Translations
Translations
What this isThe manuscripts, made readable
Every replica we make reproduces a real ancient page — the actual Greek letters a scribe wrote seventeen or eighteen centuries ago. But unless you read Koine Greek in all-capital, no-spaces handwriting, it can be hard to know what your replica actually says. These pages solve that.
For each manuscript we’ve built a companion reading page. It sets the ancient text and a modern translation side by side, so you can follow the words on your fragment one at a time — and, next to them, a photograph of the replica itself, so you can find each word on the page in front of you. It is part study tool, part guided tour: a way to actually read the oldest New Testament we have.
How it worksFour layers, from the ink to the meaning
Each page carries the same manuscript through four steps — from the raw letters on the papyrus all the way to a sentence you can read aloud. Here is a single word from Papyrus 46 (“grace”) shown the way every page shows it:
The first layer is the Greek exactly as it sits on the manuscript — the same majuscule (all-capital) letters, in the same line breaks, with no added spaces or punctuation, just as the scribe wrote it. The second is a simple transliteration, so you can pronounce each word even with no Greek. The third is a word-for-word English gloss sitting directly under its Greek word. The fourth is a smooth, readable translation of the whole passage, so it all comes together as Scripture you can actually read.
Every page also shows the text a second way — line by line, laid out beside a photograph of the replica — so you can match what you’re reading to the exact spot on your own fragment.
The colour codeWhat survives, and what is restored
Ancient papyri are usually damaged — torn at the edges, holed, or broken off mid-page. So an honest reading page has to show you which letters are really there and which have been filled in. We use a simple, consistent colour system across every manuscript:
On a nearly complete leaf, almost everything is gold. On a small torn scrap, much of a line may be grey. Either way, you always know exactly what you are looking at.
Where the text comes fromOur sources
We didn’t invent any of the Greek. For the surviving text of each manuscript — and, crucially, the boundary between what survives and what is supplied — we follow the published scholarly transcriptions made by the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung (INTF) and hosted in the New Testament Virtual Manuscript Room. We then check each page against those transcriptions letter by letter.
The word-for-word English glosses follow standard tagged Greek New Testament data (the STEP Bible from Tyndale House, and the Berean interlinear tradition). The smooth, full translation is the World English Bible — a modern, public-domain translation — so we can share it freely with you. Full sources are listed at the bottom of each individual manuscript page.
The collectionChoose a manuscript
Eighteen pages so far — from the Ten Commandments in Hebrew, through the opening words of the New Testament and the earliest copy of Revelation, to the oldest Christian hymn with its music. Pick one to start reading.
The Ten Commandments & the Shema
The oldest manuscript in the collection, and the only one in Hebrew — the Ten Commandments and “Hear, O Israel.” Until the Dead Sea Scrolls, this was the oldest known copy of any part of the Hebrew Bible.
Read the transcription →
The Genealogy of Jesus — Matthew 1
The opening page of the New Testament — “the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ” — from one of the oldest copies of Matthew, preserving the famous “Asaph” reading and the three sets of fourteen generations.
Read the transcription →
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem” — Matthew 23
One of the earliest copies of Matthew — the last of Jesus’ woes and his lament over the city, “as a hen gathers her chicks,” with a correction the scribe made still visible on the leaf.
Read the transcription →
The John Rylands Fragment
The oldest surviving fragment of any book of the New Testament — a credit-card-sized scrap of Jesus’ trial before Pilate, and the question “What is truth?”
Read the transcription →
“God So Loved the World” — John 3
The night conversation with Nicodemus and the best-known verse in the Bible — from a near-complete copy of John whose scribe corrected his own work, visibly, on this very leaf.
Read the transcription →
“I Am the Light of the World” — John 7–8
“I am the light of the world” — on a leaf that runs straight from 7:52 to 8:12, one of the oldest witnesses to a text of John without the story of the woman caught in adultery.
Read the transcription →
Where Luke Ends and John Begins
Two Gospels copied as a single book — the end of Luke and the opening of John (“In the beginning was the Word”) meeting on one leaf.
