THE
VALUE OF THE NASH PAPYRUS HOW
do you accurately date an old Hebrew Bible manuscript? That was the problem
facing Dr. John C. Trever in 1948 when he
first saw the Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah. The form of the Hebrew letters
intrigued him. He knew the letters held the key to its age, but with what
could he compare them? Correctly, he concluded: Only with the script of the
Nash Papyrus. Why? What is this manuscript, and where did it come from? The
Nash Papyrus consists of merely four fragments of 24 lines of Hebrew text,
measuring some three by five inches [7.5 by 12.5 cm].
It was named after W. L. Nash, the secretary of the Society of
Biblical Archaeology, who acquired it from an Egyptian dealer in 1902. It was
published by S. A. Cooke in the following year in that
society’s Proceedings and was presented to Cambridge University
Library, When
Dr. Trever compared a color
slide of the Nash Papyrus with the scroll before him, he looked meticulously
at the form and shapes of individual letters. Without a doubt, they were very
similar. Even so, it seemed incredible to him that the large, newly
discovered manuscript could possibly be as early in date as the Nash Papyrus.
In time, however, his line of reasoning proved to be correct. The Dead Sea
Scroll of Isaiah belonged to the second century B.C.E.! The
Contents of the Nash Papyrus An
analysis of the Nash Papyrus text reveals that all of its 24 lines are
incomplete, with a word or letters missing at both ends. It contains parts of
the Ten Commandments from Exodus chapter 20, along with some verses from
Deuteronomy chapters 5 and 6. So this was not a regular Bible manuscript but
a mixed text with a special purpose. It was evidently part of an
instructional collection to remind a Jew of his duty to God. A section of
scripture commencing with Deuteronomy 6:4, called the Shema,
was frequently repeated. That verse reads: "Listen, O Israel:
Jehovah our God is one Jehovah." The
Tetragrammaton, YHWH, "Jehovah," in this
verse is visible twice on the last line of the papyrus, and it occurs in five
other places. It also appears once with its first letter missing. The
Shema in particular was meant to emphasize "the single personality
of God." According to the Jewish Talmud (Berakoth 19a), the concluding
word, ´E·chadh´ ("One"), "should be specially
emphasized while it was being enunciated by holding out each syllable." (W.
O. E. Oesterley and G. H. Box) In reference to God, this
lengthened ´E·chadh´ also proclaimed his uniqueness. Today,
the Nash Papyrus has many peers, especially among scrolls found in caves
along the shores of the Dead Sea close to Qumran. Detailed analysis has
confirmed that many of these manuscripts date to the first and second
centuries B.C.E. Although it is no longer the earliest-known Hebrew
manuscript, the Nash Papyrus is still of great interest. It remains the only
Hebrew Bible manuscript of such early date discovered in Egypt.
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