New Testament Papyrus

A New Testament papyrus is a copy of a portion of the New Testament made on papyrus. To date, over one hundred and twenty such papyri are known. In general, they are considered the earliest witnesses to the original text of the New Testament.

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 followed by a superscript number. Before 1900, only 9 papyri manuscripts were known, and only one had been cited in a critical apparatus (11 by Constantin von Tischendorf). These 9 papyri were just single fragments, except for 15, which consisted of a single whole leaf. The discoveries of the twentieth century brought about the earliest known New Testament manuscript fragments. Kenyon in 1912 knew 14 papyri, Aland in his first edition of Kurzgefasste... in 1963 enumerated 76 papyri, in 1989 were known 96 papyri, and in 2008 124 papyri. Now a total of 127 papyri are known.

Discoveries were also made of more complete manuscripts, which allowed scholars to examine the textual character of these early manuscripts.

Not all of the manuscripts are simply New Testament texts: 59, 60, 63, 80 are texts with commentaries; 2, ³, and 44 are lectionaries; 50, 55, and 78 are talismans; and 42, 10, 12, 42, 43, 62, and 99 belong to other miscellaneous texts, such as writing scraps, glossaries, or songs.

Every papyrus is cited in Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece.