Papyrus 7 or ε 11 (von Soden), designated by ⁷, is an early copy of the New 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 Luke

Gospel of Luke

The Gospel According to Luke , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Luke or simply Luke, is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from the events of his birth to his Ascension.The...

 4:1-2. Possibly it is a patristic fragment. The manuscript had been difficult to date 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...

, because of its fragmentary condition. It had been assigned to the 4th–6th century (or even the 3rd century).

The Greek text of this codex is too brief to classify (possibly it 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...

 did not place it in any of Categories of New Testament manuscripts

Categories of New Testament manuscripts

New Testament manuscripts in Greek are categorized into five groups, according to a scheme introduced in 1981 by Kurt and Barbara Aland in Der Text des Neuen Testaments. The categories are based on how each manuscript relates to the various text-types. Generally speaking, earlier Alexandrian...

.

C. R. Gregory

Caspar René Gregory

Caspar René Gregory was a American-born German theologian theologian.-Life:Gregory was born in Philadelphia. He studied theology at two Presbyterian seminaries: in 1865-67 at the University of Pennsylvania and at Princeton Theological Seminary...

 examined the manuscript in 1903 in Kiev.

It is currently housed at the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine

Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine

The Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine is the main academic library and main scientific information centre in Ukraine, one of the world's largest national libraries. It is located in the capital of the country – Kiev. The library contains about 15 million items...

 (Petrov 553) in Kiev

Kiev

Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

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Further reading

• Kurt 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...
  
  , Neue neutestamentliche Papyri, NTS 3 (1957), pp. 261-265.