Papyrus 126 designated by siglum ¹²⁶, is a copy of the New Testament

New Testament

The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

 in Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

. It is a papyrus

Papyrus

Papyrus is a thick paper-like material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge that was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt....

 manuscript

Manuscript

A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...

 of the Epistle to the Hebrews

Epistle to the Hebrews

The Epistle to the Hebrews is one of the books in the New Testament. Its author is not known.The primary purpose of the Letter to the Hebrews is to exhort Christians to persevere in the face of persecution. The central thought of the entire Epistle is the doctrine of the Person of Christ and his...

.

Description

To the present day survived only fragment from one leaf. The surviving texts of Hebrews are verses 13:12-13.19-20, they are in a fragmentary condition. The manuscript palaeographically

Palaeography

Palaeography, also spelt paleography is the study of ancient writing. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating historical manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of...

 has been assigned to the 4th century (INTF

Institute for New Testament Textual Research

The Institute for New Testament Textual Research at the University of Münster, Westphalia, Germany, is an institute for the investigation of the text of the New Testament. The INTF was founded in Münster in 1959 by Professor Kurt Aland , the first director of the Institute...

).

The text is written in one column per page, 20 lines per page (originally). The size of the fragment is 3.7 by 9.1 cm (original size ).

History

The manuscript was announced by the Papyrological Intitute in Florence in 2003. The text of the codex was published in 2008. In 2009, Claire Clivaz

Claire Clivaz

Clivaz Claire, born March 21, 1971, assistant professor at the University of Lausanne , textual critic, pastor in Lutry until 2006; she is married and has three children....

 signaled it to the Institute for New Testament Textual Research (INTF) and the manuscript was catalogued on the INTF list of the New Testament manuscripts.

The manuscript currently is housed at the Istituto Papirologico „G. Vitelli" at Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

 with the shelf number PSI inv. 1479.

Further reading

• Pubblicazioni della Società Italiana: Papiri Greci e Latini, Firenze: Le Monnier: Istituto papirologico "G. Vitelli", vol. 15, 2008.
• Claire Clivaz, “A New NT Papyrus: P126 (PSI 1497)”, Early Christianity 1 (2010).

External links

• "Continuation of the Manuscript List" Institute for New Testament Textual Research, University of Münster
  University of Münster
  The University of Münster is a public university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. The WWU is part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, a society of Germany's leading research universities...
  
  . Retrieved September 8, 2009