Crosby–Schøyen Codex MS 193: Jonah and 1 Peter in Coptic
The late-third- or early-fourth-century Crosby–Schøyen Codex is a Sahidic single-quire papyrus book preserving the oldest known complete Jonah and 1 Peter beside paschal writings.
- Artifact date
- Third century AD
- Findspot
- Upper Egypt, associated with the Dishna manuscripts
- Current location
- Museum of the Bible Collection, Washington, DC
What archaeologists can actually examine
The Crosby–Schøyen Codex, formerly MS 193 and now Museum of the Bible GC.MS.000958, is a Sahidic Coptic papyrus book from the late third or early fourth century. Its surviving texts include Jonah, part of 2 Maccabees 5:27–7:41, 1 Peter, Melito of Sardis's Peri Pascha 47–105, and an unidentified Easter homily. Jonah and 1 Peter are the oldest known complete manuscript witnesses to those books. The codex's mixed biblical and homiletic contents illuminate early Christian reading around Pascha, suffering, deliverance, and faithful witness. One anthology's sequence, however, is not a universal canon list or formal liturgical calendar.
Jonah and 1 Peter survive complete
The codex preserves the oldest known complete manuscript texts of both books in Sahidic Coptic.
Five works form one anthology
Melito's Peri Pascha, a 2 Maccabees section, 1 Peter, Jonah, and a concluding homily create a strongly paschal thematic environment.
Each work had its own pagination
Separate ancient page-number sequences reveal how the early single-quire codex was organized and help reconstruct missing leaves.
The manuscript has a new public home
After the 2024 auction, the Green family acquired the codex for Museum of the Bible, where it is now exhibited and digitized as GC.MS.000958.
Follow the evidence from discovery to debate
Move through the find in a deliberate order: establish its provenance, examine the surviving object, place it in time, and then weigh the scholarly interpretation.
How the find came to light
The codex surfaced in Egypt in the early 1950s among manuscripts often connected with the Bodmer-Dishna group, without a controlled excavation record. It was acquired by the University of Mississippi in 1955 and became known as the Crosby Codex, then entered Martin Schøyen's collection in 1988 as MS 193. Christie's sold it in London on 11 June 2024. Museum of the Bible later announced the Green family's acquisition, and by 2026 the museum was exhibiting and digitizing the now-unbound leaves under a new collection number. Each transfer is documented more securely than the ancient findspot, which should remain described broadly as Egypt rather than assigned confidently to one monastery.
What you are looking at
The codex was originally a single thick quire made from four papyrus rolls cut and stacked into thirty-five sheets: thirty-three bifolia and two singletons, producing sixty-eight folios or 136 pages. Fifty-two leaves survive. Each work carried its own pagination, an unusual navigation system that helps reconstruct lost portions and shows that the anthology was planned in textual units. The script is Sahidic Coptic with restrained decoration, including a chevron-enclosed title for Jonah that some observers compare cautiously to a fish spine. Conservation unbound and flattened the leaves between Plexiglas, improving access while introducing reflection and focus problems for digitization.
Where it belongs in history
Palaeography and codicology place the manuscript in the late third or early fourth century, broadly AD 250–350. The codex belongs to the early history of Egyptian Christian book culture and the single-quire format, not securely to a monastery named by an excavation inscription. Its texts create a striking thematic environment: Maccabean martyrdom, 1 Peter's theology of suffering and hope, Jonah's descent and deliverance, Melito's Passover homily, and an Easter sermon. Scholars can responsibly speak of paschal resonance and editorial grouping. Calling it the earliest Christian liturgical book is more interpretive, because the volume lacks a surviving rubric explaining precisely when or how the collection was read.
Consensus, questions, and debate
Scholars debate the codex's exact date, ancient provenance, purpose, and what its anthology implies. A peer-reviewed study by Thomas Wayment argues that the thematic company of 1 Peter can illuminate its early reception, while caution is needed before inferring a settled lectionary. Museum interpretation links the collection to early Egyptian monasticism, but market provenance cannot verify a particular cell or Pachomian house. The label 'complete' refers to surviving text of Jonah and 1 Peter and depends on reconstruction of minor losses, not an untouched bound volume. Pagination and thematic arrangement show intentionality, yet intention may belong to a patron, exemplar, scribe, or later compilation process that remains unnamed.
The biblical record beside the artifact
The codex preserves complete Coptic texts of Jonah and 1 Peter, not merely references to them. Jonah's prayer from the fish and 1 Peter 3:18–22 both contributed to early Christian reflection on death, deliverance, baptism, and Christ's victory; placing the books near Peri Pascha intensifies that resonance. The opening title calls the New Testament work 'the epistle of Peter,' language that may reflect the scribe's local naming practice. It does not prove that only one Petrine letter was known or accepted. The manuscript witnesses reception and translation centuries after composition, not the historicity of Jonah's fish or independent authorship evidence for Peter.
1 Peter 3:18–22
18For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:
19By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;
20Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.
21The like figure whereunto [even] baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ:
22Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.
A responsible historical conclusion
Few ancient Christian books preserve enough material to let readers examine not only a biblical text but the company it kept. The Crosby–Schøyen Codex joins Scripture, deuterocanonical martyr narrative, and preaching about Passover and Easter in one portable material object. That arrangement shows an early reader encountering Jonah and 1 Peter within a network of suffering, deliverance, and resurrection themes. The codex also charts the technology of the book: cut papyrus rolls, a single quire, work-specific page numbers, sparse decoration, later disbinding, and digital imaging. It is simultaneously a Coptic Bible witness, an anthology, and a surviving experiment in early codex design.
Authoritative sources
Institutional catalogs, excavation reports, and academic publications let you examine the evidence beyond this summary.
The Unbound Codex: A Papyrus Book in the Age of Digital Light
Museum of the BibleDocuments the current identity, dating, contents, 136-page construction, pagination, conservation state, digitization, script, decoration, and display.
The Crosby–Schøyen Codex
The Schøyen CollectionProvides the former shelfmark, Coptic contents, codicology, dimensions, ownership history, editions, and bibliography assembled during decades of scholarly access.
The Crosby-Schøyen Codex, in Coptic, Manuscript on Papyrus
Christie'sDocuments the codex's 2024 sale, physical extent, actual text sequence, dating, provenance chain, single-quire structure, and published scholarship.
The Themes of 1 Peter: Insights from the Earliest Manuscripts
New Testament Studies, Cambridge University PressExamines how the codex's neighboring works and material arrangement inform interpretation of 1 Peter's early themes and reception.