This is a digital transcription of F.C. Burkitt’s published transcription of the Decalogue and the opening of the Shema from the Nash Papyrus.^[1] F.C. Burkitt, “The Hebrew Papyrus of the Ten Commandments,” The Jewish Quarterly Review, 15, 392-408 (1903)  . Text in brackets is reconstructed based on the the surrounding text, space to margin, and comparative sources.

Once upon a time, according to the Mishnah, it was the nusaḥ (liturgical tradition) of the Cohanim in the Bet Hamikdash^[2] Priests of the Temple in Jerusalem   for the Ten Commandments to be read prior to the Sh’ma. Here’s the relevant teaching from Mishnah Tamid (32b in Talmud Bavli Tamid), emphasis mine:

So, why don’t we read the Ten Commandments during the Shaḥarit (morning service) today? Sadly, fears over the insinuations made by certain Minim (a category of heretics), left this practice confined to the age of the Temple. No one was able to revive this custom regardless of the evident surviving passion for it shown by generations of Babylonian Amoraim.

By the time Rav Saadya Gaon and Rav Amram helped to set down the liturgy in print, this liturgical custom had been relegated to the age of the Temple (before 70 C.E.). This wasn’t the first time a liturgical custom had been left to this era. As Rabbi Mark Sameth explains:

The Tetragrammaton [the four-letter divine name used in the Torah, aka, the shem hameforash) was permitted for everyday greetings until at least 586 B.C.E., when the First Temple was destroyed (Mishnah Berakhot 9:5). In time its pronunciation was permitted only to the priests (Mishnah Sotah 7:6), who would pronounce it in their public blessing of the people. With the death of the High Priest Shimon HaTzaddik circa 300 BCE (Talmud Bavli, Yoma 39b) the Name was pronounced only by the High Priest in the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur (see Mishnah, Sotah 7:6; Mishnah, Tamid 7:2). According to the Zohar, “the ineffable Name was openly enunciated in the hearing of all, but after irreverence became widespread it was concealed under other letters” (Zohar, Bamidbar Naso 146b). According to the Talmud, the pronunciation was passed on by the sages to their disciples only once (some say twice) every seven years (Talmud Bavli, Kiddushin 71a). Finally, upon the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E., the Name was no longer pronounced at all.^[14] Rabbi Mark Sameth, “The Secret Four-Letter Name of God,” CCAR Journal Summer 2008, p.27, cf., 10.  

Nor are these examples unique to the history of Jewish spiritual practice. Concerns over how liturgy was heard or misheard, understood or misunderstood, abused irreverently or used to incite fear and prejudice, produced a fair amount of liturgical variation between nusḥaot. These variations reflect regions in which Jewish communities struggled under oppression and censorship even unto the 20th century.

But back to the reciting of the Ten Commandments prior to the Sh’ma. Quite remarkably, in 1898 an ancient papyrus manuscript was purchased from an antiquities merchant in Egypt that attests to this tradition. On the papyrus is recorded the Ten Commandments followed by the Sh’ma. Named the Nash Papyrus after the man W.L. Nash who purchased it and then brought it to Cambridge University Library, the manuscript witnesses what is likely the oldest extant work of Jewish liturgy. Scholars dated it somewhere between 150 and 100 BCE. What continues to fascinate scholars is how this text, early enough to predate the fixed Masoretic text familiar to Judaism, corresponds to very early editions of the Torah only preserved in translation.

Twenty four lines long, with a few letters missing at each edge, the papyrus contains the Ten Commandments in Hebrew, followed by the start of the Sh’ma prayer. The text of the Ten Commandments combines parts of the version from Exodus 20:2-17 with parts from Deuteronomy 5:6-21. A curiosity is its omission of the phrase “house of bondage”, used in both versions, about Egypt – perhaps a reflection of where the papyrus was composed.

