever to have been part of a scroll, but rather a separate sheet intended for liturgical or instructional use. It contains 24 lines with traces of a 25th. The ends of all lines are missing. Only lines 16–18, where the sheet is 7.3 cm wide, have their beginnings intact. It contains the Decalogue (ll. 1–21), the *Shema* (= Deut. 6:4–5; ll. 23–24), and a brief introduction to it (ll. 22–23) not found in the Hebrew Bible but present in the Septuagint (Deut. 6:4).
Given its subject matter, its great antiquity, and the rarity of ancient Hebrew papyri, the Nash Papyrus aroused lively interest both for Hebrew palaeography and for the history and criticism of the biblical text. In 1903, on palaeographical grounds, Cook dated the papyrus to the 2nd century AD, an opinion generally followed by scholars. In 1937, however, W. F. Albright, in light of new palaeographical material, assigned it to the 2nd century BC, i.e. the Maccabean period. The Nash Papyrus gained fresh palaeographical importance when, in recent years, the Dead Sea Hebrew manuscripts were discovered; their script closely resembles that of the papyrus.
The text presents several readings differing from the Decalogue in the Masoretic text, both of Ex. 20:2–17 and Deut. 5:6–18 (it reverses, for example, the order of the commandments: “Do not kill, do not commit adultery!”). The text closely approaches the form presented by Codex Vaticanus (B) of the Septuagint. It therefore seems not to be a freely altered text, but a special branch of the transmission of the biblical text.