Papyrus 101 designated by ¹⁰¹, 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 3:10-12; 3:16-4:3, they are in a fragmentary condition. The manuscript palaeographically

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 3rd century.

Text
The Greek text of the 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...

.

Location
The manuscript is currently housed at the Sackler Library

Sackler Library

The Sackler Library holds a large portion of the classical, art historical, and archaeological works belonging to the University of Oxford, England.- History :...

 (Papyrology Rooms, P. Oxy. 4401) at 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...

.

Textual Variants

• 3:10: εις (into) becomes προς (towards).

• 3:11: omits οπισω μου (after me).

• 3:11: βαστασαι (to bear) is changed to λυσαι (to untie). The missing space on the line above could also include κυφας (bending down), therefore almost conforming the text to the same as Mark 1:7.

• 3:16: ωσαι (as if it were) becomes ως (like).

• 3:16: και (and) is omitted from after περιστεραν (dove).

• 3:17: ευδοκησα (well pleased) becomes ηυδοκησα, a variant spelling.

• 4:2: ημερας τεσσερακοντα και νυκτας τεσσερακοντα (days forty and nights forty) becomes μ ημερας και μ νυκτας (forty days and forty nights (the numeral μ representing "forty")).

Images

• P.Oxy.LXVI 4401 from Papyrology at Oxford's "POxy: Oxyrhynchus Online"
• ¹⁰¹ recto 3:10-12
• ¹⁰¹ verso 3:16-4:3

Official registration

• "Continuation of the Manuscript List" Institute for New Testament Textual Research, University of Münster
  University of Münster
  The University of Münster is a public university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. The WWU is part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, a society of Germany's leading research universities...
  
  . Retrieved April 9, 2008