Papyrus P2: John 12:12–15 in a Greek–Coptic Witness

The fragment's archaeological findspot and acquisition circumstances are poorly documented in accessible catalogues. It entered the Egyptian collection in Florence and was published by Ermenegildo Pistelli in the early twentieth century, then incorporated into Gregory-Aland cataloguing as P2. Later handlists and digital manuscript projects standardized its inventory number, contents, approximate date, and photographs. This is therefore a case where museum custody and scholarly publication are secure but excavation context is absent. Responsible reconstruction begins with the exact leaf and early edition rather than inventing a provenance from the languages or present collection.

P2 is only about 6.6 by 5.8 centimeters in its surviving state. The Greek side preserves part of John's triumphal-entry account in a single column; the Coptic material preserves portions of Luke's report to John the Baptist and the declaration to the forgiven woman. Sacred names are abbreviated, and damage removes letters at line edges. Descriptions sometimes call the object a Greek-Coptic diglot, but the two faces do not present parallel translations of the same passage. It may be a reused leaf or a bilingual liturgical artifact, and the distinction remains important.

Palaeographers have proposed dates from the fifth through seventh centuries, with sixth century the common catalogue assignment. Letter forms provide a range rather than a calendar date, and no colophon survives. Greek remained central to Egyptian Christian Scripture while Sahidic Coptic made texts available in an Egyptian language written with a Greek-derived alphabet. P2 belongs within that multilingual environment. Its small format and nonparallel contents have encouraged a lectionary hypothesis, but without more leaves, binding evidence, or a find context, the exact function and original codex dimensions cannot be securely recovered.