Aurelius Leonidus Papyrus Recreation about 4 1/2 inches by 6 3/4 inches. This papyrus contains the first seven verses of Paul's Letter to the Romans.
Beneath the scripture a different author has scribbled in a different text. It is thought that this may have been students writing exercise.
A Princeton University researcher has identified the owner of this New Testament papyrus that dates to the time of Constantine the Great.
Now, thanks to this new discovery, we know the story of one of these Christians.
“It is the first and only ancient instance where we know the owner of a Greek New Testament papyrus,” writes Professor AnneMarie Luijendijk in an article recently published in the Journal of Biblical Literature. “For most early New Testament manuscripts, we do not know where they were found, let alone who had owned them.”
The papyrus was discovered in the late 19th century at the Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus, located roughly 160 kilometres south of Cairo. The document contains the first seven verses of Paul´s Letter to the Romans. “There are several mistakes in spelling and part of verse 6 is omitted” wrote site excavators Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt in 1899. They concluded that the papyrus was “no doubt a schoolboy’s exercise.”