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Chester Beatty in the 1930s from a dealer in Egypt. These third century papyrus codices were purchased by British mining engineer A.

It has significance as an early manuscript because the remaining copies bear witness to the earlier Gospels. The Diatessaron was used as the standard Gospel text in the liturgy of the Syrian Church for two centuries. Though Tatian closely followed the wording of the Gospels, he put the verses in a different sequence. It combines the four canonical Gospels into a single harmonious narrative. The Diatessaron, which means “Harmony of Four” was created by Tatian, a Christian writer in the second century. “P75,” which scholars date between AD 175 and 225, is the earliest known copy of the Gospel according to the Luke and one of the earliest of the Gospel according to John. “P72” is the earliest copy of the epistle of Jude and the two epistles of Peter. “P66,” dating from AD 200 or earlier, contains most of John’s gospel. This codex is just one century removed from the time of the autograph (original text). Among the approximate 160,000 items is a copy of the Guttenberg Bible, and a group of manuscripts - “P66,” “P72,” and “P75,” some of the world’s earliest Christian writings. In 2003 the present Bodmer Library of World Literature opened in Cologny, near Geneva, Switzerland. He turned down an offer to sell his expansive collection. Martin Bodmer, who began amassing his collection of the world’s best books and early writings at the age of 16, died in 1971. From this fragment we know that already in the first half of the second century there were Christians along the Nile and these Christians were reading the very same words of God that we read today.” And here we begin to see the importance of this little fragment of papyrus encased in glass in John Rylands Library. Textual critics are scholars who examine and evaluate all the surviving manuscripts in order to accurately reproduce the original text. How then can we have confidence that the Bible we possess today is the Bible as God inspired and intended it? This is where we are grateful for the discipline of textual criticism. He adds, “Of the manuscripts that remain to us today, no two are exactly the same. This portion of the Gospel of John is so old that it helps to confirm the traditional date of the composition of the Gospel to be about the end of the first century.Īs writer Tim Challies says in his blog post The History of Christianity in 25 Objects, “This little scrap of papyrus is our oldest historical link to the New Testament Scriptures. It represents the thousands of manuscripts and fragments of manuscripts that have survived the centuries.” If you missed our earlier blog post on materials used to write the Bible, we invite you to give it a read. As the papyrus contains writing on both sides, it must be from a codex, a type of book, rather than a scroll. The fragment contains words from the account of Jesus’ trial before Pilate.

The manuscript fragment was among a group acquired on the Egyptian market in 1920, but not translated until 1934. This papyrus fragment, also known as “ P52,” is encased within a climate-controlled cabinet located inside the John Rylands Library of Manchester, England. These Manuscripts Validate the New Testament: John Rylands MS (AD 130)

Each serves to validate that our modern Bible is, indeed, a reliable representation of those early writings. Let’s look at a handful of important early New Testament manuscripts that scholars have discovered so far.

What helps them to determine the age of a manuscript? Numerous factors, including the material used, the letter size and form, text divisions, ornamentation, the ink color, and even Carbon-14 dating. Scholars are able to assess the importance of a manuscript by how much of the Bible it includes, and by the date assigned to it. The Bible we use today originates from early historical documents. Important early New Testament manuscripts validate the reliability of the Bible.