{"id":563,"date":"2026-10-20T06:58:28","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T06:58:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/p52-the-rylands-fragment-of-the-gospel-of-john\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T06:58:28","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T06:58:28","slug":"p52-the-rylands-fragment-of-the-gospel-of-john","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/p52-the-rylands-fragment-of-the-gospel-of-john\/","title":{"rendered":"P52, the Rylands Fragment of the Gospel of John"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the collections of the John Rylands Library in Manchester there is a scrap of papyrus a little smaller than a playing card. It carries on one side parts of seven lines of Greek from the eighteenth chapter of the Gospel of John, where Jesus stands before Pontius Pilate, and on the other side parts of seven lines from a few verses further on in the same scene. Its catalogue number is P.Ryl. III 457; in the list of New Testament manuscripts maintained since the nineteenth century it is Papyrus 52, usually written P52. Since its publication by Colin H. Roberts in 1935 it has often been described as the earliest surviving manuscript of any part of the New Testament.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-1\"><a href=\"#note-1\">1<\/a><\/sup> That description depends on a date assigned to it by the comparison of handwriting, and the history of the fragment is in large part the history of that date: how it was first proposed, why it mattered, and how later papyrologists have reconsidered it. This article describes the fragment, its discovery and publication, its text, the codex from which it came, and the debate about its age.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-2\"><a href=\"#note-2\">2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group at-a-glance\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"at-a-glance\">At a glance<\/h3>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li><strong>Late 1st or 2nd century:<\/strong> A scribe in Egypt copies the Gospel of John into a papyrus codex.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>1920:<\/strong> Bernard Grenfell buys a group of papyri in Egypt for the John Rylands Library.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>1934:<\/strong> Colin H. Roberts identifies one small fragment as part of John 18.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>1935:<\/strong> Roberts publishes the fragment and dates it to the first half of the second century.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>1938:<\/strong> The fragment is catalogued as P.Ryl. III 457; in the Gregory\u2013Aland list it is P52.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>1989:<\/strong> Andreas Schmidt proposes a date of about AD 170, give or take 25 years.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>2005:<\/strong> Brent Nongbri argues that palaeography allows a range stretching into the third century.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>2012:<\/strong> Orsini and Clarysse date it to between 125 and 175.<\/li>\n\n\n<li><strong>Today:<\/strong> The fragment is kept at the John Rylands Research Institute and Library, Manchester.<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-fragment\">The Fragment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"size-and-appearance\">Size and Appearance<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The fragment measures about 8.9 centimetres in height and 6 centimetres at its widest point. It is roughly rectangular, narrowing towards the foot, with a deep notch out of the upper edge on the side that faces the reader in most photographs. The papyrus is of good quality, light brown in colour, and the fibres can be clearly seen running horizontally on one side and vertically on the other. On both sides the writing is in black ink, which remains clear where the surface is intact. Because the upper margin of the page survives on both sides, it is possible to say that the first lines preserved were the first lines of their pages; no lower margin survives, so the original length of the page must be calculated from the text.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-3\"><a href=\"#note-3\">3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The hand is a fairly large, rounded script of the type papyrologists describe as an informal book hand. The letters are separated rather than joined, and the scribe made some attempt at regularity, although the lines are not ruled and the letters vary in size. Some of the forms drew Roberts\u2019 particular attention: an alpha with a looped body, a delta with a projecting stroke, a curving upsilon, and an eta whose crossbar stands high. There is no punctuation and no word division, as was normal in Greek books of the period, and there are no accents or breathings. Two dots, or a diaeresis, stand over an initial iota on the side carrying the earlier verses, a feature of many Greek scribes of the Roman period.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-4\"><a href=\"#note-4\">4<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"recto-and-verso\">Recto and Verso<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In papyrology the side on which the fibres run horizontally is normally called the recto and the side on which they run vertically the verso. On a roll the text was written on the recto, and the verso was left blank or used later for something else. On P52 both sides were written by the same scribe, and the text runs continuously from one side to the other. The side with horizontal fibres carries words from John 18:31\u201333; the side with vertical fibres carries words from John 18:37\u201338. A scrap of a roll could not contain a continuous text written in this way, so the fragment must have come from a book made of folded sheets, that is, a codex.