event · E0477
Papyrus Fouad 266 פפירוס פואד 266
Fragments of Greek papyrus rolls of Bereishit and Devarim from Egypt — three manuscripts grouped as Papyrus Fouad 266 (Rahlfs 847, 848, and 942) — written in the first century BCE and acquired in 1939 for the Société Royale de Papyrologie in Cairo, where the collection has been held (its precise current disposition is not independently verified). In the famous Devarim roll (Rahlfs 848), wherever the divine name occurs the Greek text breaks off and the Tetragrammaton is written in square Hebrew letters — over thirty times — the earliest extant Septuagint copy to preserve the Name in Hebrew inside the Greek.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- פפירוס פואד 266
- Also known as
- P. Fouad 266, Rahlfs 847/848/942
- Era
- second-temple
II. When
- Traditional
- c. 3661–3760 AM — the academic date laid onto the AM scale
- Civil (computed)
- 3661–3760 AM · 100–1 BCE
- Academic
- 1st century BCE
- Date range
- written 1st century BCE (palaeographic)
- Duration
- ≈99 years
- Precision
- approximate
IV. What
- Events
- Rylands Greek Papyrus 458
Why it matters
A Greek-reading Jew in Ptolemaic Egypt, working through this scroll of Devarim, would read smoothly until the divine name — and there find not a Greek word but יהוה, in Hebrew letters, untranslated and untranslatable. Together with the Nahal Hever Minor Prophets scroll (Greek Minor Prophets Scroll from Nahal Hever), this papyrus shows that the earliest Jewish copies of the Greek Bible kept the Name itself in Hebrew script: the familiar "Lord" (kyrios) of later Greek Bibles is a development, not the original practice. It is a small typographic fact with a large meaning — even at the farthest linguistic edge of the diaspora, the Name did not assimilate. As its sibling Rylands 458 (Rylands Greek Papyrus 458) proves how early the Greek Torah existed, Fouad 266 preserves how reverently it was first written.
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Papyrus Fouad 266 comprises fragments of three first-century-BCE papyrus rolls — of Bereishit and Devarim (Rahlfs 847, 848, 942; 117 fragments in all) — found in the Fayum region and acquired in 1939 for the Société Royale (later Égyptienne) de Papyrologie in Cairo, published in full by Dunand (1966) and in the Zaki Aly and Koenen edition (1980). The collection has been housed in Cairo; its precise current disposition is not independently verified, and the atlas states the holding with that caveat.
The holder hedge follows the source batch's own honest note: the historic holding (Société de Papyrologie, Cairo) is documented; a current institutional confirmation is not.
|
archaeology external | ★★★★☆ |
|
| In the Devarim roll (Rahlfs 848) the divine name is written as the Tetragrammaton in square Hebrew characters embedded in the Greek text, over thirty times — the Greek scribe left gaps that a second scribe filled with the Hebrew Name. Among surviving Septuagint manuscripts it is the earliest to preserve this practice, showing that early Jewish copies of the Greek Bible wrote God's name in Hebrew rather than substituting the Greek kyrios, which the manuscript record shows to be a later convention. | archaeology external | ★★★★★ |
|
| Among the preserved passages of the Devarim roll is the close of the book — the papyrus preserves the Greek of Devarim 31:28 through 32:7, Moshe's summons of the elders and the opening of Shirat Haazinu, with the Hebrew Name standing mid-verse in the Greek — so the practice is documented in one of the Torah's own climactic texts about transmitting the word to later generations. | biblical archaeology | ★★★★☆ | |
| With Rylands 458 (Rylands Greek Papyrus 458), its slightly older sibling, Fouad 266 is one of the two pre-Christian witnesses to the Septuagint outside the Judean Desert finds: together they carry the Greek Torah's physical record back into the heart of the Second Temple period and anchor everything scholarship can say about the earliest form of the translation. | external reconstruction | ★★★★☆ |