Chester Beatty Papyri

The document collection Chester Beatty Papyri brings together eleven documents from the early period of Christian Scripture, which are of incomparable value for research on the late antique textual tradition of the Old and New Testaments. The papyrus fragments date from the 2nd to 4th century CE and are therefore among the oldest surviving Bible documents. Today, they give us a unique insight into the form that the Christian Bible tradition used to have in Egypt before the widespread persecution of Christians under Emperor Diocletian (around 240 – around 312). Preserved in various libraries, the fragile papyri contain text fragments of both the Old and New Testaments as well as apocryphal writings, including, for example, the Book of Enoch and the only surviving copy of the Apocryphon of Ezekiel. The most important documents are probably the three famous fragments P45, P46, and P47 from the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, which contain passages from the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Pauline Epistles, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Revelation of John.