Papyrus Bookrolls with Jewish and Christian Content

Abstract

This close study of forty extant fragments of papyrus bookrolls with Jewish and Christian content focuses on details like format and scribal habits that might suggest distinct scribal communities. The study isolates three groups. (1) Nine BCE-era Septuagint papyri from Egypt and the Judean Desert with striking similarities in high-quality script and generous formatting, suggesting a trans-Mediterranean community of scribes with definite ideas about the proper look and feel of Septuagint manuscripts on papyrus. (2) Seven Septuagint bookrolls from the Common Era that resemble classical literary rolls in format and handwriting but include features like nomina sacra and the Paleo-Hebrew Tetragrammaton, suggesting production in specialized workshops. (3) Twenty-four Christian-content rolls from the same era that exhibit features like wide columns, untrained hands, and inconsistent punctuation, indicating informal or “private” copies produced by copyists not from the pool of scribes used to create bookrolls with classical Greek texts.