The Septaguint, Psalm 70 and 71, in Greek, a fragment from a large papyrus codex

provenance

From the private collection of the respected Austrian conservator Dr. Anton Fackelmann (1916-85), who worked on many ancient manuscripts (including the Nag Hammadi codices), discovered a number of important ancient papyrus fragments (including the oldest known copy of a poem by the seventh-century B.C. poet Archilochos dating to the poet's own lifetime; the oldest known Greek Acta Pauli et Thecla, third century AD: now Schøyen MS. 2634/1; and fragments of a manuscript of Homer's Iliad dating to either the first century BC or the first century AD: now Schøyen MS. 2628), and held responsibility for the Vienna papyrus collection.

text

According to tradition, the Greek Septuagint was translated from the Hebrew Bible in Alexandria by seventy-two Jewish scholars, and it is accepted that this probably took place in several stages between the third and first centuries BC.

The present manuscript is an exceedingly early witness to Psalm 69 and 70, both prayers for deliverance. If it is fourth century in date, then its witness to the second psalm is pre-dated only by the Bodmer Papyrus 24, which dates to the third century AD and contains Psalms 71-118; and a single papyri fragment from the Oxyrhynchus excavations (now P.Oxy VI.845: Cairo, Egyptian Museum, JE 41083, of c. 400 AD; containing Ps. 70:3-8 & 68:30-7; K. Aland, Repertorium der griechischen christlichen Papyri, vol. 1: Biblische Papyri, 1976, item: AT74) A fourth-century date would also make this manuscript contemporary to the earliest complete surviving manuscripts of the Septaguint: Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. If it is fifth century then we must add the Codex Alexandrinus to its peers. Thus, its witness to Psalm 69 is the fourth or fifth oldest recorded manuscript of the text, and its witness to Psalm 70 is the fifth or sixth oldest witness to the text.