A New Testament papyrus is a copy of a portion of the New Testament made on papyrus. To date, over 140 such papyri are known. In general, they are considered the earliest witnesses to the original text of the New Testament.Nestle-Aland 1996
This elite status among New Testament manuscripts only began in the 20th century. The grouping was first introduced by Caspar René Gregory, who assigned papyri texts the Blackletter character 𝔓 followed by a superscript number. This number refers not to the age of the papyrus, but to the order in which it was registered.Law 2012, p. 95 Before 1900, only 9 papyri manuscripts were known, and only one had been cited in a critical apparatus ( by Constantin von Tischendorf). These 9 papyri were just single fragments, except for , which consisted of a single whole leaf.Nestle-Aland 1996, pp. 83-84, 87 The discoveries of the 20th century brought about the earliest known New Testament manuscript fragments.', , , and all dating to the 2nd century Kenyon in 1912 knew 14 papyri,Kenyon, F. G., Handbook to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, London2, 1912, p. 129. Aland in his first edition of Kurzgefasste... in 1963 enumerated 76 papyri, in 1989 there were 96 known papyri, and in 2008 124 papyri. As of 2021, a total of 141 papyri are known, although some of the numbers issued were later deemed to be fragments of the same original manuscript.
Among the most important are the Chester Beatty Papyri: , which contains the Gospels and Acts; , which contains the Pauline epistles; and , which contains the Book of Revelation. All of these are thought to date from sometime in the third century.
Also significant are the Bodmer Papyri: , which contains the Gospel of John;Floyd V. Filson, A New Papyrus Manuscript of the Gospel of John, The Biblical Archeologist (Vol. XX), p. 54. and , which contains the Gospels of Luke and John.Aland and Aland, The Text of the New Testament (1989), p. 244 These early manuscripts are more complete, allowing scholars to better examine their textual character.In fact, the preservation level of surprised scholars because the first 26 leaves were basically fully intact, and even the stitching of the binding remained.
Not all of the manuscripts are simply New Testament texts: , , , are texts with commentaries; , , and are lectionaries; , , and are talismans; and , , , , , , and belong to other miscellaneous texts, such as writing scraps, glossaries, or songs.Nestle-Aland 1996, p. 85
Every papyrus is cited in Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece.
List of all registered New Testament papyri The P-numbers are the standard system of Gregory-Aland. Dates are estimated to the year range shown. Content is given to the nearest chapter; verses are sometimes listed. Thus, many of the papyri are small fragments, not whole chapters. For instance, contains 5 verses out of the 40 verses in John chapter 18.
Manuscripts in beige rows belong to the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (𝔓78, 𝔓90, 𝔓104, 𝔓115, 𝔓137)Manuscripts in light cyan rows belong to the Bodmer Papyri (, , , , )Manuscripts in light pink rows belong to the Chester Beatty Papyri (, , , , )
Digital images are referenced with direct links to the hosting web pages. The quality and accessibility of the images is as follows:
Gold color indicates high resolution color images available online.Tan color indicates high resolution color images available locally, not online.Light tan color indicates only a small fraction of manuscript pages with color images available online.Light gray color indicates black/white or microfilm images available online.Violet color indicates high resolution ultraviolet images available online.
Papyrus 1–50