Papyrus 50 designated by ⁵⁰, is an early 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 Acts of the Apostles

Acts of the Apostles

The Acts of the Apostles , usually referred to simply as Acts, is the fifth book of the New Testament; Acts outlines the history of the Apostolic Age...

, it contains Acts 8:26-32; 10:26-31. 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 3rd/4th century.

Description

The Greek text of this codex is mixed. It has some orthographical peculiarities and corrections. Aland

Kurt Aland

Kurt Aland was a German Theologian and Professor of New Testament Research and Church History. He founded the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung in Münster and served as its first director for many years...

 placed it in Category III. The text generally concurs with Codex Sinaiticus

Codex Sinaiticus

Codex Sinaiticus is one of the four great uncial codices, an ancient, handwritten copy of the Greek Bible. It is an Alexandrian text-type manuscript written in the 4th century in uncial letters on parchment. Current scholarship considers the Codex Sinaiticus to be one of the best Greek texts of...

 and Vaticanus.

The nomina sacra

Nomina sacra

Nomina sacra means "sacred names" in Latin, and can be used to refer to traditions of abbreviated writing of several frequently occurring divine names or titles in early Greek language Holy Scripture...

 are contracted (ΙΛΗΜ, ΠΝΑ, ΑΝΟΣ, ΑΝΟΝ, ΘΣ, ΘΥ, ΚΥ).

The manuscript was purchased in Paris by Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

 in 1933 along with other manuscripts of Egyptian provenance. It was published in 1937 by Carl H. Kraeling.
It is currently housed at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library was a 1963 gift of the Beinecke family. The building was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft of the firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, and is the largest building in the world reserved exclusively for the preservation of rare books...

 at Yale University (P.CtYBR inv. 1543) in New Haven.

Further reading

• Carl H. Kraeling, Two Selections from Acts, in: Robert P.Casey, Silva Lake i Agnes K. Lake: Studies Presented to KIBSOPP LAKE by Pupils, Colleagues and Friends. 1937, s. 163–172.
• Philip W. Comfort, The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts, Tyndale House Publishers, 2001, p. 362-364.

External links

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• Image ⁵⁰ reverso