Cambridge University Library is to release digital versions of some of the most significant religious manuscripts in the world – following on from last year’s release of Isaac Newton’s manuscripts and notebooks. Launched in December last year (2011), the Cambridge Digital Library has already attracted tens of millions of hits on its website. Among the 25,000 new images being made freely available at http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/ are a 2,000-year old copy of The Ten Commandments (the famous Nash Papyrus) , see below, and one of the most remarkable ancient copies of the New Testament (Codex Bezae).
The Nash Papyrus contains the text of the Ten Commandments.
The Nash Papyrus. Named after the Egyptologist who purchased it at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Nash papyrus is a very fragile second-century BCE manuscript. Before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, it was by far the oldest manuscript containing text from the Hebrew Bible, and even now it remains among the most ancient.