392 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW 15 (1903)
392-408.
Public Domain.
THE HEBREW PAPYRUS OF
THE TEN
COMMANDMENTS.
F. C. Burkitt
A HEBREW papyrus is a rarity in any
case, but the
document that forms the subject of this paper is
unique.
It
is a papyrus containing the Decalogue in Hebrew followed
by the Shema’, the text
differing in many notable particulars
from the Massoretic
standard, and agreeing with that which
underlies the Septuagint version. When we add that
there
is every reason to suppose that the Papyrus is at
least five
or six hundred years older than any piece of
Hebrew writing
known to scholars, it is evident that the tattered
fragments
of which a facsimile is here inserted are
interesting and
important from every point of view.
The recent history of the Papyrus is involved in
some
obscurity. It came into the possession of Mr. W.
L. Nash,
the Secretary of the Society of Biblical
Archaeology, having
been bought in
very early uncial fragments of the Odyssey. Mr. Nash
thinks it very probable that the whole "find
" comes from
somewhere in the Fayyum.
These Greek fragments must
be as old as the second century A. D., and are
probably
much earlier: they contain portions of Odyssey XII. 279-
304,
and have been edited by the present writer with
a facsimile in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical
Archaeology for November, 1902, p.
290 ff.
The Hebrew
fragments which form the subject of the present
article were
entrusted to Mr. Stanley A. Cook, Fellow of Caius College,
paedia Biblica. Mr. Cook identified
the fragments and
published them in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical
Burkitt: Ten Commandments 393
HEBREW
PAPYRUS OF THE DECALOGUE
HEBREW
PAPYRUS OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 393
Archaeology for January, 1903, in
an admirable paper which
contains, in addition to the text and
translation, a full
discussion of the interesting questions to which
this dis-
covery has given rise. The
Papyrus itself has been most
generously presented by Mr. Nash to the
University Library.
So much for the way in which the Papyrus has
made its
reappearance in the world. About one
thing there can be
no doubt. There can be no doubt that it is a
genuine
relic of antiquity and not a forgery. The scraps of
Greek
papyrus with which it was associated are
certainly genuine.
It
may be safely said that no forger of antiquities has the
palaeographical knowledge necessary for
such work as
this; and if he had had the knowledge, he would not
have
allowed his work to be thrown in, as a thing of
no particular
value, among a collection of Greek documents. I have
thought it worth while to insist upon the
genuineness of
the Papyrus, because unfortunately it has been
found
impossible to make a satisfactory photograph of it.
What
appears here is a photograph of the papyrus, but not
of the handwriting.
The papyrus is a very dark yellow,
and by the time this has made a sufficient
impression on
the photographic plate, light enough has been
reflected
from the black surfaces of the letters themselves to
affect
the plate also: consequently, while every fibre in the
material was visible in the photograph, the
letters were
not visible at all or were exceedingly faint. What
is seen
in the reproduction is a very careful drawing of
the letters
upon the photograph, made by myself from the
Papyrus.
In
doing this I was greatly helped by the faint marks on
the photograph, which could be identified when
compared
with the original as the traces of the several
letters.
Fortunately
there is no serious case of doubtful reading.
In
a slanting light the letters are clear on the Papyrus
itself, and there is only one word in the decipherment
of
which Mr. Cook and I are not completely agreed.
Modern
fluid ink and modern pens, coupled with the
circumstance
394 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
that it was almost impossible to erase a
badly-formed
letter, made the copy somewhat rougher than the
original,
but I can honestly claim that the facsimile gives a
not
misleading view of the appearance of the
handwriting.
In its present state the Nash Papyrus consists
of four
fragments, all of which fit together. The largest
is nearly
two inches across and about four inches long. It
appears
to have been doubled up into a packet. A portion
of the
upper margin (not shown in the photograph) is still
pre-
served, and one of the smaller fragments contains a
portion
of the right-hand margin. The handwriting is
arranged in
a column with an average of a little over thirty
letters in
a line. The greater part of twenty-four lines are
preserved,
and there are traces of a twenty-fifth, but it is
of course
impossible to say how much further this column extended.
