Papyrus 13, designated by siglum[1] P¹³ in the Gregory-Aland numbering, is a fragmented manuscript of the New Testament in Greek. It was copied on papyrus[2] in the early 3rd century at approximately 225-250 CE.[3]

Description of P13

Grenfell and Hunt
Bernard Grenfell		Arthur Hunt

Papyrus Papyri ¹³

New Testament Manuscript
Portions of two columns of P13, beginning with Hebrews 4:2. Note the surviving numbering at the top of the left column.
Name	P. Oxyrhynchus 657
Text	Hebrews 2:14-5:5; 10:8-22; 10:29-11:13; 11:28-12:17
Date	225-250
Script	Greek
Found	Oxyrhynchus, Egypt
Now at	British Library/Egyptian Museum
Cite	Grenfell & Hunt, Oxyrynchus Papyri 4:36-48. (#657)
Size	12 columns of scroll; 23-27 lines/column; pagination legible: 47-50, 61-65, 67-69.
Type	Alexandrian often agrees with Vaticanus; 80% with Papyrus 46
Category	I
Note	largest papyrus other than Chester Beatty collection

Papyrus 13 was discovered by Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt. It is currently housed at the British Library, Inv. Nr. 1532, and Egyptian Museum, SR 3796 25/1/55/2 (11), or PSI 1292.[4]

The surviving text is twelve columns of 23 to 27 lines each, from a scroll. This is all from the Epistle to the Hebrews, namely 2:14-5:5; 10:8-22; 10:29-11:13; 11:28-12:17. Its presence of pagination[5] 47-50 means that Hebrews was preceded by only one book in the original scroll, likely the Epistle to the Romans as in Papyrus 46.[6] It is the largest papyrus manuscript of the New Testament outside the Chester Beatty Papyri.[7]

It was written on the back of a papyrus containing the Epitome of Livy[8] and some scholars think the manuscript was possibly brought to Egypt by a Roman official and left behind when he left his post.[9]

It has errors of itacism[10] (ι and ει, ε and αι, υ and οι).[11]

Text of P13

Papyrus 13 is a representative of the Alexandrian text-type. Aland placed it in Category I.[12]

It bears strong textual affinity with Codex Vaticanus and also has an 80% agreement with Papyrus 46. It has numerous distinctive readings.^[2]

Papyrus 13 is written recto-verso,[13] with the verso (back) containing Hebrews and the recto (front) containing part of Livy’s History of Rome, dated to around 200 CE.[14]

Philip Comfort,

This manuscript was originally dated to the fourth century by Grenfell and Hunt, even though they stated that the manuscripts found with it were predominantly of the third century—such as P. Oxy. 654 (ca. 250) and one third-century libelli. There was even a second-century manuscript, P. Oxy 656 (Genesis), among the lot. Manuscripts comparable to P13 in handwriting style are as follows: (1) P. Oxy. 852 (175–225), which is very similar; (2) P. Oxy. 2635 (no later than ca. 200), which has many similarities, especially the long-tailed swooping upsilon; and (3) P. Oxy. 1016 (ca. 200–225), with some similarities. These manuscripts suggest a date of about 200 for P13, but it is necessary to date it 225–250 because P13 was written on the verso of P. Oxy. 657 (part of the Epitome of Livy’s history of Rome), dated ca. 200. The pagination reveals that other epistles may have preceded this one—perhaps Romans, as in P46. The text of Hebrews was written in a reformed documentary hand. Because it was written on the back of a papyrus containing the Epitome of Livy, some scholars think the manuscript was possibly brought to Egypt by a Roman official and left behind when he left his post. There are many similarities between P13 and P46. Out of a total of eighty-eight variation units, there are seventy-one agreements and only seventeen disagreements. The copyists of P13 and P46 made similar use of double points for punctuation, and the pagination of both documents indicates that Romans preceded Hebrews in P13 as well as in P46.[15]

Attribution: This article incorporates text from the public domain: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Edward Andrews and Philip W. Comfort

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[1] Scribal abbreviations or sigla (singular: siglum) are the abbreviations used by ancient and medieval scribes writing in various languages, including Latin, Greek, Old English and Old Norse. In modern manuscript editing (substantive and mechanical) sigla are the symbols used to indicate the source manuscript (e.g., variations in text between different such manuscripts) and to identify the copyists of a work. See Critical apparatus.

[2] Papyrus ( pə-PYE-rəs) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge.

[3] Philip Wesley Comfort and David P. Barrett, THE TEXT OF THE EARLIEST NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS: Papyri 1-72, Vol. 1 (English and Greek Edition) (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2019), 70.

[4] Aland, Kurt; Aland, Barbara (1995). The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism. Erroll F. Rhodes (trans.). Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. p. 97. 

“Handschriftenliste”. Münster: Institute for New Testament Textual Research. Retrieved 23 August 2013.

PSI XII 1292 at PSIonline

[5] Pagination, also known as paging, is the process of dividing a document into discrete pages, either electronic pages or printed pages. In reference to books produced without a computer, pagination can mean the consecutive page numbering to indicate the proper order of the pages, which was rarely found in documents pre-dating 1500, and only became common practice c.

[6] Philip Wesley Comfort and David P. Barrett, THE TEXT OF THE EARLIEST NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS: Papyri 1-72, Vol. 1 (English and Greek Edition) (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2019), 70.

[7] The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri or simply the Chester Beatty Papyri are a group of early papyrus manuscripts of biblical texts. The manuscripts are in Greek and are of Christian origin.

[8] The book History of Rome, sometimes referred to as Ab Urbe Condita Libri (Books from the Founding of the City), is a monumental history of ancient Rome, written in Latin between 27 and 9 BC by the historian Titus Livius, or “Livy”, as he is usually known in English. The work covers the period from the legends concerning the arrival of Aeneas and the refugees from the fall of Troy to the city’s founding in 753, the expulsion of the Kings in 509, and down to Livy’s own time, during the reign of the emperor Augustus.

[9] Philip Wesley Comfort and David P. Barrett, THE TEXT OF THE EARLIEST NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS: Papyri 1-72, Vol. 1 (English and Greek Edition) (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2019), 70.

[10] Iotacism (Greek: ιωτακισμός, iotakismos) or itacism is the process of vowel shift by which a number of vowels and diphthongs converged towards the pronunciation ([i]) in post-classical Greek and Modern Greek. The term “iotacism” refers to the letter iota, the original sign for ([i]), with which these vowels came to merge.

[11] C. R. Gregory, Textkritik des Neuen Testaments III (Leipzig: 1909), p. 1091.

[12] Aland, Kurt; Aland, Barbara (1995). The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism. Erroll F. Rhodes (trans.). Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. p. 97.

[13] Recto is the “right” or “front” side and verso is the “left” or “back” side when text is written or printed on a leaf of paper (folium) in a bound item such as a codex, book, broadsheet, or pamphlet.

[14] Philip Wesley Comfort and David P. Barrett, THE TEXT OF THE EARLIEST NEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS: Papyri 1-72, Vol. 1 (English and Greek Edition) (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2019), 70.

^[15] IBID, 70-71.