The Ezekiel text of Papyrus 967: Edition, Translation, Philological Analysis, Classification

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Papyrus 967 is dated to the late second or early third century CE and is, aside from a missing portion of the beginning of the manuscript (Ez chs. 1-11:24), the earliest substantial witness to Ezekiel in any language, including Hebrew. P967's Ezekiel text presents significant textual divergence, particularly with respect to the Masoretic Text. The most notable features are several unique minuses of significant length, a difference in structure (placement of ch. 37 after chs. 38-39), and many details pointing to a Hebrew Vorlage which was not a proto-masoretic text. Furthermore, p967's Ezekiel text imposes important divergence with respect to the other early substantial pre-Hexaplaric Greek witness of Ezekiel, Codex B's text. Despite of the apparent significance of p967 for textual studies of Ezekiel, pre-dating Origin's Hexapla and Codex B by nearly a century, no comprehensive full-length study of its composition and linguistic quality has yet appeared and the text has not yet been translated, probably due to the protracted publication of the manuscript in four separate critical editions. The proposed project wants to address this surprising desideratum. Firstly, a synopsis, containing four parallel columns, is to be prepared (first column: MT-Ezekiel; second column: Codex B's Ezekiel text: third column: P967's Ezekiel text; fourth column: German translation of p967's Ezekiel text). P967's Ezekiel text will be provided with accentuation. With help of this edition and the translation into German, the whole text will be comprehensively presented in a "readable" manner for the first time. Its presentation together with MT-Ezekiel and Codex B's Ezekiel text and a philological and text-critical apparatus at the end of the pages should facilitate its study. Secondly, supplementing the preparation of the synopsis, p967's Ezekiel Greek text is to be systematically explored (composition, tenses/aspects/moods, style/rhetoric, semantics). The expected results will address the quality of the Greek translation (how much did the translator pay attention to the literary quality of his text?), the question of different translators of the book (how much homogeneous/inhomogeneous are the translated sections with respect to their linguistic quality?), the question of the relationship between p967 and Codex B's Ezekiel text (how much do the texts share significant linguistic features?, are they different translations/revisions/"variant literary editions"?) and the question of the Hebrew Vorlage (is the most basic norm of the translation the faithfull rendering of the Hebrew word order and syntax in all sections?).The results might influence both the study of the Book of Ezekiel as well as the study of the Septuagint in general significantly.