Papyrus 23, also known as P. Oxy X 1229, 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 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 ...

of the

Epistle of James The Epistle of James is a Catholic epistles, general epistle and one of the 21 epistles (didactic letters) in the New Testament. It was written originally in Koine Greek. The epistle aims to reach a wide Jewish audience. It survives in manusc ...

, surviving in a fragmentary condition containing only James 1:10-12,15-18. It is designated by the

siglum Scribal abbreviations, or sigla (singular: siglum), are abbreviations used by ancient and medieval scribes writing in various languages, including Latin, Greek, Old English and Old Norse. In modern manuscript editing (substantive and mecha ...

in the Gregory-Aland numbering of New Testament manuscripts. Using the study of comparative writing 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 ...

), it has been assigned to the early 3rd century.

Description

The

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 ...

are written fully, abbreviations are used only at the end of lines. There has been noticed the occurrence of the ungrammatical αποσκιασματος found also in

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 ...

and Vaticanus in James 1:17. It is currently housed in the

Spurlock Museum The William R. and Clarice V. Spurlock Museum, better known as the Spurlock Museum, is an ethnographic museum at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Spurlock Museum's permanent collection includes portions of collections from other ...

at the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United ...

(G. P. 1229) in

Urbana, Illinois Urbana ( ) is a city in Champaign County, Illinois, United States, and its county seat. As of the 2020 census, Urbana had a population of 38,336. It is a principal city of the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, which had 236,000 residents i ...

Text

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 ...

(or rather proto-Alexandrian). Biblical scholar

Kurt Aland Kurt Aland (28 March 1915 – 13 April 1994) was a German theologian and Biblical studies, biblical scholar who specialized in New Testament textual criticism. He founded the ''Institute for New Testament Textual Research, Institut für neutest ...

placed it in Category I of his New Testament manuscript classification system. The manuscript displays the greatest textual agreement with codices Sinaticus (א),

Alexandrinus The Codex Alexandrinus (London, British Library, Royal MS 1. D. V-VIII) is a manuscript of the Greek Bible,The Greek Bible in this context refers to the Bible used by Greek-speaking Christians who lived in Egypt and elsewhere during the early ...

, and Ephraemi, which represent the best text of the

Catholic epistles The catholic epistles (also called the general epistles) are seven epistles of the New Testament. Listed in order of their appearance in the New Testament, the catholic epistles are: Naming The use of the word ''catholic'' in the term catholic' ...

, and then with

Codex Vaticanus The Codex Vaticanus ( The Vatican, Bibl. Vat., Vat. gr. 1209), is a manuscript of the Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Old Testament and the majority of the New Testament. It is designated by siglum B or 03 in the Gregory-Aland numb ...

and .

References

External links

Digital Images of
online at the

CSNTM The Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose mission is to digitally preserve Greek New Testament manuscripts. Toward that end, CSNTM takes digital photographs of manuscripts at institu ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Papyrus 0023 New Testament papyri 3rd-century biblical manuscripts Early Greek manuscripts of the New Testament Epistle of James papyri

Description

Text

See also

References

Further reading

External links