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-5\"><a href=\"#note-5\">5<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The words that survive are few. On the first side they include the phrase of the Jewish authorities, \u201cit is not lawful for us to put anyone to death\u201d, a reference to the word of Jesus \u201csignifying by what death he was to die\u201d, and Pilate\u2019s re-entry into the praetorium where he called Jesus and asked him \u201cAre you the king of the Jews?\u201d On the second side they include Jesus\u2019 statement \u201cfor this I have been born and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth\u201d, the words \u201ceveryone who is of the truth hears my voice\u201d, Pilate\u2019s question \u201cWhat is truth?\u201d, and the beginning of the sentence in which Pilate went out again to the Jews and said that he found no fault in him. Each line preserves only a handful of letters, some of them broken, and the scene can be recognised only because the full text of the Gospel is known from later manuscripts.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-6\"><a href=\"#note-6\">6<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-7\"><a href=\"#note-7\">7<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"acquisition-and-identification\">Acquisition and Identification<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"grenfells-purchase-of-1920\">Grenfell&#x27;s Purchase of 1920<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The fragment came to Manchester as part of a larger lot of papyri bought in Egypt in 1920 by Bernard P. Grenfell, the Oxford papyrologist who, with his colleague Arthur S. Hunt, had excavated at Oxyrhynchus from 1896 onwards. Grenfell was purchasing on behalf of the John Rylands Library, which had been founded by Enriqueta Rylands in memory of her husband and opened in 1900, and which had already acquired important collections of manuscripts and papyri. The place where the 1920 lot was found is not recorded. It was bought on the antiquities market, and Roberts later said only that the papyri were thought to have come from the Fayum or from Oxyrhynchus. Neither attribution can now be confirmed, and the uncertainty is shared by most papyri acquired through dealers in the early twentieth century.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-8\"><a href=\"#note-8\">8<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-9\"><a href=\"#note-9\">9<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Rylands lot was not studied at once. Grenfell\u2019s health was failing, and he died in 1926; Hunt died in 1934. Many of the Greek pieces were still unpublished when Colin Henderson Roberts, then a young fellow of St John\u2019s College, Oxford, began to work through them as part of the preparation of the third volume of the library\u2019s catalogue of Greek and Latin papyri. It was in the course of this work, in 1934, that he recognised among the unsorted fragments the passage from John\u2019s account of the trial of Jesus.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-10\"><a href=\"#note-10\">10<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"roberts-publication-of-1935\">Roberts&#x27; Publication of 1935<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Roberts did not wait for the catalogue. In 1935 he published the fragment separately as a short booklet entitled <em>An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library<\/em>, and an expanded version appeared the following year in the library\u2019s <em>Bulletin<\/em>.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-11\"><a href=\"#note-11\">11<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-12\"><a href=\"#note-12\">12<\/a><\/sup> He gave a transcription, a reconstruction of the missing parts of each line, a description of the hand, and an argument for its date. His conclusion was that the fragment had been written in the first half of the second century, and he noted that it was the earliest known manuscript of any part of the New Testament.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-13\"><a href=\"#note-13\">13<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The timing of the publication was notable. In the same year the British Museum published a group of papyrus leaves known as Papyrus Egerton 2, which contain fragments of an otherwise unknown gospel and which H. Idris Bell and T. C. Skeat also assigned to the first half of the second century.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-14\"><a href=\"#note-14\">14<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-15\"><a href=\"#note-15\">15<\/a><\/sup> The two discoveries appeared within months of each other and were frequently discussed together. Both were taken as evidence that Christian books were circulating in Egypt earlier than many scholars had supposed, and both drew upon the same set of comparisons for their dating.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-16\"><a href=\"#note-16\">16<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The fragment entered the Rylands catalogue in 1938 as number 457 of the third volume, and it was registered in the official list of New Testament papyri as P52. It was later placed on display in the library\u2019s building on Deansgate in Manchester, where the library became part of the University of Manchester in 1972. The John Rylands Library\u2019s history and its collections are described in a separate article on this site, <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/john-rylands-library-bible-scholarship-manchester\/\">The John Rylands Library and Its Bible Scholarship<\/a>.