The
fragment containing a portion of the right-hand margin
appears to terminate with the natural edge of
the Papyrus,
so that what is preserved is the beginning of a
document.
The
smallness of this margin suggests that there was never
more than the single column of writing. The material
is
now very brittle, and it would be hazardous to
detach it
from the card upon which the fragments have been
gummed,
but Mr. Cook and I have managed to ascertain that
there
is no writing on the other side. Before
speculating on the
nature of the document, it will be convenient to give
the
actual text, and to examine its relation to other
authorities.
Then
will follow a few words on the date of the Papyrus,
and the value of the text.
HEBREW
TEXT.
[Myrc]m
Crxm jyt[xcvh] rwx
jyhlx hvh[y
yknx ...] 1
[lsp
jl] hwft
xvl yn[p
lf] MyrHx Myhlx
j[l
hyhy xvl] 2
[tHtm] Crxb rwxv
lfmm Mymwb rwx [hnvmt lkv] 3
[xvlv] Mhl hvHtwt
xvl Crxl tHtm M[ymb
rwxv] 4
[Nvf d]qp xvnq lx jyhlx hvhy
yknx [yk
Mdbft] 5
HEBREW
PAPYRUS OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 395
[hWfv] yxnWl Myfbr
lfv Mywlw lf M[ynb lf tvbx] 6
[tx
xw]t xvl ytvcm yrmwlv ybhxl
[Myplxl dsH]
7
[rwx
tx] hvhy hqny
xvl yk xvwl
jyhl[x hvhy Mw] 8
[vwdql] tbwh Mvy
tx rvkz xvwl
hm[w tx xwy]
9
[yfybwh] Mvybv jtkxlm
lk tywfv dvbft M[ymy tww] 10
[htx] hkxlm lk hb hWft xvl
jyhlx [hvhyl
tbw] 11
[jtmH]b
lkv jrmHv jrvw jtmxv jdbf
[jtbv jnbv] 12
[hvh]y
hWf Mymy tww yk jyrfwb [rwx jrgv] 13
[Mb
rw]x
lk txv Myh
tx Crxh txv
M[ymwh tx] 14
[Mvy] tx
hvhy jrb Nklf yfybwh [Mvyb] Hnyv 15
[Nfml j]mx txv jybx tx
dbk vywdqyv yfybwh 16
[rwx] hmdxh lf jymy
Nvkyrxy Nfmlv jl bFyy 17
[x]vl Hcrt
xvl Jnxt xvl jl Ntn
jyhlx hvhy 18
[tx] dvmHt xvl xvw df
jfrb hn[f]t
xvl bn[gt] 19
[vdbfv
vh]dW
jfr t[y]b tx hv[x]tt xv[l
jfr twx 20
[Blank] jfrl
rwx lkv vrmHv
vrv[wv vtmxv 21
[ynb] tx hwm
hvc rwx MyFpwmhv
My[qHh hlxv] 22
[f] mw Myrcm
Crxm Mtxcb rbdmb
[lxrWy] 23
[tbh]xv
xvh dHx hvhy
vnyhlx hvhy l[xrWy] 24
[
. . . .jbb]l l[kb
jyh]l[x hvhy tx] 25
TRANSLATION.
