Papyrus P115 (𝔓¹¹⁵)

Reflection

Papyrus 𝔓¹¹⁵ is the earliest substantial witness we possess to the text of Revelation. Twenty-six fragments, recovered from the Oxyrhynchus excavations and published in 1999, preserve portions of chapters two through fifteen — the letters to the churches, the throne-room vision, the seal and trumpet judgments, the woman and the dragon, the beasts of land and sea.

The date is roughly AD 225 to 275, within about a hundred and thirty to a hundred and seventy-five years of when John wrote on Patmos. The text is Alexandrian. The hand is careful. The nomina sacra are present.

The most discussed reading in 𝔓¹¹⁵ is at Revelation 13:18: the number of the beast, written here as 616 rather than the familiar 666. This is not a new discovery in itself — Irenaeus mentioned the variant in the late second century and Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus also reads 616 — but 𝔓¹¹⁵ is the earliest manuscript witness to that reading. Both numbers calculate to forms of the same name (gematria for Nero Caesar in slightly different spellings), and both have been used by interpreters who read Revelation against the backdrop of first-century Roman emperor cult. The variant does not change the message of the chapter. It witnesses to the early circulation of the book and to the careful transmission of even its most unusual details.

For the believer today, 𝔓¹¹⁵ is a witness to the resilience of the Apocalypse. Revelation was one of the last books to be universally received in the early church, and yet by the middle of the third century an Egyptian scribe was copying it with the same care given to the Gospels. The visions of judgment, the songs of the redeemed, the promise of the Lamb who was slain and lives forever — all preserved in fragments from an Egyptian rubbish heap, all standing today in your Bible. The text held. The Lamb reigns. The gospel ends where Revelation ends: the Bridegroom comes.