Papyrus P37: Matthew 26:19–37 in a Greek Witness

The University of Michigan acquired the papyrus in Cairo in 1924. Its exact findspot was not recorded; a Fayum origin has been proposed because related purchases included Fayum material, but that is not a secure archaeological provenance. Henry Sanders published the leaf in 1926 in the Harvard Theological Review. It remains in Michigan's papyrus collection and has been digitized and interpreted in the library's Sacred Hands exhibition. The modern history therefore begins with an antiquities-market purchase rather than controlled excavation. Stable inventory, early facsimile, and current institutional imaging permit meaningful verification, but claims about the ancient town, church, or burial context must not be inferred from the Cairo transaction.

The leaf is about 22.4 by 12.1–13.5 centimeters and originally belonged to a page near 25 by 15 centimeters. One column held approximately thirty-two or thirty-three long lines of thirty-eight to forty-seven characters. The handwriting is a regular but unpolished cursive/documentary hand, suggesting an experienced writer rather than a luxury literary scribe. Later diagonal dashes may be reading marks for public use. A conspicuous correction in the Last Supper text shows the scribe first writing a form meaning 'called' and then crossing it out and adding 'broke' above the line, a small-letter difference in Greek. That correction reveals production in motion rather than an idealized flawless copy.

Published dates range from the middle or later third century into the early fourth; Michigan's current exhibit uses the first half of the fourth century, while CSNTM lists third–fourth. Comparisons with P53 and dated documentary hands have supported narrower proposals around 250, but those parallels do not turn the leaf into a dated document. A broad later-third/early-fourth-century description best represents the evidence. The codex belongs to Egyptian Christian book culture before or around the age of the great parchment Bibles. Possible reading marks may indicate communal use, though their date and purpose are not certain. The artifact's informal hand warns against assuming that important Gospel texts circulated only in professionally produced volumes.