Papyrus P138: Luke 13:13–17 and 25–30 in a Greek Witness
P.Oxy. LXXXIII 5346, Gregory-Aland P138, is a third-century papyrus codex leaf fragment preserving Jesus’ Sabbath healing of a bent woman and sayings about entry into God’s kingdom.
- Artifact date
- 3rd Century
- Findspot
- Oxyrhynchus, Egypt
- Current location
- Oxford, United Kingdom, Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library, P. Oxy. 5346
What archaeologists can actually examine
P138 is P.Oxy. LXXXIII 5346, two pieces from the edge of one papyrus codex leaf containing Luke 13:13–17 on the recto and 13:25–30 on the verso. The first passage moves from Jesus’ healing of the bent woman to the synagogue ruler’s objection and Jesus’ Sabbath argument; the second preserves the warning about a shut door, exclusion, and people arriving from every direction to recline in God’s kingdom. The artifact is therefore a direct third-century witness to the Greek transmission of both units. It does not independently authenticate the healing or sayings, and restored line lengths must not be confused with surviving ink.
One leaf links two Luke 13 units
The recto preserves the Sabbath-healing controversy in Luke 13:13–17, while the verso preserves the shut-door and kingdom sayings in 13:25–30.
The page is mostly reconstructed
Thirteen and fourteen surviving lines come from a page estimated at about thirty-three lines; supplied text must remain distinct from visible ink.
Luke 13:29 preserves a local variant
Visible traces and line spacing support a form of the directional list that may omit a conjunction, though the inference partly depends on reconstruction.
Provenance does not identify use
Oxyrhynchus is secure at city level, but no owner, congregation, copy shop, building, or stratified locus is known.
Follow the evidence from discovery to debate
Move through the find in a deliberate order: establish its provenance, examine the surviving object, place it in time, and then weigh the scholarly interpretation.
How the find came to light
The fragments came from the Egypt Exploration Society’s Oxyrhynchus collection and were published by Dirk Obbink and Daniela Colomo in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri LXXXIII in 2018. Registration by the Institute for New Testament Textual Research supplied the stable Gregory-Aland number P138. The manuscript is held in Oxford as P.Oxy. 5346. Oxyrhynchus is a controlled city-level provenance rather than an antiquities-market attribution, but the consulted records do not identify a precise rubbish mound, building, owner, congregation, or copying workshop. Publication more than a century after the main excavations also means that modern catalog history is much fuller than the recoverable ancient use history.
What you are looking at
Two small fragments preserve thirteen lines on one face and fourteen on the other from a single-column leaf, while the editor reconstructs a page of roughly thirty-three lines. The pieces measure only a few centimeters and retain one edge; most words are incomplete. Fiber direction, the sequence of Luke, and the amount of missing text establish the recto-verso relationship. The hand is a literary majuscule rather than an informal note. A reconstruction in Luke 13:29 is textually noteworthy: surviving traces support the preposition before ‘north,’ while calculated spacing suggests that the conjunction found in many witnesses was absent. That conclusion depends partly on line reconstruction and should remain qualified.
Where it belongs in history
The third-century date is palaeographic, based on comparison of letter forms with other ancient hands; the leaf has no dated colophon and has not been assigned a narrower year by absolute evidence. Codex format places the text within the early Christian preference for bound books, but neither format nor handwriting reveals whether it was privately owned, used for reading in an assembly, or copied at Oxyrhynchus. The manuscript shows that these Lukan passages were circulating in Greek in Roman Egypt by the proposed period. It does not disclose the age of its exemplar or how many copying stages separated it from Luke’s composition.
Consensus, questions, and debate
Identity, contents, codex format, Oxyrhynchus provenance, and a third-century palaeographic placement are well established. The principal textual interest lies in individual readings rather than a dramatic alternate Gospel. At Luke 13:29, the apparent omission of a conjunction before the directional list aligns imperfectly with other witnesses and depends on reconstructed spacing. Because the sample is short, assigning the entire lost book to a broad text type would say more than the evidence permits. P138 should be collated variant by variant. Its early date increases its value for comparison, but age alone does not guarantee that every surviving reading is earlier or better than readings in later manuscripts.
The biblical record beside the artifact
P138 directly preserves Luke 13:13–17 and 13:25–30. In the first range, the woman is straightened, glorifies God, and becomes the center of a Sabbath dispute framed by Jesus’ comparison with releasing livestock. In the second, the master shuts the door, rejected claimants appeal to prior association, and people come from east, west, north, and south while first and last are reversed. Both ranges require Bible-page reverse links. The papyrus materially witnesses this wording and narrative sequence; it cannot prove that the healing occurred, identify the original audience, or settle every word where the leaf is broken.
Luke 13:13–17
13And he laid [his] hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.
14And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because that Jesus had healed on the sabbath day, and said unto the people, There are six days in which men ought to work: in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day.
15The Lord then answered him, and said, [Thou] hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or [his] ass from the stall, and lead [him] away to watering?
16And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?
17And when he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed: and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him.
A responsible historical conclusion
The leaf joins two themes that shape Luke 13: liberation opposed by religious scruple and the surprising boundaries of the kingdom. Its physical page once carried both a healing controversy and an eschatological warning, showing how an ancient reader encountered these units within a continuous Gospel rather than as isolated quotations. For textual criticism, P138 supplies an independently copied witness to a sparsely preserved section of Luke and illustrates how page reconstruction can expose a possible omitted word. For book history, its small surviving edge still documents deliberate Greek codex production at Oxyrhynchus. Its importance is cumulative and exact, not sensational.
Authoritative sources
Institutional catalogs, excavation reports, and academic publications let you examine the evidence beyond this summary.
INTF Manuscript Workspace P138
Institute for New Testament Textual Research, University of MünsterControls the Gregory-Aland identity and provides the scholarly workspace for witness-level comparison.
Center for New Testament Restoration: P138
Center for New Testament RestorationWorking record-specific catalogue for P138’s aliases, dimensions, layout, contents, excavation history, bibliography, and electronic transcription; its erroneous present-day shelf-number line should not be reused.
Kurzgefasste Liste of Greek New Testament Manuscripts
Institute for New Testament Textual Research, University of MünsterOfficial list control for P138’s designation, P.Oxy. 5346 identity, contents, date, holding, and edition bibliography.
Oxyrhynchus Papyri Publications
University of OxfordInstitutional context for the Oxford Oxyrhynchus collection and its numbered publication series.