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-17\"><a href=\"#note-17\">17<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-text\">The Text<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"what-the-lines-contain\">What the Lines Contain<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because the fragment preserves the upper margin, Roberts could work out the number of letters in each line by comparing the surviving letters with the full text of John. He found that the lines on both sides held between about 29 and 33 letters, which suggested a single column of writing on a page of modest size. From the amount of text between the last line on the first side and the first line on the second, he estimated that each page held about eighteen lines.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-18\"><a href=\"#note-18\">18<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The text that survives agrees with the text of John known from the great codices of the fourth century and from the later papyri. It contains no variant that changes the meaning of the passage. This is not surprising, given its size: fewer than a hundred letters survive, and many of them are damaged. Textual critics generally classify the fragment as too brief to be assigned with confidence to any particular group of manuscripts, though its readings are compatible with the text of the Alexandrian witnesses.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-19\"><a href=\"#note-19\">19<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-20\"><a href=\"#note-20\">20<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-question-of-spacing-in-john-18-37\">The Question of Spacing in John 18:37<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One textual observation of Roberts has been repeated in later discussions. In John 18:37 most manuscripts read, in Greek, \u201cfor this I have been born and for this I have come into the world\u201d, repeating the words for \u201cfor this\u201d. Roberts calculated that the line on the second side of the fragment would be unusually long if it contained the repetition, and he suggested that the scribe\u2019s copy may have lacked the second occurrence of the phrase. The suggestion rests entirely on calculation of line lengths, since the relevant letters are not preserved, and Roberts presented it as a possibility rather than a reading.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-21\"><a href=\"#note-21\">21<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-22\"><a href=\"#note-22\">22<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-name-of-jesus-and-the-nomina-sacra\">The Name of Jesus and the Nomina Sacra<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A further question concerns the way in which the scribe wrote the name of Jesus. Almost all early Christian manuscripts use a system of abbreviations known as the <em>nomina sacra<\/em>, in which a small set of words, including God, Lord, Jesus and Christ, are written in contracted form with a line above them.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-23\"><a href=\"#note-23\">23<\/a><\/sup> The name of Jesus appears twice in the passage covered by the fragment, but in both places the relevant letters are lost. Roberts thought that the spacing of the lines suggested that the name was written in a contracted form, consistent with the usual Christian practice.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-24\"><a href=\"#note-24\">24<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The point was reopened in 2001 by Christopher Tuckett, who argued that the arithmetic of the lines did not settle the matter and that the scribe may have written the name in full.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-25\"><a href=\"#note-25\">25<\/a><\/sup> Charles E. Hill replied in 2002 that a closer analysis of the lines, including the letters per line and the shape of the surviving text, made the contracted form the more likely.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-26\"><a href=\"#note-26\">26<\/a><\/sup> The exchange illustrates both the care with which the fragment has been examined and the limits of what can be inferred from fewer than a hundred letters. Whatever the answer, the absence or presence of the abbreviation would not by itself fix the date, because <em>nomina sacra<\/em> appear in Christian manuscripts across several centuries.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-27\"><a href=\"#note-27\">27<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-codex\">The Codex<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"a-book-not-a-roll\">A Book, Not a Roll<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The fact that P52 comes from a codex is as significant as the text it contains. In the Greek and Roman world of the first and second centuries, literary works were normally copied on rolls. The codex, a book of folded leaves bound at the spine, was at first a humbler form, associated with notebooks and practical writing. Christian scribes adopted it for their scriptures earlier and more consistently than other writers; among surviving Christian manuscripts of the second and third centuries, the great majority are codices, whereas among non-Christian literary manuscripts of the same period, rolls predominate.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-28\"><a href=\"#note-28\">28<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Colin Roberts himself made the history of the codex one of the subjects of his career. In <em>The Birth of the Codex<\/em>, written with T. C. Skeat and published in 1983, the two scholars collected the evidence for the rise of the codex and argued that the Christian preference for it was already established by the early second century. P52, if its early date is accepted, would be one of the earliest examples of that preference.