Some (but not all) of the papyrus’ substitutions from Deuteronomy are also found in the version of Exodus in the ancient Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible. The Septuagint also interpolates before Deuteronomy 6:4 the preamble to the Sh’ma found in the papyrus, and additionally agrees with a couple of the other variant readings where the papyrus departs from the standard Hebrew Masoretic text. The ordering of the later commandments in the papyrus (Adultery-Murder-Steal, rather than Murder-Adultery-Steal) is also that found in most texts of the Septuagint, as well as in the Christian Gospels (Mark 10:19, Luke 18:20, Romans 13:9, and James 2:11, but not Matthew 19:18).

It is thus believed that the papyrus was probably drawn from a liturgical document, which may have purposely synthesised the two versions of the Commandments, rather than directly from Scripture. However, the similarities with the Septuagint text give strong evidence for the likely closeness of the Septuagint as a translation of a Hebrew text of the Pentateuch extant in Egypt in the 2nd century BCE that differed significantly from the texts later collated and preserved by the Masoretes.^[15] ”Nash Papayrus,” wikipedia, accessed 2011-01-21.  

What makes this manuscript fascinating to me is that the Nash Papyrus and the liturgy it witnesses, presents a novel example of a remix. By placing the two different texts next to each other in sequence, a novel association is evoked. A narrative is… reenacted.

As I imagine it, the current Shacharit (morning) practice follows the following thematic journey: liberation from the land of Constriction/mitzrayim (awareness blessings upon waking), songs of liberation until after the passage through the symplegades of standing water (psukei dzimra until az yashir), passage though a world of light and angels (i.e., the Ascent of Moshe at Har Sinai to receive the Torah^[16] See “Moses and Angels” at the Encyclopedia of Jewish, Myth, Magic, and Mysticism   — the blessings preceding the Sh’ma), a declaration of Oneness upon the revelation of a theophany on Earth (the Sh’ma — a meditation on the interconnectedness of transcendent One with the immanent Shem Kavod Malchuto name of God written in nature), and finally, the intimate meeting during the standing meditation of the Amidah (as the Kavod/Glory of YHVH passes before Moshe preserved in a cleft in the side of the mountain Sinai).

A recitation of the Decalogue (ten commandments) feels entirely consistent with this journey of Bnei Yisroel and Moshe, re-enacted through liturgy. It also feels a shame that even when the Temple stood, fears of irreverence mediated individual’s experience and encounters in Jewish spiritual practice. My heart is with Ameymar and Rabbah bar Bar Ḥanah in restoring this liturgy.

Sources

The Nash Papyrus. Photo appearing in THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW 15 (1903) 392-408.

“השמע ועשרת הדיברות | the Shema prefaced by the Decalogue, as found in the Nash Papyrus (ca. 2nd c. BCE)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Aharon N. Varady

Aharon Varady is the founding director of the Open Siddur Project. A community planner (M.C.P, DAAP/University of Cincinnati.) and Jewish educator (M.A.J.Ed., the William Davidson School of Education), his work in open-source Judaism has been written about in the Yiddish Forverts, the Atlantic Magazine, Tablet, and Haaretz. If you find any egregious mistakes in his work, please let him know. Shgiyot mi yavin; Ministarot naqeni שְׁגִיאוֹת מִי־יָבִין; מִנִּסְתָּרוֹת נַקֵּנִי "Who can know all one's flaws? From hidden errors, correct me" (Psalms 19:13). If you'd like to directly support his work, please consider donating via his Patreon account. (Varady also transcribes and translates prayers, besides serving as the primary shammes of the Open Siddur Project.)

Works of related interest:

 

אַקְדָמּוּת מִלִּין | The Aḳdamut, a piyyut for introducing the Decalogue by Meir ben Yitsḥaq Nehorai of Orléans (acrostic translation by Isaac Gantwerk Mayer)

אַרְעָא רַקְדָא | Ar’a Raqda (And the Earth Danced), a piyyut in Aramaic for introducing the Decalogue as read in the Targum

רָנּוּ שָׁמַֽיִם | Ronnu shamayim, a piyyut celebrating the Decalogue by Elyaqim

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