Papyrus 10 signed by ¹⁰, and named Oxyrhynchus papyri

Oxyrhynchus Papyri

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a very numerous group of manuscripts discovered by archaeologists including Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt at an ancient rubbish dump near Oxyrhynchus in Egypt . The manuscripts date from the 1st to the 6th century AD. They include thousands of Greek and...

 209, is an early copy of part of the New Testament content 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 Romans

Epistle to the Romans

The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, often shortened to Romans, is the sixth book in the New Testament. Biblical scholars agree that it was composed by the Apostle Paul to explain that Salvation is offered through the Gospel of Jesus Christ...

, dating paleographically

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...

 to the early 4th century.

Description

The manuscript is a fragment of one leaf, written in one column per page.
The surviving text is of Romans, verses 1:1-7. The manuscript was written very carelessly. The handwriting is crude and irregular, and the copy contains some irregular spellings. A part of verse 6 is omitted (εν οις εστε και υμεις κλητοι who are called to belong to).

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 written in an abbreviated way.

The Greek text of this codex is a representative of the Alexandrian text-type

Alexandrian text-type

The Alexandrian text-type , associated with Alexandria, is one of several text-types used in New Testament textual criticism to describe and group the textual character of biblical manuscripts...

. 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 I. The manuscript is too brief for certainty. The only variant of any importance is Χριστου Ιησου in Rom 1:7, where the manuscripts all have the reverse order.

History

The papyrus was found tied up with a contract dated in 316 A.D., and other documents of the same period.

It was discovered in Oxyrhynchus

Oxyrhynchus

Oxyrhynchus is a city in Upper Egypt, located about 160 km south-southwest of Cairo, in the governorate of Al Minya. It is also an archaeological site, considered one of the most important ever discovered...

, Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

, and is currently housed at the Houghton Library

Houghton Library

Houghton Library is the primary repository for rare books and manuscripts at Harvard University. It is part of the Harvard College Library within the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Houghton is located on the south side of Harvard Yard, next to Widener Library.- History :Harvard's first...

 of the Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 (Semitic Museum

Semitic Museum

The Semitic Museum at Harvard University was founded in 1889, and moved into its present location at 6 Divinity Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1903....

 Inv. 2218), Cambridge

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

 (Massachusetts).

Further reading

• C. R. Gregory
  Caspar René Gregory
  Caspar René Gregory was a American-born German theologian theologian.-Life:Gregory was born in Philadelphia. He studied theology at two Presbyterian seminaries: in 1865-67 at the University of Pennsylvania and at Princeton Theological Seminary...
  
  , "Textkritik des Neuen Testaments", Leipzig 1909, vol. 3, p. 1091.