1
[ . I am Jalhwe thy God that [brought] thee out of
the
2
[thou shalt not hav]e other gods be[fore] me. Thou
shalt not make [for thyself
an image]
3
[or any form] that is in the heavens above, or that is in
the earth [beneath,]
4
[or that is in the waters beneath the earth. Thou shalt
not bow down to them [nor]
5
[serve them, for] I am Jahwe thy God, a jealous God
visiting the iniquity]
6
[of fathers upon sons to the third and to the fourth
generation unto them that hate me,
[and doing]
396 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
7
[kindness unto thousands] unto them that love me and
keep my commandments. Thou shalt [not]
8
[take up the name of Jahwe] thy God in vain, for Jahwe
will not hold guiltless [him
that]
9
[taketh up his name in vain. Remember the day of the
Sabbath [to hallow it:]
10
[six days thou shalt work and do all thy business,
and
on the [seventh day,]
11
a Sabbath for Jahwe] thy God, thou shalt not do therein
any business, [thou]
12
[and thy son and thy daughter,] thy slave and thy
handmaid, thy ox and thy ass and
all thy [cattle,]
13 [and thy stranger that is] in thy gates. For six days
did Ja[hwe make]
14
[the heaven]s and the earth, the sea and all th[at is
therein,]
15
and he rested [on the] seventh day; therefore Jahwe
blessed [the]
16
seventh day and hallowed it. Honour thy father and
thy mother, that]
17
it may be well with thee and that thy days may be long
upon the ground [that]
18
Jahwe thy God giveth thee.
Thou shalt not do adultery.
Thou shalt not do
murder. Thou shalt [not]
19
[st]eal.
Thou shalt not [bear] against thy neighbour
vain witness. Thou shalt not covet [the]
20 [wife of thy neighbour. Thou shalt] not desire the house
of thy neighbour,
his field, or his slave,]
21
[or his handmaid, or his o]x, or his ass, or anything
that
is thy neighbour's. [Blank]
22
[(?) And these are the statutes and the judgements
that
Moses commanded the [sons of]
23
[
the
24
[0 Isra]el: Jahwe our God, Jahwe is one; and
thou
shalt love]
25
[Jahwe thy G]o[d with al]1
t[hy heart ... . ].
HEBREW PAPYRUS OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 397
In
making the restorations at the beginnings and ends of the lines
it must be borne in mind that h, m, M, c, w, t (and sometimes k)
are wide letters, and that d, v, z, N, P, J, r (and sometimes b and n) are
narrow letters. Lines 15-19 indicate that about seven
letters are lost
on the right hand of lines 1-14, 20-22;
consequently, no more than
four letters as a rule are lost on the left-hand
side. I think there-
fore that Mr. Cook has supplied too many letters at
the ends of
lines 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 11, and too few at the
beginnings of the
following lines. That the division here adopted is
right may also
be seen from lines 4 and 5, for to add Mdbft xvlv at the end of line 4
leaves only yk to be prefixed to line
5. At the end of line 20 I have
added vdbfv after vhdW, leaving only vtmxv to be prefixed to vrvwv
at the beginning of line 21. It is more likely
that the end of a line
should be crowded than the beginning, and in the
handwriting of the
Papyrus
all the letters in vdbfv are rather narrow.
The only point where there is some doubt as to
the actual reading
of the Papyrus occurs in line 20, where I read hvxtt “desire” (as in
Deut.
v. 18b), but Mr. Cook is still inclined to read dvmHt “covet” (as
in the preceding line and in Ex. xx. 17b). The surface of the Papyrus
is here somewhat damaged and the middle letter is
defaced-so much
so, that it looks more like c than x or m. But the curve at the
foot
of the left-hand stroke of the second letter is
characteristic of t and
not of H, while it is very
difficult to suppose that the last letter can
be anything but h. If hvxtt be right, the x exhibits an extreme
form of that curious horizontal sweep at the end of
the right foot,
which is characteristic of the handwriting of this
Papyrus, e. g. in
the dHx of the Shema’.
The Ten Commandments are familiar to every one,
and
I
do not propose to go through the text line for line.
Mr.
Cook, in the course of his paper in the Proceedings
of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, has
already done
this, and the reader will find there full and clear
details
about the readings of the Versions and other
authorities.
I
propose here only to touch upon such points as may
help us to discover the nature of the document and
its
date.