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-29\"><a href=\"#note-29\">29<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-30\"><a href=\"#note-30\">30<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"reconstructing-the-book\">Reconstructing the Book<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From the estimate of about eighteen lines to the page, Roberts calculated how many pages would be needed to contain the whole Gospel of John. His figure was about 130 pages, or some 66 leaves, which would make a single-quire codex of moderate thickness or a book made of several gatherings. The page would have been about 21 centimetres high and 20 centimetres wide, a squarish format of a kind found among other early codices.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-31\"><a href=\"#note-31\">31<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-32\"><a href=\"#note-32\">32<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It is not certain that the codex contained only the Gospel of John. It may have contained other texts as well, but there is no means of knowing, and most scholars assume, as Roberts did, that it was a single-gospel book. The other early manuscripts of John found in Egypt, such as the Bodmer papyri P66 and P75, are also single-gospel or two-gospel codices, and the collection of four gospels in one volume is first attested in the third century. The Bodmer manuscripts are described in <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/the-bodmer-papyri-and-the-earliest-new-testament-codices\/\">The Bodmer Papyri and the Earliest New Testament Codices<\/a>.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-33\"><a href=\"#note-33\">33<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-34\"><a href=\"#note-34\">34<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The size of the fragment also implies something about the book\u2019s owners. A codex of about 130 pages of papyrus was not cheap, and the regular if informal hand suggests a trained scribe rather than a private reader writing for himself. Roberts considered that the hand was that of a professional who wrote documents as well as books, an interpretation that fits what is known of the production of Christian books in Egypt in the second and third centuries.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-35\"><a href=\"#note-35\">35<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-36\"><a href=\"#note-36\">36<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"dating-by-handwriting\">Dating by Handwriting<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-method\">The Method<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">P52 carries no date. It was not found in a dated archaeological context, and nothing in the text indicates when it was copied. The only means of estimating its age is palaeography, the comparison of its handwriting with that of other manuscripts. In Greek papyrology the most valuable comparisons are with documents that bear dates, such as contracts, petitions and letters, because their hands can be placed in a particular year. Literary manuscripts rarely carry dates, so the hands of books are dated mainly by comparison with dated documents written in similar styles.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-37\"><a href=\"#note-37\">37<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-38\"><a href=\"#note-38\">38<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The method has well-known limitations. A scribe could write in the same way for forty years or more, and older styles of writing could persist in some places long after newer ones had appeared elsewhere. A book hand may differ from the same scribe\u2019s documentary hand. Comparisons are therefore usually expressed in ranges of half a century or more, and papyrologists generally regard a date expressed more narrowly than that as an indication of probability rather than a fixed point.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-39\"><a href=\"#note-39\">39<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-40\"><a href=\"#note-40\">40<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"roberts-comparisons\">Roberts&#x27; Comparisons<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Roberts compared the hand of P52 with a number of papyri of the late first and early second centuries. Among them were a private letter in the Fayum papyri, P.Fayum 110, dated to AD 94; a papyrus of the <em>Iliad<\/em> in Berlin; papyri of the reign of Domitian; and the Egerton Gospel, which had just been assigned by Bell and Skeat to the period before 150.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-41\"><a href=\"#note-41\">41<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-42\"><a href=\"#note-42\">42<\/a><\/sup> On the basis of these comparisons he concluded that the hand belonged to the first half of the second century, and he gave the opinion that \u201con the whole we may accept with some confidence the first half of the second century as the period in which P. Ryl. Gr. 457 was written\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-43\"><a href=\"#note-43\">43<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Roberts sent photographs of the fragment to several leading papyrologists of the day. Frederic Kenyon, Wilhelm Schubart, H. Idris Bell, Ulrich Wilcken and others agreed with his date, some of them inclining towards the earlier end of the range. Kenyon, writing in 1937, described the fragment as showing that the Gospel of John was in circulation in Egypt in the first half of the second century.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-44\"><a href=\"#note-44\">44<\/a><\/sup> This consensus, drawn from the most experienced readers of Greek papyri then working, gave the date a weight that it retained for decades.