Papyrus 9 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering), signed by 𝔓⁹, and named

Oxyrhynchus papyri The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a group of manuscripts discovered during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by papyrologists Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt at an ancient rubbish dump near Oxyrhynchus in Egypt (, mo ...

402, is an early copy of the New Testament in Greek. 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'') can also refer to a ...

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printing, printed or repr ...

of the First Epistle of John, dating paleographically to the early 3rd century.

Description

Papyrus 𝔓⁹ was discovered by

Bernard Pyne Grenfell Bernard Pyne Grenfell FBA (16 December 1869 – 18 May 1926) was an English scientist and Egyptologist. Life Grenfell was the son of John Granville Grenfell FGS and Alice Grenfell. He was born in Birmingham and brought up and educated at Clif ...

and

Arthur Surridge Hunt Arthur Surridge Hunt, FBA (1 March 1871 – 18 June 1934) was an English papyrologist. Hunt was born in Romford, Essex, England. Over the course of many years, Hunt, along with Bernard Grenfell, recovered many papyri from excavation sites in E ...

Oxyrhynchus Oxyrhynchus (; grc-gre, Ὀξύρρυγχος, Oxýrrhynchos, sharp-nosed; ancient Egyptian ''Pr-Medjed''; cop, or , ''Pemdje''; ar, البهنسا, ''Al-Bahnasa'') is a city in Middle Egypt located about 160 km south-southwest of Cairo ...

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

. Papyrus 𝔓⁹ is currently housed at the Houghton Library,

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Semitic Museum The Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East (HMANE, previously the Harvard Semitic Museum) is a museum founded in 1889. It moved into its present location at 6 Divinity Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1903. Description From the beginning, ...

Inv. 3736,

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

(Massachusetts). The surviving text is a fragment of one leaf containing verses 4:11-12,14-17, written in one column per page. The original codex had 16 lines per page. The text on the manuscript was written very carelessly, evidenced by the crude and irregular handwriting, and the manuscript contains some unintelligible spellings.

Text

The Greek text of this codex is 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 ...

. Aland placed it in Category I. The manuscript is too brief for certainty.

Description

Text

See also

References

Further reading