Papyrus 22 is an early copy of the

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

. It is designated by (in the Gregory-Åland numbering of New Testament manuscripts), and is a

papyrus Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, ''Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'' or ''papyruses'') can a ...

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has ...

containing text from the

Gospel of John The Gospel of John () is the fourth of the New Testament's four canonical Gospels. It contains a highly schematic account of the ministry of Jesus, with seven "Book of Signs, signs" culminating in the raising of Lazarus (foreshadowing the ...

. Using the study of comparative writings styles, (

palaeography Palaeography (American and British English spelling differences#ae and oe, UK) or paleography (American and British English spelling differences#ae and oe, US) (ultimately from , , 'old', and , , 'to write') is the study and academic disciplin ...

), the manuscript has been dated to the early 3rd century CE. It is the only identified New Testament papyrus to have been written originally as a roll; not a

codex The codex (: codices ) was the historical ancestor format of the modern book. Technically, the vast majority of modern books use the codex format of a stack of pages bound at one edge, along the side of the text. But the term ''codex'' is now r ...

or re-using the back of a scroll.

Description

The original manuscript was likely a roll, and currently only has extant John 15:25-16:2, 21–32. The text is written in two consecutive columns, with the reverse side of the roll being blank. The manuscript employs conventional

Nomina Sacra In Christian scribal practice, (singular: , Latin for 'sacred name') is the abbreviation of several frequently occurring divine names or titles, especially in Greek manuscripts of the Bible. A consists of two or more letters from the original w ...

: . The text contains no punctuation marks. The Greek text of this codex is considered a representative of the

Alexandrian text-type In textual criticism of the New Testament, the Alexandrian text-type is one of the main text types. It is the text type favored by the majority of modern textual critics and it is the basis for most modern (after 1900) Bible translations. Over 5,8 ...

Åland Åland ( , ; ) is an Federacy, autonomous and Demilitarized zone, demilitarised region of Finland. Receiving its autonomy by a 1920 decision of the League of Nations, it is the smallest region of Finland by both area () and population (30,54 ...

described it as a normal text and placed it in Category I. This manuscript displays an independent text. Coincidences with the

Codex Sinaiticus The Codex Sinaiticus (; Shelfmark: London, British Library, Add MS 43725), also called the Sinai Bible, is a fourth-century Christian manuscript of a Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Greek Old Testament, including the deuterocanonica ...

are frequent, but divergences are noticeable. There are no singular readings.Peter M. Head, ''The Habits of New Testament Copyists Singular Readings in the Early Fragmentary Papyri of John'', Biblica 85 (2004), 406. According to Reverend Ellwood Schofield, the papyrus "rather represents the eclecticism of the early papyri before the crystallizing of the textual families had taken place."

History

The papyrus was found in

Oxyrhynchus Oxyrhynchus ( ; , ; ; ), also known by its modern name Al-Bahnasa (), is a city in Middle Egypt located about 160 km south-southwest of Cairo in Minya Governorate. It is also an important archaeological site. Since the late 19th century, t ...

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

, and was originally published by Papyrologists

Bernard Grenfell Bernard Pyne Grenfell FBA (16 December 1869 – 18 May 1926) was an English scientist and egyptologist. Excavations he did with Arthur Surridge Hunt uncovered manuscripts including the oldest Oxyrhynchus Papyri. Life Grenfell was the son ...

and Arthur Hunt in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Volume 10, designated as P. Oxy. 1228. To determine its palaeographical dating, Grenfell and Hunt compared the graphical writing style to P. Oxy 654, which according to papyrologist

Philip Comfort Philip Wesley Comfort (28 October 1950–31 December 2022) was a professor, writer, editor and expert on the Bible who specialized in textual criticism of the New Testament. He served as Professor of Greek and New Testament at Trinity Episcopal S ...

"can be dated confidently to the mid-third century." Comfort states that though the writing style of is "a bit heavier", it should be dated to the same time period. It is currently housed at the

Glasgow University Library Glasgow University Library in the main library of the University of Glasgow. At the turn of the 21st century, the main library building itself held 1,347,000 catalogued print books, and 53,300 journals. In total, the university library syst ...

(MS Gen 1026) in

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

References

External links

Fifty Treasures from Glasgow University Library

Images of the codex
at the CSNTM {{DEFAULTSORT:Papyrus 0022 New Testament papyri 3rd-century biblical manuscripts University of Glasgow Library collection Early Greek manuscripts of the New Testament Gospel of John papyri

Description

History

See also

References

External links