Chester Beatty Papyri

Also called Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri

Eleven papyrus codices bought on the Egyptian antiquities market in the 1930s, which pushed the surviving manuscript evidence for the New Testament back by well over a century in a single stroke.

Siglum: P45, P46, P47 (Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri I, II and III)
Type: Papyrus codices, written in an uncial hand
Language: Koine Greek
Contents: Eleven codices in all. P45: the four Gospels and Acts, of which thirty leaves survive. P46: the Pauline letters, of which eighty-six leaves survive — 56 in Dublin and 30 at the University of Michigan; the surviving leaves do not include 1-2 Timothy or Titus. The original extent of each is a reconstruction rather than a count, and is not given here. P47: a continuous run of Revelation 9:10-17:2. The rest preserve Old Testament books in Greek
Written: Third century AD Traditional dating
Origin: Unknown — the Chester Beatty records the scribe and place of production as unknown; the codices are generally taken to be Egyptian
Found at: Not excavated. No findspot is recorded
Found in: Acquired in the early 1930s, with further leaves of P46 in the mid-1930s
Found by: Alfred Chester Beatty, by purchase. No finder or excavator is on record
Now held at: The Chester Beatty, Dublin (CBL BP I, II and III), with 30 leaves of P46 at the University of Michigan
Shelfmark: CBL BP I (P45), BP II (P46) and BP III (P47); the Michigan leaves of P46 are P.Mich. inv. 6238
Facsimile: View the manuscript

A Mining Magnate's Purchase

Alfred Chester Beatty was an American-born mining engineer who made a fortune in copper and spent a great deal of it collecting manuscripts. In the early 1930s, with further leaves following in the middle of the decade, he acquired the remains of eleven papyrus codices containing Greek biblical texts. The library's own records say only that he acquired them; the widely repeated account that they came through Cairo dealers is secondary. What is not in dispute is that no excavation produced them and their scribes and place of production are recorded as unknown, which is a real limitation on what can be said about where and how they were used. Most are in the Chester Beatty in Dublin; some leaves from the same codices ended up at the University of Michigan.

Three matter most for the New Testament, and the honest way to describe them is by what survives rather than by what they once were. P45 held all four Gospels and Acts, and thirty of its leaves survive — the earliest undeniable four-gospel codex. P46 is the oldest substantially complete copy of Paul's letters: eighty-six leaves survive, 56 in Dublin and 30 at Michigan. How many leaves either codex originally had is a reconstruction and not a count, and the published figures differ from one another, so this article gives only what is still there. P47 preserves a continuous run of Revelation 9:10 to 17:2, and is the earliest substantial papyrus of that book. All three are dated to the third century AD. Others in the group preserve Old Testament books in Greek, including Genesis, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Esther.

What They Changed

Until these codices appeared, the earliest substantial New Testament manuscripts were the great fourth-century parchment Bibles, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. The Chester Beatty papyri are roughly 150 years older, and they are not scraps — P46 alone preserves eighty-six leaves. For the first time scholars could see what the text looked like well before the fourth century, and the answer was reassuring in the way that matters: substantially the same text, with the same kinds of ordinary copying variations already present.

P46 also shows something about the shape of the collection. It is a single codex gathering Paul's letters together as a set, around AD 200 — evidence that the letters were being read and copied as a body long before any church council pronounced on a canon. In P46 Hebrews follows Romans, an arrangement not used later, which is a small window onto how fluid the ordering still was.

One Argument to Handle Carefully

P46's surviving leaves do not include 1 and 2 Timothy or Titus, and this is sometimes presented as evidence that those letters were not yet regarded as Paul's, or not yet written. The inference is weaker than it sounds. The codex is incomplete at both ends, and the argument depends on reconstructing how many leaves are missing and how much text would have fitted on them — a calculation scholars have run to opposite conclusions, since the scribe's handwriting shrinks as he goes, apparently realising he was running out of room. Some conclude there was no space for the Pastorals; others that there may have been. It is a genuinely open question and should be described as one.

More generally, these codices are working copies, not showpieces: they have corrections, they have mistakes, and their scribes vary in skill. That is what makes them valuable. A manuscript tradition that shows its own ordinary human wear is a tradition that can be studied and reconstructed, and the discipline of textual criticism exists precisely to do that work in the open.

Scripture references

Romans 1:1-7 — P46 opens Paul's collected letters with Romans
Hebrews 1:1-4 — In P46, Hebrews follows immediately after Romans
Revelation 1:1-8 — Preserved in part by P47
2 Timothy 3:16-17 — From the Pastoral Epistles, whose absence from P46's surviving leaves is debated

Sources

Holding institutionThe Chester Beatty, Dublin: catalogue records for BP I, BP II and BP III — The Chester Beatty, Dublin · The library's own catalogue descriptions give the third-century date, the surviving leaf counts (thirty for P45; eighty-six for P46, split 56 Dublin / 30 Michigan), the extent of P47 as Revelation 9:10-17:2, and scribe and production place as "Unknown". Its online viewer was returning errors when this article was checked. It does not state how many leaves either codex began with, and neither does anything else that was opened here — the published reconstructions disagree — so no such figure appears in this articleSupports: The contents, the honest surviving extents, the date and the split with Michigan
ScholarshipFrederic G. Kenyon, The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri: Descriptions and Texts — Frederic G. Kenyon · London: Emery Walker, 1933-1941 — the first edition of the whole group, in eight fascicles. Print onlySupports: The identification and first publication of the codices
ReferenceE. Hixson, "Taking Stock of the 'First-Century Mark' Saga" — Elijah Hixson, Text & Canon Institute, Phoenix Seminary · Published 25 January 2022. The page's own title is "Taking Stock of the 'First-Century Mark' Saga"; the older wording used here was taken from the URL and has been correctedSupports: Why the dating of early papyri needs to be stated carefully
EncyclopediaWikipedia: Chester Beatty Papyri