Papyrus 23

(Referred to Gregory- Aland Sigel 23) Papyrus 23 is an early copy of the Greek New Testament. It is a papyrus manuscript of the Epistle of James contains only the verses 1:10-12; 15-18. Using palaeography, it has been dated to the early 3rd century.

Description

The Nomina sacra are written out in full. Abbreviations are used only at the end of some lines. Remarkably, there is also the grammatically incorrect formulation αποσκιασματος in James 1:17 - as in the Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus.

The Greek text of this codex is a representative of the Alexandrian text-type (or rather a proto- Alexandrian ). Aland placed it in Category I. The manuscript shows most highly with the codices א, A and C, which represent the best text of the Catholic Epistles.

The manuscript is currently housed in the University of Illinois ( GP 1229 ) in Urbana (Illinois ).