The first question which naturally presents
itself is the
identification of the Biblical
passages. Does the Papyrus
give us a text of Exodus or of Deuteronomy? In
agreement
398 THE
JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
with Exodus against Deuteronomy it begins the Fourth
Commandment
with "Remember" instead of "Keep," and
does not add "as Jahwe
thy God commanded thee" after
"to hallow it." It adds at the end of this Commandment
the verse "For in six days Jahwe
made the heavens and the
earth," &c., as in Exod.
xx. 11, and does not give the verse
Deut.
v. 15 or the clause "that thy manservant and thy
maidservant may rest as well as thou " in the
preceding
verse. In the Fifth Commandment it agrees with Exodus
in not having the clause "as Jahwe thy God commanded
thee." On the other hand, the Papyrus agrees
with
Deuteronomy
against Exodus in the Fourth Commandment
by prefixing "thy ox and thy ass" to "thy
cattle," in the
Fifth
Commandment by inserting the clause "that it may
be well with thee," in the Ninth Commandment
by reading
"vain (xvw) witness" and not
"false (rqw) witness," and
in the Tenth Commandment by putting the wife
before the
house, and by the insertion of "field "
before " slave," and
(if my reading be correct) by having "desire" in
the second
place instead of "covet." To these we must
add the
appearance of the Shema’, which of course belongs to
Deuteronomy alone. Most of these agreements
with
Deuteronomy
against Exodus are also found in the Greek
text of Exodus, but not all: in fact, we may say
with con-
fidence that in the Ninth
Commandment the Greek supports
rqw both for Exodus and for
Deuteronomy. Moreover vhdW
"his field" in the Tenth Commandment is without the
conjunction as in Deuteronomy, while the Greek has ou@te
to>n a]gro>n au]tou?.
It is, I venture to think, impossible to resist
the im-
pression that the Papyrus gives
a text containing elements
both from Exodus and from Deuteronomy, just such a
text
as might be formed in a liturgical work based
indeed
upon the Pentateuch, yet not a direct transcript
either of
Exodus or of Deuteronomy. We know from both Talmuds
that the daily reading of the Decalogue before the Shema’
was once customary, and that the practice was
discontinued
HEBREW
PAPYRUS OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 399
because of Christian cavils.1 It is therefore reasonable to
conjecture that this Papyrus contains the daily
worship of
a pious Egyptian Jew who lived before the custom
came
to an end.
But further, the Hebrew text upon which the
fragment
is based was far from being identical with the Massoretic
text. Even if we refer each phrase to its origin in
Exodus
or Deuteronomy, whichever be the most convenient,
there
still remain several readings which do not agree with
the
Massoretic text, and do agree with the Septuagint.
In
the Fourth Commandment we have the insertion of b before
[yfybwh] Mvy in 1.10, and the addition of hb after hWft in
the following line. At the end of the same
Commandment
we find "seventh day" instead of
"Sabbath day," again
with the Septuagint. In the Fifth Commandment, the
reading, " that it may be well with thee,
and that thy days
may be long on the ground," agrees in order
with the
Greek. The order, Adultery, Murder, Steal, is that of
some
texts of the Septuagint (including Philo), and it is
found
in the New Testament (Mark, Luke, Romans, James,
not
Matthew).
To crown all, we have the preface to the Shema’,
which is found in the Septuagint of Deut. vi. 4, but
not
in the Hebrew; and in the Shema’ itself we find--
xvh dHx hvhy vnyhlx
hvhy lxrWy fmw
the xvh at the end being added
in agreement with the
Greek, both of the Septuagint and of Mark xii. 29, which
has @Akoue, ]Israh<l, Ku<rioj o[ qeo>j h[mw?n Ku<rioj ei$j e]stin.
In this Papyrus, therefore, we have a Hebrew
document
based upon a text which is not the Massoretic text, but
has notable points of agreement with that which
underlies
the Septuagint. It is not a question only of
difference
from the Massoretic
standard; mere differences might have
arisen through carelessness. The all-important point
is
the agreement with the Septuagint. This shows us
that
1 Talm. J. Berakhoth, i.
8 (4) ; Talm. B. Berakhoth, 12 a.
