The “Jewish” LXX Papyri from Oxyrhynchus: Witnesses of Ways that did not Part?

Abstract

ABSTRACT The city of Oxyrhynchus is a well-known testing ground for our knowledge of the transmission of the Old Greek Bible. Most of the Septuagint’s fragmentary texts that come from this city were copied by Christians, but some of them are thought to have been produced in a Jewish milieu. A review of the criteria that are used to determine if a particular Septuagint roll or codex has a Jewish or Christian provenance and an analysis of the fragments themselves may help to establish to what extent there was an interaction between Jewish and Christian palaeographical and codicological practices. This may also reveal whether the boundaries between the two communities were less rigid than are commonly assumed.