More Digital Images of Papyri at the Bodleian Online

A couple years ago, I noted that the Bodleian Library at Oxford had put digital images of several early Christian manuscripts online. Now they have uploaded images of many more manuscripts, and there are several old favorites among them. The most substantial pieces of the Oxyrhynchus codex of Philo of Alexandria, for example, are held at the Bodleian, including a fragment that preserves a parchment stay and binding thread:

One of the fragments of the Oxyrhynchus Philo codex at the Bodleian (Bodleian Library MS. Gr. class. c. 74; image source: Digital Bodleian, CC-BY-NC 4.0)

(Sidenote: I’ve written a bit about the excavation of the different parts of this codex here, and there has been some interesting recent work on the copyists of the codex by Sean A. Adams in a Festschrift for James Royse, who of course wrote the essential treatment of this codex in a 1980 article.)

As far as I can see, there are about 100 other Oxyrhynchus pieces among the newly digitized materials, including some new and much-improved images of P.Oxy. 1.1, the Gospel of Thomas:

P.Oxy. 1.1, the Gospel of Thomas; (Bodleian Library MS. Gr. th. e. 7 (P); image source: Digital Bodleian, CC-BY-NC 4.0)

In addition to the Oxyrhynchus papyri, there are now images of other important papyri in the Bodleian, like this fragment from the Psalms that is generally thought to be one of the earliest surviving codices:

Papyrus codex fragment containing the Psalms in Greek (Bodleian Library MS. Gr. bib. g. 5 (P); image source: Digital Bodleian, CC-BY-NC 4.0

It’s great to see these excellent images made more widely available. Thanks once again to our colleagues at the Bodleian Library for making it happen.

This entry was posted in Bodleian Library, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Oxyrhynchus Philo. Bookmark the permalink.

4 Responses to More Digital Images of Papyri at the Bodleian Online

  1. Mike Sampson says:

    I’m happy to report that these links to the Digital Bodleian have already been imported into papyri.info, and that the work of adding digital transcriptions of the texts continues.

  2. Asaf Gayer says:

    Very cool! Thank you for this. Can you say a few words on the piece of wood (?) in the image of the Philo codex?

Leave a comment