Book excerpt: The six biblical manuscripts that reside in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington DC are historically significant artifacts for tracing the early history of the transmission of the writings that make up the New Testament and the Septuagint. The manuscripts, all purchased in Egypt at the beginning of the twentieth century by Charles Freer, date to the third through fifth centuries and include codices of the four Gospels, Deuteronomy and Joshua, the Psalms, and the Pauline Epistles, as well as a Coptic codex of the Psalms and a papyrus codex of the Minor Prophets, which, until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, was the earliest Greek manuscript of the Minor Prophets known. The ten essays in this volume are a notable collection of fresh scholarship with long-term value for the study of what is a small but highly valuable treasure trove of biblical manuscripts. The contributors are Malcolm Choat, Kent D. Clarke, Kristin De Troyer, Timothy J. Finney, Dennis Haugh, Larry W. Hurtado, J. Bruce Prior, Jean-Francois Racine, James R. Royse, Ulrich Schmid, and Thomas A. Wayment. Book jacket.