Read the transcription →
Two Ends of One Sheet — Romans & 1 Thessalonians
One sheet of the oldest copy of Paul’s letters, carrying two conjugate leaves — the opening of Romans and the closing words of 1 Thessalonians, ending on a single surviving word: “grace.”
Read the transcription →
The Love of Christ — Romans 8
Almost the whole of the most beloved chapter Paul wrote — “Abba, Father,” heirs with Christ, “all things work together for good,” and “who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” — in the oldest copy of his letters.
Read the transcription →
Died, Buried, and Raised — 1 Corinthians 15
The earliest written form of the Christian creed — “Christ died for our sins… was buried… was raised on the third day” — and the roll-call of resurrection witnesses, in the oldest copy of Paul’s letters.
Read the transcription →
Love Is Patient, Love Is Kind — 1 Corinthians 13
Almost all of the Love Chapter read at weddings and funerals the world over — “though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels… love is patient, love is kind… love never fails” — in the oldest copy of Paul’s letters, with its own distinctive reading at 13:5.
Read the transcription →
A Living Sacrifice — Romans 12
Almost the whole of Paul’s great turn to daily life — “present your bodies a living sacrifice,” “be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” “overcome evil with good” — in the oldest copy of his letters, with a word restored above the line by an ancient corrector.
Read the transcription →
Galatians & Philippians
A page from the oldest surviving collection of Paul’s letters — the exact seam where Galatians ends and Philippians begins, gathered as one book around AD 200.
Read the transcription →
“God Is Love” — 1 John 4
One of the earliest copies of John’s first letter — “God is love” — written by a famously untrained hand, with the striking reading “the love which Christ has.”
Read the transcription →
The Mark of the Beast & the 144,000
The oldest surviving copy of the Book of Revelation — the number 666, the Lamb on Mount Zion with the 144,000, and “Fallen is Babylon the great.”
Read the transcription →
The First Hymn — with its Melody
The earliest Christian hymn that survives with its music — a hymn to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, its melody written letter by letter above the words, on the back of a discarded grain account.
Read the transcription →
The Triumphal Entry — John 12
A rare bilingual leaf — the crowds greeting Jesus with palm branches in Greek on one side, and Luke in Coptic on the other, from Byzantine-era Egypt.
Coming soon →
The Nicene Creed
Believed to be the oldest surviving copy of the Nicene Creed — the Church’s confession of faith, written on papyrus in 6th-century Egypt.
Coming soon →A note on accuracy — read this
We build these pages with real care, but we should be honest about what they are: we are collectors and enthusiasts who love these manuscripts, not professional papyrologists or textual critics. The surviving Greek on every page is taken directly from the published scholarly transcriptions described above, and we check each page against them letter by letter — but a few things can still be very slightly off.
In particular: a reconstructed letter at a torn edge, one of a scribe’s unusual spellings, the exact placement of a nomen sacrum, or a fine point that scholars themselves debate. Think of these pages as a faithful, carefully-made guide for reading and enjoying your replica — not as a critical scholarly edition.
If you know Greek and you spot something we’ve gotten wrong, we would genuinely love to hear it. Drop us a note through our contact page and we’ll take a look and fix it. Getting these right matters to us.
A quick glossaryWords you’ll see on these pages
- Recto & verso
- The front and back of a manuscript leaf — every replica is written on both sides.
- Papyrus
- Paper made from the papyrus reed; the writing material of the earliest New Testament copies.
- Codex
- A bound book of folded leaves — not a scroll. Early Christians preferred the codex.
- Diplomatic transcription
- A letter-for-letter copy of what is on the page, keeping the scribe’s spelling and line breaks.
- Majuscule
- The formal all-capital handwriting of these early manuscripts — with no spaces between words.
- Nomen sacrum
- A “sacred name” (God, Jesus, Lord…) abbreviated and marked with an overline.
- Itacism
- Ordinary period spellings where letters that had come to sound alike (like ΕΙ and Ι) get swapped.
- Gregory–Aland number
- The catalogue number for a Greek New Testament manuscript — the “𝔓” papyri, like 𝔓52.
Own a piece of the record
Every page here has a museum-grade replica on real Egyptian papyrus, reproduced at its true size. We’re adding manuscripts over time.