However, it wasn’t really “discovered” until 1934 when it was translated by C. It was purchased in 1920 by Bernard Grenfell on the Egyptian antiquities market. The earliest and most famous Greek New Testament manuscript is the Ryland Papyrus P52, currently on display at the John Rylands University Library in Manchester, UK. Photo Credit: JRUL / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain It is the earliest New Testament manuscript discovered to date. Papyrus P52 The John Rylands Library Papyrus P52 (recto) contains parts of John 18:31-33. Thus, P98 was likely copied within about 100 years of the original autograph. 81-96, which is one of the reasons many scholars believe the book of Revelation was written by the Apostle John sometime in the 90’s. 185, Irenaus wrote that the book of revelation was composed, “almost in our day, towards the end of Domitian’s reign.” 10 Domitian reigned from A.D. The manuscript is in the collection of L’Institut français d’archéologie orientale (IFAO) in Cairo, Egypt. He did not recognize that it was a biblical text, however, and it wasn’t until 20 years later that Dieter Hagedorn identified it as coming from Rev. 9 The manuscript was first published by Guy Wagner in 1971, who dated it to the second century. 237b ) is a manuscript fragment that contains verses from the first chapter of the book of Revelation.

Photo Credit: L’Institut français d’archéologie orientale (IFAO), Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain 8 Papyrus P98 Papyrus P98 comes from an ancient scroll and contains the earliest manuscript of the book of Revelation. For comparison, Pliny the Elder wrote his encyclopedia, Natural History, in the first century and the earliest manuscript we have is from the 5th century – a gap of about 400 years. This means that these two manuscripts date to within 100-150 years of the original autographs. Again, Irenaeus, writing near the end of the second century states, “Afterward, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia.” 7 Early church history records that John lived the final years of his life in Ephesus, dying as an old man sometime near the end of the first century. This is due in part to a comment by the church father Irenaeus that “Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church.” 6 John’s gospel is dated to the late first century, after the composition of the other gospels. Scholars date the writing of Matthew’s gospel to the late 50’s or early 60’s in the first century. 5 This manuscript is 6.35 cm by 9.5cm in size. 21:34-37 on the front, and traces of verses 43 and 45 on the back. 4404) is a second-century papyrus fragment that contains Matt. 4 This text is part of the Oxyrhynchus papyri, a group of manuscripts discovered in the ancient garbage dump near Oxyrhynchus, Egypt. It has been dated paleographically to the second century A.D. 3523), is a small fragment of papyrus with portions of the Gospel of John (18:36-19:7) on both sides in Greek. Housed in the Sackler Library Papyrology Room at the University of Oxford, England are two of the earliest New Testament manuscripts.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society (London) and the Oxyrhynchus Imaging Project (Oxford).

3523) comes from an ancient codex of the gospel of John and dates to the second century.

So what are the earliest New Testament manuscripts? Papayri P90 and P104 P90 (P. No other ancient text can compare with the New Testament when it comes to the sheer volume of manuscripts, nor when we consider how close the earliest manuscripts are to the originals. which number in the tens of thousands, 3 and you realize that there is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to New Testament manuscripts. 2 Add to this the ancient manuscripts in Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, etc. 1 While some of these manuscripts are small and fragmentary, the average size of a New Testament manuscript is 450 pages. To date we have over 5800 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, with an astounding 2.6 million pages of biblical text. Not so the so-called “other gospels,” which were pseudepigraphical Gnostic works written 100-300 years later. All of the books of the New Testament were written within a lifetime of the death of Jesus of Nazareth.

Manuscript book