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-45\"><a href=\"#note-45\">45<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"why-the-date-mattered\">Why the Date Mattered<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The early date carried implications for the history of the Gospel itself. In the nineteenth century, scholars of the T\u00fcbingen school, led by Ferdinand Christian Baur, had argued that the Gospel of John was a late composition, written in the middle or later part of the second century.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-46\"><a href=\"#note-46\">46<\/a><\/sup> By the time Roberts published P52 this view had been widely abandoned, and most critics placed the composition of John at the end of the first century. Nevertheless, a copy in Egypt in the first half of the second century seemed to put the matter beyond argument. If a copy had reached a provincial town in Egypt by about 125 to 150, the Gospel must have been written some time earlier, and a date of composition after the middle of the century became very difficult to defend.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-47\"><a href=\"#note-47\">47<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-48\"><a href=\"#note-48\">48<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The fragment was therefore cited widely in introductions to the New Testament, often with a date of about AD 125. Some authors went further and suggested an even earlier date, close to the year 100. The precision of these figures often exceeded what Roberts himself had claimed. His own expression had been a range of half a century, and he had been careful to state that palaeographical dating could not be more exact than that.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-49\"><a href=\"#note-49\">49<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"reassessment\">Reassessment<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"later-comparisons\">Later Comparisons<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From the late twentieth century onward, papyrologists began to look again at the comparisons on which the date of P52 rested. One reason was the publication of a great many more papyri, especially from Oxyrhynchus, which made possible a wider survey of the hands of the second and third centuries. Another was a general concern within the discipline that the dating of early Christian manuscripts had sometimes been influenced by the wish to find early witnesses.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-50\"><a href=\"#note-50\">50<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-51\"><a href=\"#note-51\">51<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 1989 Andreas Schmidt published a short note in the <em>Archiv f\u00fcr Papyrusforschung<\/em> in which he compared P52 with the hand of the Chester Beatty papyrus of Ezekiel, Daniel and Esther, and proposed a date of about 170, give or take twenty-five years. This placed the fragment within the second half of the second century, though still within reach of the earlier estimate at the edge of its range.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-52\"><a href=\"#note-52\">52<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"nongbris-critique\">Nongbri&#x27;s Critique<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The most influential reassessment appeared in 2005, when Brent Nongbri published in the <em>Harvard Theological Review<\/em> an article entitled \u201cThe Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel\u201d.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-53\"><a href=\"#note-53\">53<\/a><\/sup> Nongbri re-examined the dated documents that Roberts and his correspondents had used as comparisons, and he set beside them other dated documents of the later second and early third centuries whose hands showed similar letter forms. Among these were documents from the late second century and a petition of the early third century. He argued that the features Roberts had identified as early also occurred in hands of considerably later date.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-54\"><a href=\"#note-54\">54<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nongbri did not propose a fixed date of his own. His argument was that the palaeographical evidence, properly assessed, allowed a range that extended from the second century into the early third, and that P52 could not be used to fix the date of the composition of the Gospel of John. He insisted that he was not arguing for a late date for the Gospel, only that the fragment could not bear the weight that had been placed upon it.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-55\"><a href=\"#note-55\">55<\/a><\/sup> In his later book <em>God\u2019s Library<\/em>, published in 2018, he extended the argument to other early Christian papyri and to the circumstances of their acquisition.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-56\"><a href=\"#note-56\">56<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"other-views\">Other Views<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Other specialists responded in different ways. Don Barker, in a study of the dating of New Testament papyri published in 2011, compared P52 with a range of dated hands and concluded that a date anywhere in the second or early third century was possible.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-57\"><a href=\"#note-57\">57<\/a><\/sup> Pasquale Orsini and Willy Clarysse, in a survey of early New Testament manuscripts published in 2012, assigned P52 to the period between 125 and 175, a date range that kept the fragment in the second century but moved its centre later than the figure of about 125 that had become customary.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-58\"><a href=\"#note-58\">58<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Larry Hurtado, in his study of the earliest Christian artifacts, accepted that palaeographical dates should be given as ranges and that P52 was a second-century manuscript, while emphasising that its significance for the history of the codex and of Christian scribal practice did not depend on a single precise year.