Papyrus P28: John 6:17–22 in a Greek Witness

Grenfell and Hunt excavated P28 at Oxyrhynchus in the 1905–1906 season and published it in 1919. The Egypt Exploration Society distributed it to the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, where it belonged to the Badè Museum of Biblical Archaeology as Papyrus 2. In April 2015 it was purchased by collector Gifford Combs, and CSNTM now lists a private collection in Los Angeles. The excavated origin and early publication secure the object's identity, but the transfer out of an institutional collection narrows public control over future examination. No surviving documentation names the ancient reader or proves that the book was manufactured at Oxyrhynchus rather than discarded there after use.

The surviving papyrus is approximately 10.7 by 5.2 centimeters, reconstructed from a leaf around 23 by 13 centimeters. A single column contained roughly twenty-six lines, of which thirteen are partially extant, averaging perhaps twenty-nine to thirty-seven characters when complete. The hand is often described as documentary or informal. Text appears on both page faces as consecutive Johannine material, indicating a codex. Holes and lost margins interrupt the lines, and the two surviving verse blocks are separated by missing material rather than intentionally excerpted. The small sample contains enough letters for textual comparison but not enough to infer the appearance, decoration, title, or complete contents of the parent manuscript.

Palaeographers usually assign P28 to the later third century or the third century broadly. One comparative record notes that the biblical writing reused papyrus associated with a third-century document, potentially offering contextual support, but the precise relationship of the documentary and literary layers must be described from the artifact rather than assumed. No colophon gives an exact year. The fragment belongs to an Egyptian environment in which John's Gospel is relatively well represented among early surviving Christian papyri. That pattern may reflect climate and excavation history as much as ancient popularity. The manuscript shows a practical codex circulating by this period; it does not establish when John was first composed or first reached Egypt.