Papyrus P21: Matthew 12:24–26 in a Greek Witness

Grenfell and Hunt discovered the papyrus in the Oxyrhynchus excavations and published it in 1914 as number 1227 in Part X. Through the Egypt Exploration Fund's distribution network, the piece reached Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where it is catalogued Theol. Pap. 3 and has been used in teaching and digital exhibitions. Its archaeological provenance is Oxyrhynchus, though the precise ancient user and depositional context are unknown. Modern online records have sometimes assigned it an early third-century date, while current CSNTM and the campaign's live baseline use fourth–fifth century. That disagreement is not a reason to choose the older, more impressive date without argument. The first edition, present holding record, INTF identity, and modern material catalogue need to be read together because each answers a different question about origin, custody, text, and dating.

The fragment is only about 11.5 by 4.5 centimeters in published descriptions and represents a badly broken portion of a codex leaf. The original page is estimated at thirty-two or thirty-three lines in a single column. Large upright Greek letters show modulation between lighter and heavier strokes. Very little punctuation remains, although researchers note a high point and a rough breathing. Damage creates two separated textual islands: verses 24–26 and verses 32–33, with the material that once contained the intervening argument lost. The manuscript's spelling of Beelzebul and individual additions or omissions can be compared with Codex Bezae and other Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Coptic witnesses. Such agreements do not transform the fragment into a representative of a simple 'Western text'; they are specific scribal or ancestral readings on a severely incomplete leaf.

The date is palaeographic. Grenfell and Hunt and some later references placed P21 earlier, while CSNTM assigns the broader fourth-to-fifth-century range used in the live record. Handwriting parallels can shift as more comparanda are published, so a wide range is methodologically preferable to a single year. The codex came from Christian Oxyrhynchus, where Matthew circulated in Greek amid diverse literary and documentary texts. The fragment's upright bookhand suggests deliberate Scripture copying, but quality of script does not identify a professional church scriptorium. The original codex size, Gospel contents, and ownership are unknown. Its page carried Matthew 12's controversy narrative and teaching about accountable speech, showing continuity of the passage in late antiquity even though only two portions survived the later destruction and disposal of the book.