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-59\"><a href=\"#note-59\">59<\/a><\/sup> Peter Head, surveying the newly published Oxyrhynchus papyri of the New Testament, noted that P52 had several near contemporaries among them, including a fragment of John 18 and 19 published as P.Oxy. L 3523, catalogued as P90, which covers part of the same passage and is generally dated to the second century.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-60\"><a href=\"#note-60\">60<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The present state of the discussion, therefore, is that most papyrologists place P52 in the second century, with estimates that range from the first half of the century to its later decades, and that some allow the possibility of a date around the year 200. No one now claims that the fragment can be dated to a particular decade. It remains among the earliest surviving manuscripts of the New Testament, but whether it is the very earliest cannot be determined by palaeography alone, and a number of other papyri may be equally old.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-61\"><a href=\"#note-61\">61<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-62\"><a href=\"#note-62\">62<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"p52-and-other-early-papyri\">P52 and Other Early Papyri<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-early-manuscripts-of-john\">The Early Manuscripts of John<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Gospel of John is well represented among the earliest New Testament papyri. Besides P52 and P90, early witnesses include P66 and P75, both now part of the Bodmer collection, the latter in the Vatican Library; P66 preserves a substantial part of the Gospel, and both are generally dated to around 200 or the early third century. Several smaller fragments from Oxyrhynchus are also assigned to the late second or third century. The relative abundance of early copies of John in Egypt has been taken as evidence of the popularity of the Gospel there, though it may also reflect the accidents of survival.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-63\"><a href=\"#note-63\">63<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-64\"><a href=\"#note-64\">64<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-65\"><a href=\"#note-65\">65<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-chester-beatty-and-bodmer-collections\">The Chester Beatty and Bodmer Collections<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Chester Beatty papyri, acquired in the early 1930s, and the Bodmer papyri, acquired in the 1950s, contain larger portions of early Christian books than P52 and allow a fuller picture of the scribal practices of the period. The Chester Beatty codex of the Pauline letters, P46, is described in <a href=\"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/papyrus-46-and-the-chester-beatty-pauline-collection\/\">Papyrus 46 and the Chester Beatty Pauline Collection<\/a>. These collections share with P52 the use of the codex and of the <em>nomina sacra<\/em>, and the comparison of their hands with that of P52 has formed part of the discussion of its date.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-66\"><a href=\"#note-66\">66<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-67\"><a href=\"#note-67\">67<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-egerton-gospel\">The Egerton Gospel<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Egerton Gospel, published by Bell and Skeat in 1935, has a similar history. It was first assigned to a date before 150, partly by comparison with the same documents that Roberts used for P52. In 1987 a further fragment of the same manuscript was identified in Cologne, and its letter forms led some scholars to suggest a date closer to 200. The parallel history of the two manuscripts illustrates how much depends on comparisons drawn from a limited number of dated hands.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-68\"><a href=\"#note-68\">68<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-69\"><a href=\"#note-69\">69<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-70\"><a href=\"#note-70\">70<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-fragment-in-manchester\">The Fragment in Manchester<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"display-and-conservation\">Display and Conservation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">P52 is kept by the John Rylands Research Institute and Library, part of the University of Manchester. It is mounted between sheets of glass, which allow both sides to be seen, and it is normally on display in the historic library building on Deansgate, where it has become one of the best-known objects in the collection. High-resolution images of both sides have been published by the library, and the fragment has been included in digital catalogues of New Testament manuscripts.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-71\"><a href=\"#note-71\">71<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The fragment has been examined many times since its publication, but its physical condition has changed little. Papyrus preserved in the dry conditions of Egypt can remain stable for very long periods, and the main concern in its care is to protect it from light, humidity and handling. No scientific dating, such as radiocarbon analysis, has been carried out on the fragment, because the procedure would require the destruction of part of an already very small object. Even if it were done, radiocarbon would date the manufacture of the papyrus rather than the writing, and its margin of error would be comparable to that of palaeography.