400 THE
JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
the variants have a history behind them, and that
they
belong to the pre-Massoretic
age of the text. We can trace
the consonantal text of our printed Hebrew Bibles
back
to the time of
Cochba. From that time onwards
there has been but
little serious change in the Hebrew text of the
Canonical
Scriptures
as accepted by the Synagogue. From that time
onwards the composition of a document such as
our
Papyrus
is inconceivable.1 In other words, it is a relic
of Jewish religious literature earlier than the
age of Rabbi
‘Akiba, who died in the year 135 A.D., and who was the
founder of the accurate study of the Hebrew
text.
It is of course probable that our Papyrus is the
copy
of an earlier document. The original composition
might
be older than Rabbi ‘Akiba,
but our fragment might be
very much later. At the same time there are palaeo-
graphical considerations which suggest that the
Nash
Papyrus
is itself of very great antiquity. It is entirely
unaffected by the conventional rules that regulated
the
writing of Scripture in later times; the d of dHx in the
Shema’
is not enlarged, there are no "crowns " to
the letters,
nor is there any division into verses. It is also a
mark
of very early date that several of the letters are
run
together by a ligature, e.g. in 1. 15. We have to
compare
the handwriting not with rolls and codices of the
early
mediaeval period, or with the other surviving
fragments
of Hebrew written on papyrus, but with Palmyrene and
Nabataean
inscriptions.
The nearest parallel of all is to
be found in a Nabataean
inscription of A. D. 55, and I
1 I cannot resist quoting the
words of Dr. Landauer about Euting's
discovery of a text of the Shema' engraved over the lintel of the ruined
Synagogue at
so uralten Gebets wie das
Sch'ma wird kein Verstandiger bei einer
Uberlieferung aus
einer Zeit wie die der Mischna
etwa erwarten. Die
Umschreibung von Jahwe
durch ynvdx uberrascht
uns nicht, wohl aber
dass dem
Kiinstler ein Lapsus passirt ist, indem er
jtbywb mit
mater
lectionis schreibt
und, wenn ich recht lese, htbhxv mit
h"
(Sitzungsberichte
of the
HEBREW
PAPYRUS OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 401
am inclined to assign this Papyrus to about the
same
date. Those who place it later will have to account
for
the archaic h (X), the large
broken-backed medial; the
occasionally open final m, the q with a short foot (like
Palmyrene and Syriac),
and the looped it. The hand-
writing is cursive, but it is as distinct from
the so-called
"Rashi." character as the cursive Greek of
pre-Byzantine
times is distinct from the minuscule hands of the
Middle
Ages. And I have already drawn attention to the fact
that our Papyrus made its reappearance before the
world
in company with Greek fragments of the Odyssey,
which
are certainly as old as the second century A . D.,
and may
be very much earlier.
The five letters j m N J and C all appear on the
Papyrus
in distinct medial and final forms, but the
development
of nearly all these forms can be traced almost
back to the
Christian era. The distinction of
medial and final Kaph,
for instance, is as old as the first beginnings of Syriac
literature. More curious are the considerations
derived
from the spelling of the Papyrus. The most
characteristic
feature of this spelling is its independence of
the Biblical
standard. On the one hand we have the archaic no
and
hmw for
text the vowel o is not written plene
in Myhlx, yknx, hwm,
or the present participle. The distinction between
the
vowels in rvw and rmH is maintained, just as in the Masso-
retic text of the
Commandments. On the other hand we
have xvl every time for xlo, we have dvbft and dvmHt (but
also bngt), and Nvkyrxy is written plene. rvkz
agrees with
the
present Massoretic
spelling.
These spellings cannot be brought forward in favour of
a later date than what I have urged in the
preceding
paragraphs. The scriptio plena had become general by the
year 66 A. D., for from that time we find Nhvkh on Jewish
coins. And I cannot help remarking by the way that
I
believe the saying in Matt. v. 18 about the jot
and the
tittle (i]w?ta
e{n h} mi<a kerai<a) to refer not to the
size of certain
402 THE
JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
letters but to their use as vowels. The word waw meant
“a hook,” and this I fancy may have been rendered kerai<a,
as a Greek equivalent for the original Semitic term.
