Papyrus 23

Papyrus 23, also known as P. Oxy X 1229, is an early copy of the New Testament in Greek. It is a papyrus manuscript of the Epistle of James, surviving in a fragmentary condition containing only James 1:10-12,15-18. It is designated by the siglum in the Gregory-Aland numbering of New Testament manuscripts. Using the study of comparative writing styles, it has been assigned to the early 3rd century.

Description

The Nomina sacra 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 and Vaticanus Graecus 1209|Vaticanus] in James 1:17. It is currently housed in the Spurlock Museum at the University of Illinois in Urbana, Illinois.

Text

The Greek text of this codex is considered a representative of the Alexandrian text-type. Biblical scholar Kurt Aland placed it in Categories of [New Testament manuscripts#Category I|Category I] of his New Testament manuscript classification system. The manuscript displays the greatest textual agreement with codices Sinaticus (א), Alexandrinus, and Ephraemi, which represent the best text of the Catholic epistles, and then with Codex Vaticanus and.