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-72\"><a href=\"#note-72\">72<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"its-place-in-scholarship\">Its Place in Scholarship<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The fragment has served several purposes in the history of scholarship. For the textual critic it is a witness to a small portion of the Gospel of John, consistent with later copies. For the historian of the book it is an early example of the Christian use of the codex. For the historian of Christianity it is evidence that the Gospel of John was being copied in Egypt within a few generations of its composition. For the papyrologist it has become a test case in the method of dating by handwriting and in the danger of allowing a precise figure to circulate where only a range is justified.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-73\"><a href=\"#note-73\">73<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-74\"><a href=\"#note-74\">74<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-75\"><a href=\"#note-75\">75<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The last of these roles has perhaps become as important as the others. In much recent writing, P52 is cited not only as an early witness to John but as an illustration of how palaeographical dates should be expressed. Roberts himself had been cautious, and the subsequent narrowing of his estimate to a single figure was the work of others. The reassessment of the last few decades has restored the wider range that he originally proposed, and in some estimates extended it.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-76\"><a href=\"#note-76\">76<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-77\"><a href=\"#note-77\">77<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"colin-h-roberts\">Colin H. Roberts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Colin Henderson Roberts, who identified and published the fragment, was born in 1909 and educated at Merchant Taylors\u2019 School and St John\u2019s College, Oxford. He spent most of his career in Oxford, where he was a fellow of St John\u2019s and a lecturer in papyrology, and from 1954 to 1974 he was Secretary to the Delegates of the Oxford University Press. He edited papyri from Oxyrhynchus and Manchester, wrote on the history of the book and on the earliest Christian manuscripts, and delivered the Schweich Lectures of the British Academy in 1977 on manuscript, society and belief in early Christian Egypt. He died in 1990.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-78\"><a href=\"#note-78\">78<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-79\"><a href=\"#note-79\">79<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Roberts\u2019 work on P52 was one of his earliest publications, made when he was in his mid-twenties. In his later work he returned many times to the question of the earliest Christian books, and his arguments about the codex and the <em>nomina sacra<\/em> remain central to the subject. In his Schweich Lectures he listed P52 among a small group of Christian papyri that he considered to belong to the second century, and he argued that these papyri showed a community in Egypt that took care over the copying of its books.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-80\"><a href=\"#note-80\">80<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"conclusion\">Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">P52 is a small and incomplete object. It preserves fewer than a hundred letters from a few verses of the Gospel of John, written on both sides of a leaf from a papyrus codex by a scribe whose name and location are unknown. Its importance derives from its age, which was estimated by Colin Roberts in 1935 as the first half of the second century and which is now generally given as a range within the second century, with some scholars allowing a later date. The fragment was for many decades presented as fixing the date of the Gospel of John, but more recent studies have shown that palaeography alone cannot carry that conclusion. It remains one of the earliest known copies of any part of the New Testament, an early witness to the Christian use of the codex, and an instructive example of the strengths and limits of dating manuscripts by their handwriting.<sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-81\"><a href=\"#note-81\">81<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-82\"><a href=\"#note-82\">82<\/a><\/sup><sup class=\"fn-ref\" id=\"ref-83\"><a href=\"#note-83\">83<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"notes\">Notes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list post-notes\">\n\n<li id=\"note-1\">Colin H. Roberts, <em>An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library<\/em> (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1935). <a href=\"#ref-1\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-2\">Grokipedia, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Rylands_Library_Papyrus_P52\">Rylands Library Papyrus P52<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-2\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-3\">Colin H. Roberts, <em>An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library<\/em> (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1935). <a href=\"#ref-3\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-4\">Eric G. Turner, <em>Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World<\/em>, 2nd edn, rev. P. J. Parsons (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1987). <a href=\"#ref-4\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-5\">Grokipedia, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Codex\">Codex<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-5\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-6\">Grokipedia, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Gospel_of_John\">Gospel of