Thus
the fashion of representing the long vowels i and u. by
the consonants y and v was not only in use
about the
year 3o A. D., but was already beginning to invade
the
copies of the Law. Our Papyrus represents the every-
day usage. The Massoretic
text of the Bible, based as we
believe it to be upon the spelling of a MS. of
about 135 A.D.,
represents a mixture. It often preserves the
archaic spelling
of an earlier age, as is natural in a copy of any
ancient
writing: on the other hand, many spellings
represent the
usage of the second century A. D.
The differences between our Papyrus and the Massoretic
text show that the scrupulous care to preserve the
words
of the Law accurately, which prevailed among the
later
Jews,
was not universally taken in the first century A.D.
and the preceding ages. The agreement between the
Papyrus
and the Septuagint also proves that some things
in the Greek which we may have been inclined to
regard
as paraphrase or amplification are in fact the
faithful
reproduction of the Hebrew text that
lay before the
translator. But there remains a more serious
question,
the question as to which is really the better text.
Does
the text approved by
text of the Nash Papyrus and the Septuagint, more
nearly
represent the text of Exodus and Deuteronomy as
(shall
we say) Ezra left it? I am afraid, after all, that
in this
instance I must vote for the Massoretic
text. So far as the
Decalogue
and the Shema’ go, the Massoretic
text appears
to me the more archaic and therefore the more
genuine.
In
these passages the Massoretic text reads to me like
the
scholarly reproduction of an old MS. which happens
here
to contain no serious errors, while the Nash
Papyrus is not
the scholarly reproduction of a MS., but a monument
of
popular religion, giving a text of the
Commandments with
the grammatical difficulties smoothed down.
HEBREW
PAPYRUS OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 403
I trust I may escape being misrepresented as
holding
a brief for the Massoretic
text. On the contrary, I believe
that the printed Hebrew Bible contains serious
errors, both
palaeographical and editorial. Many of
these errors can,
I
am confident, be removed by an intelligent use of the
Septuagint, and I greatly rejoice to learn from the
Nash
Papyrus
that the ancient Greek translation was even more
faithful to the Hebrew which underlies it than
some of us
dared hope. But it does not follow that all the labour of
the Sopherim was thrown
away, or that every early variant
is a relic of a purer text. Especially is this the
case with
the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch became, canonical
from
very early times, and the consonantal text was
practically
fixed in the Maccabaean
age. And if any part of the text
were fixed, surely this would be the Ten
Commandments.
When
therefore we find that the Ten Commandments
actually differ in Exodus and in Deuteronomy, we
have
some ground for supposing that they have escaped inten-
tional harmonization. And if
they have escaped intentional
harmonization they have escaped the
only serious danger
to which they would have been exposed, for it is
hardly
likely that a mere palaeographical
error in such a well-
known context would have been left uncorrected.
The clearest instance to my mind is in the text
of the
Fourth Commandment. Here I believe the Massoretic
text to be right, and the Nash Papyrus to give an
easier,
less original, reading: at the same time it is a
better
commentary on the true text than either the
Authorized
Version
of 1611 or the Revised Version of 1881, both of
which actually follow the Samaritan text. The Massoretic
text has hvhyl
tbw yfybwh Mvyv jtkxlm lk
tyWfv
dbft
Mymy tww hkxlm lk hWft xl jyhlx
i. e. Six days thou shalt
work and
do all thy business ; and the seventh day, Jahweh thy God's
Sabbath,
thou shalt do no business.
In the first clause " six
days " are in what may be called
the accusative of duration of time: the symmetry of
the
sentence shows us that yfybwh
Mvy is in the same construc-
404 THE
JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
tion, and "yl tbw is in apposition to it.
