Papyrus 38 designated by ³⁸, is an early copy of part 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 only Acts 18:27-19:6.12-16. The manuscript 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...

 has been assigned to the early 3rd century.

Although the text is quite short, the Greek text of this codex has been called a representative of the Western text-type

Western text-type

The Western text-type is one of several text-types used in textual criticism to describe and group the textual character of Greek New Testament 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...

 named it as Free text and placed in Category IV. The text of this manuscript is related to Codex Bezae

Codex Bezae

The Codex Bezae Cantabrigensis, designated by siglum Dea or 05 , δ 5 , is a codex of the New Testament dating from the 5th century written in an uncial hand on vellum. It contains, in both Greek and Latin, most of the four Gospels and Acts, with a small fragment of the 3 John...

.

The manuscript was purchased in Cairo

Cairo

Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...

 in 1924.

It is currently housed at the University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

 (Inv. 1571) in Ann Arbor

Ann Arbor, Michigan

Ann Arbor is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Washtenaw County. The 2010 census places the population at 113,934, making it the sixth largest city in Michigan. The Ann Arbor Metropolitan Statistical Area had a population of 344,791 as of 2010...

.

Further reading

• Henry A. Sanders, A Papyrus Fragment of Acts in the Michigan Collection, Harvard Theological Review
  Harvard Theological Review
  Harvard Theological Review is a journal of theology, published by Harvard Divinity School. It was founded in 1908.-External links:* * * * at the Internet Archive...
  
  . vol. 20. 1927, pp. 1-19.
• A. C. Clark, The Michigan Fragment of Acts, JTS XXIX (1927), pp. 18-28.
• Silva New, The Michigan Papyrus Fragment 1571, in Beginnings of Christianity V (1933), pp. 262-268.
• M.-J. Lagrange, Critique textuelle II, La Critique rationelle (Paris, 1935), pp. 402-405.
• Henry A. Sanders, Michigan Papyri, University of Michigan Studies, Humanistic Series, XL (Ann Arbor, 1936), pp. 14-19.