Papyrus P100: James 3:13–4:4 and 4:9–5:1

The Egypt Exploration Society excavations recovered the leaf at Oxyrhynchus. R. Hübner published it in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri LXV in 1998, and it received Gregory-Aland number P100. Oxford preserves it in the papyrology rooms as P.Oxy. 4449. Unlike market-acquired papyri, the city of origin is secure, but the consulted record does not assign the fragment to a particular ancient building or owner. Publication late in the twentieth century allowed immediate comparison with the Editio Critica Maior work on the Catholic Epistles and made the witness part of contemporary critical-edition discussions.

One papyrus codex leaf survives, about 19 by 7.5 centimeters in its present broken state, with a single column and twenty-six surviving lines per side. Reconstructions suggest a larger original page, roughly 13 by 29 centimeters. The reformed documentary hand changes its apparent slant across the two sides. Spelling errors, iotacisms, diaereses, a diastole, and at least one correction by the original scribe reveal normal production processes. The page numbers 6 and 7 are direct ink evidence, not modern inference. Much text at the outer edges is missing, but the central run is long enough to study scribal habits rather than isolated letters.

CSNTM and the Oxford object record use the third-to-fourth-century range; some palaeographers favor the later third or early fourth century through comparison with dated documentary hands. No colophon supplies an absolute year. The fragment belongs to Christian book culture at Oxyrhynchus and is among the earliest witnesses to these sections of James. If pages 6–7 belonged to a collected Catholic Epistles codex, preceding material was necessarily short; if James stood alone, the numbering is straightforward. Pagination makes the collection hypothesis testable but does not decide it without additional leaves.