If we wanted to
bring out the exact force of these accusatives, we
might
translate "During six days thou shalt work. .., but during
the seventh day .. . thou shalt do no business." But this
construction, though perfectly
clear, can easily be mis-
understood. It is so easy to take jyhlx ... Mvyv as a separate
sentence and say "But the seventh day is the
Sabbath," or
to regard it as a kind of nominativus pendens without any
grammatical construction at all. This leaves hWft xl, so
to speak, in the air: "thou shalt do no business" by itself
is rather too general a commandment, and
consequently we
find vb (written hb, as in Jeremiah
xvii. 24) added by the
Nash
Papyrus and by the Samaritan, and implied by the
Septuagint and the Vulgate. The Papyrus further
prefixes
b to yfybwh Mvy,
thereby making it quite clear that tbw is in
apposition and not a predicate. The English Bible
has
"but the seventh day is
the sabbath of the LORD thy God
in it thou shalt not do any work"--a
translation that
makes havoc of the syntax, and the matter is made
worse
by the Revised Version, which puts the italic is into
ordinary type.
The result of this grammatical excursus can be
stated in
a sentence. On the assumption that the Massoretic text
preserves the true wording of the Fourth
Commandment
both in Exodus and Deuteronomy, the reading of the
Nash
Papyrus, of the Samaritan, and the rendering of the
Septuagint,
can all be easily explained; but on the
assumption that either the Nash Papyrus or the
Samaritan
gives the original, it is very difficult to account
for the
omissions of the Massoretic
text.
At the end of the Fourth Commandment (Exod. xx. 11b)
I
incline to think that we have another instance of the
superiority of the Massoretic
text, this time in company
with the Samaritan. "Blessed the sabbath day"
(MT.) is
less obvious than "blessed the seventh day " (Papyrus and
LXX),
which might easily have come from the context
or from Gen. ii. 3. Here again it is interesting
to note
HEBREW
PAPYRUS OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 405
that the divergence of the Septuagint from the Massoretic
text was not caused by paraphrastic
tendencies on the part
of the translators, but by the faithful following
of the
Hebrew text that was used.
It is not necessary here to discuss the longer
form of
the Fifth Commandment given in the Papyrus, because
it practically amounts to an interpolation from
the
parallel in Deuteronomy which the Massoretic text of
Exodus
has escaped. It is possible, however, that the
received text of Deuteronomy should be corrected
here to
agree with the Papyrus, i.
e. "that it may be well with
thee" should precede instead of follow
"that thy days may
be long."
The variation in order between the Sixth and
Seventh
Commandments
is probably connected with the similar
change of order in the Tenth. Just as in the Tenth
Commandment
the prohibition not to covet the neigh-
bour's wife is placed first in
the Papyrus, in the Greek, and
even in the Hebrew text of Deuteronomy, so we find
that
in the Papyrus and in many Greek texts (including
Philo),
the prohibition of Adultery is put before that of
Murder.
But
is not the order of the Massoretic text in Exodus
more primitive? Is it not likely that the original
form of
the Tenth Commandment was "Thou shalt not covet thy
neighbour's House," the House
including the Family as
well as the Property? The reason
that in Exod. xx. 17,
the House comes first is not because ‘Akiba or some
"Scribe"
thought the dwelling more valuable than the
wife, but because the first clause of the
Commandment
was once all that there was of it. The rest is
explanatory
addition. But the same tendency which has brought
up
the prohibition to covet one's neighbour's
wife to the head
of the list has most likely brought up the
prohibition of
Adultery in front of Murder. Here, again, the Nash
Papyrus
represents the popular tendencies of a not yet Rabbinized
Judaism
(if I may be forgiven the phrase), while the Masso-
retic text gives us the
scholarly archaism of the Scribes.
406 THE
JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
We come at last to the Shema’ (Deut. vi. 4 f.), undoubtedly
the most remarkable part of the new discovery. What
are
we to say of the new Preface, and what are we to
say of
the addition of xvh after dHx? What reasons are we to
give for the omission of this Preface and for the
omission
of xvh on the assumption that
they are genuine portions of
Deuteronomy? The question seems to
me to be altogether
parallel to the question raised by the variations
in the
Commandments and to demand the same answer.
Let us begin with the obvious consideration that
the
Nash
Papyrus once more brings out the essential faithful-
ness of the Greek version of the Pentateuch to the
Hebrew
that underlies it. The new Preface is found in the
Greek
prefixed
to the Shema’, and in ku<rioj ei$j e]stin the last word
corresponds to xvh, just as in Gen. xli.
