The Hanna Papyrus 1 (Mater Verbi)

The Vatican Apostolic Library wishes to express its sincere gratitude to the Hanna family and to the Solidarity Association for its donation to the Library, in January 2007, of one of the most important and precious manuscripts of the Gospels, Hanna Papyrus 1 (Mater Verbi), which was previously kept at the Bibliotheca Bodmeriana in Cologny, Switzerland. Copied in the early third century A.D., it is one of the oldest surviving witnesses of the text of the New Testament.

Hanna Papyrus 1 (Mater Verbi) (P75), f. 1B2v (Luke 11:1-13; the Lord's Prayer is found in lines 7-13)

Hanna Papyrus 1 (Mater Verbi) (P75), f. 2A8r (Luke 24:51-53 and John 1:1-16)

It originally contained the complete Gospels according to Luke and John, in that order; today, some 1,800 years later, it still preserves about half of each Gospel in satisfactory condition, including the Lukan version of the Lord's Prayer (Lk 11,1-4).
For certain passages, such as Jn 6,12-16, it is the oldest surviving witness.
Known to scholars as P⁷⁵, this papyrus constitutes one of the most important sources for the reconstruction of the text of the Gospels. It is also the earliest manuscript to preserve, on a single page, the passage from the end of one Gospel to the beginning of the next, thus providing the earliest direct evidence for the order of books in the canon of the Gospels.