Papyrus Rylands 458

Using the study of comparative writing styles (palaeography), the manuscript has been dated to the middle of the 2nd century BCE.

[4] Françoise Dunand claimed in 1966: "no doubt in P. Rylands 458 of Deuteronomy the tetragrammaton was written either in square Hebrew as in Papyrus F. 266, or in archaic characters".

[5] Martin Rösel wrote in 2007 that the fragmentary manuscript contains neither Κύριος nor the Tetragrammaton, but it has "a gap in Deut.

This gap is large enough to accommodate both words, and it seems likely that the scribe of the Greek text left the space free for someone else to insert the Hebrew characters of the tetragrammaton.

He cites the directly opposite supposition of C. H. Roberts, who in 1936 wrote: "It is probable that κυριος was written in full, i.e. that the scribe did not employ the theological contractions almost universal in later MSS."

[9]: 92 Due to its very early assigned date to the mid-2nd century BCE, it is currently one of the oldest known manuscripts of the Septuagint.