Papyrus 71 designated by ⁷¹, 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 Gospel of Matthew

Gospel of Matthew

The Gospel According to Matthew is one of the four canonical gospels, one of the three synoptic gospels, and the first book of the New Testament. It tells of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth...

. The surviving texts of Matthew are verses 19:10-11.17-18.
The manuscript paleographically had been assigned to the 4th century.

Text
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 II.

Present location
It is currently housed at the Ashmolean Museum

Ashmolean Museum

The Ashmolean Museum on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is the world's first university museum...

 (P. Oxy. 2385) in Oxford

Oxford

The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

.

Images

• P. Oxy. XXIV Oxyrhynchus 2385 Oxyrhynchus Online
• ⁷¹ recto Matt. 19:10-11
• ⁷¹ verso Matt. 19:17-18

Further reading

• Edgar Lobel, Colin H. Roberts, E. G. Turner
  Eric Gardner Turner
  Sir Eric Gardner Turner CBE was an English papyrologist and classicist.Turner was born in Broomhill, Sheffield. He was educated at King Edward VII School and Magdalen College, Oxford and taught classics at the University of Aberdeen from 1936 to 1948, although from 1941 to 1945 he served in the...
  
  , and J. W. B. Barns, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, XXIV (London: 1957), pp. 5-6.