25 to> e]nu<pnion Faraw>
e!n
e]stin corresponds to xvh
dHx hfrp MvlH. There is nothing
to suggest that the text of the Papyrus has been
assimilated
to the Greek, and so we may well believe that the Septua-
gint attests a text of the Shema’ which agrees with that
of the Papyrus. But here again it is difficult to
believe
that the Palestinian recension
of the passage represented
by the Massoretic text
(and the Samaritan) is not the more
original. Why should the xvh after dHx have been dropped,
if it were originally there? It is such an obvious
thing
to add: it makes the construction so much clearer.
True,
it takes away some of the force of the great
sentence ;
it dissociates the assertion of Jahwe's uniqueness from
the command to love him with no corner reserved for
other objects of devotion; it gives, in fact, a
philosophical
turn to a positive command. Such a turn is foreign
to
the style of Deuteronomy, but it is exactly what
would
attract the Jews of the Dispersion. In this
instance also
I
must prefer the archaistic scholarship of the Scribes to
the philosophy of
To the Preface much the same argument applies.
Words
are really not wanted between Deut. vi. 3 and
"Hear,
0
HEBREW
PAPYRUS OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 407
Deut.
vi. 1-3. It reads like a
marginal chapter-heading
that has become incorporated with the text. It is
remark-
able how well it fits in with the scheme of the
Papyrus.
The
words And these are the statutes and the judgments
that Moses commanded the sons of
forth from the
transition from the Decalogue which was proclaimed
by
Jahwe himself to the rest of the Law which was given
through Moses only. Mr. Cook has made the bold sug-
gestion that our Papyrus is
part of a text of Deuteronomy,
in which this Preface actually took the place of
the fifteen
verses, Deut. v. 22-vi. 3. The Septuagint would in
that
case represent a conflate text, as it contains both
the
Preface and the fifteen verses. But
Deut. v. 22-vi. 3 is
surely a genuine portion of the Book of Deuteronomy
it has even run the gauntlet of the Encyclopaedia Biblica
(col. 1081). I think, therefore,
that the Preface to the
Shema’
is an interpolation into the genuine text, which
the Massoretic text has
happily escaped. It is in every
respect similar to Isa.
xxx. 6a ("The Burden of the Beasts
of the South"), which doubtless was also a
marginal
chapter-heading, except that in the
Isaiah passage the
interpolation is found in the Massoretic text as well as
in the Greek.
To sum up what inevitably has assumed the form
of
a discussion of technical points. I believe the
Nash Papyrus
to be a document of the first century A.D. at
latest. The
document itself I do not believe to have extended
beyond the
single column which is in great part preserved, and I
think
it not at all unlikely that it was folded up and
buried
with its former owner as a kind of charm. The
writing
which it contains consists of what were considered to
be
the chief passages of the Law, the text being taken
from
the various books, and where there were parallel
texts,
as in the Decalogue, the Papyrus presents a fusion
of the
two. The Hebrew text of the Pentateuch from which
these
extracts were made differed from the Massoretic text, and
408 THE
JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
had many points of contact with that of which the
Septuagint
is a translation. The date of the compilation
cannot be determined, but the Septuagint itself is
evidence
that such texts were current in the Ptolemaic
period. At
the same time, as far as our fragments extend, the Masso-
retic text approves itself as
purer, as a more primitive
recension of the Pentateuch, than
the text of the Nash
Papyrus and the Septuagint. Especially is this true
with
regard to the text of the Shema’. There is a story in the
Talmud
that when Rabbi ‘Akiba was martyred he was
reciting the Shema’, and he died as he was lingering over
the word dHx. "Happy art thou,
Rabbi ‘Akiba," said the
Heavenly
Voice, "that thy spirit went forth at dHx." I
think we may venture to echo this Benediction: there
is
no need at all for us to add an unnecessary
pronoun to
dHx
hvhy vnyhlx hvhy lxrWy fmw.
F. C. BURKITT.
Please report any errors to Ted
Hildebrandt at: