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An image of Papyrus 1 (verso), showing Matthew 1:1-9, 12
Papyrus 1 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering) designated by “P1“, “ε 01 (von Soden)”, is an early copy of the New Testament in Greek. It is a papyrus manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew, dating palaeographically to the middle of the 3rd century (c. 175 – 225 C.E.). It is currently housed at the University of Pennsylvania Museum (E 2746) and was discovered in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt.
Philip Comfort on the Fly Leaf
Accompanying the first chapter of Matthew is a small portion of what must have been a flyleaf cover, with writing only on the outside sheet. The extant letters are written in a slightly different hand than what appears in the text of Matthew 1. Contrary to O’Callaghan’s conjecture, the letters probably do not represent Matt. 2:14, because the writing is in a different hand, and the greater margin above the three broken lines distinguishes them from the text of Matthew. Rather, they may have been part of a title, as noted by Grenfell and Hunt. Or it could be conjectured that it was not so much a title as it was a kind of subhead descriptor:
εγεν̣[νεθη (was born; the subject being Jesus) παρ[α (from; indicating source or origin [the Holy Spirit]) μητ̣[ρος αυτου (his mother [Mary])
It could have read like this:
Was born [Jesus Christ, the son of David,] from [the Holy Spirit coming upon] his mother [Mary, the wife of Joseph]
Description
The manuscript is a fragment of one leaf, one column per page, 27-29 lines per page, roughly 14.7 cm (6 in) by 15 cm (6 in). The original codex was arranged in two leaves in a quire.
The surviving text of Matthew are verses 1:1-9, 12, and 14-20. The words are written continuously without separation. Accents and breathing marks are absent, except one rough breathing in line 14 of the recto. The nomina sacra are written in abbreviated forms:
The image to the left is of Papyrus 1 (recto), showing Matthew 1:1-9, 12
Name
P. Oxy. 2
Text
Matthew 1:1-9, 12, 14-20
Date
~250 AD
Found
Oxyrhynchus, Egypt
Now at
University of Pennsylvania
Cite
B. P. Grenfell & A. S. Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri I, pp. 4–7, 1898.
The Greek text-type of this codex is a representative of the Alexandrian text-type. Aland placed it in Category I.
According to scholars, P1 has a close agreement with Codex Vaticanus. It supports Vaticanus in 1:3 ζαρε (against ζαρα). Ten of the variants are in the spelling of names in the genealogy. Herman C. Hoskier (see below), who finds 17-20 word variations, denied close agreement with Vaticanus.
History
Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt discovered this papyrus at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt, on the third or fourth day of excavation, January 13 or 14, 1897. Their findings were published in the first volume of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri in 1898. The manuscript was examined by Francis Crawford Burkitt, Herman C. Hoskier, Comfort, and many other scholars.
Grenfell and Hunt collated its text against the Textus Receptus and against the text of Westcott-Hort. They found that the manuscript belongs to the same class as the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus codices, and has no Western or Byzantine proclivities. There are no Byzantine readings in the early papyri anyway. Usually, it agrees with these two codices, where they are in agreement. Where they differ, the manuscript is near to Vaticanus, except in one important case found at Matthew 1:18 (του δε Ιησου Χριστου), where it agrees with Sinaiticus.
Matthew 1:18
TR WH NU GENTI τοῦ δὲ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἡ γένεσις “the birth of [the] Jesus Christ” P1 א C (L) Z (f1, 33)
Variant 1 “the birth of the Christ” it syr,s
Variant 2 του δε Χριστου Ιησου η γενεσις “the birth of the Christ Jesus” B
variant 3 του δε Ιησου η γενεσις “the birth of [the] Jesus”
It was the earliest known manuscript of the New Testament until the discovery of Papyrus 52 [P52] (c. 110-125), Papyrus 66 [P66] (c. 200 C.E.) Papyrus 75 [P75] (175-225 C.E.), Papyrus 137 [P137] (175-225 C.E.), and Papyrus 45 [P45] (c. 250).
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The Greek-English New Testament Interlinear (GENTI)
[ ] Indicates conjectural reconstruction of the beginning or ending of a manuscript, or, within the transcriptions, letters or words most likely to have been in the original manuscript.