John<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-6\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-7\">Grokipedia, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Pontius_Pilate\">Pontius Pilate<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-7\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-8\">Colin H. Roberts, <em>An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library<\/em> (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1935). <a href=\"#ref-8\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-9\">Grokipedia, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Oxyrhynchus_Papyri\">Oxyrhynchus Papyri<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-9\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-10\">Colin H. Roberts, ed., <em>Catalogue of the Greek and Latin Papyri in the John Rylands Library<\/em>, vol. III (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1938), no. 457. <a href=\"#ref-10\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-11\">Colin H. Roberts, <em>An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library<\/em> (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1935). <a href=\"#ref-11\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-12\">Colin H. Roberts, \u201cAn Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library\u201d, <em>Bulletin of the John Rylands Library<\/em> 20 (1936), 45\u201355. <a href=\"#ref-12\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-13\">Colin H. Roberts, \u201cAn Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library\u201d, <em>Bulletin of the John Rylands Library<\/em> 20 (1936), 45\u201355. <a href=\"#ref-13\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-14\">H. Idris Bell and T. C. Skeat, <em>Fragments of an Unknown Gospel and Other Early Christian Papyri<\/em> (London: British Museum, 1935). <a href=\"#ref-14\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-15\">Grokipedia, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Egerton_Gospel\">Egerton Gospel<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-15\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-16\">H. Idris Bell and T. C. Skeat, <em>Fragments of an Unknown Gospel and Other Early Christian Papyri<\/em> (London: British Museum, 1935). <a href=\"#ref-16\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-17\">Colin H. Roberts, ed., <em>Catalogue of the Greek and Latin Papyri in the John Rylands Library<\/em>, vol. III (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1938), no. 457. <a href=\"#ref-17\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-18\">Colin H. Roberts, <em>An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library<\/em> (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1935). <a href=\"#ref-18\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-19\">Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, <em>The Text of the New Testament<\/em>, trans. Erroll F. Rhodes, 2nd edn (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Leiden: Brill, 1989). <a href=\"#ref-19\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-20\">Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, <em>The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration<\/em>, 4th edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). <a href=\"#ref-20\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-21\">Colin H. Roberts, \u201cAn Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library\u201d, <em>Bulletin of the John Rylands Library<\/em> 20 (1936), 45\u201355. <a href=\"#ref-21\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-22\">Philip W. Comfort and David P. Barrett, <em>The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts<\/em> (Wheaton: Tyndale House, 2001). <a href=\"#ref-22\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-23\">Grokipedia, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Nomina_sacra\">Nomina sacra<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-23\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-24\">Colin H. Roberts, <em>An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library<\/em> (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1935). <a href=\"#ref-24\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-25\">Christopher M. Tuckett, \u201cP52 and Nomina Sacra\u201d, <em>New Testament Studies<\/em> 47 (2001), 544\u2013548. <a href=\"#ref-25\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-26\">Charles E. Hill, \u201cDid the Scribe of P52 Use the Nomina Sacra? Another Look\u201d, <em>New Testament Studies<\/em> 48 (2002), 587\u2013592. <a href=\"#ref-26\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-27\">Larry W. Hurtado, <em>The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins<\/em> (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006). <a href=\"#ref-27\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-28\">Colin H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat, <em>The Birth of the Codex<\/em> (London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1983). <a href=\"#ref-28\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-29\">Colin H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat, <em>The Birth of the Codex<\/em> (London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1983). <a href=\"#ref-29\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-30\">Colin H. Roberts, <em>Manuscript, Society and Belief in Early Christian Egypt<\/em>, Schweich Lectures 1977 (London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1979). <a href=\"#ref-30\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-31\">Colin H. Roberts, <em>An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library<\/em> (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1935). <a href=\"#ref-31\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-32\">Eric G. Turner, <em>The Typology of the Early Codex<\/em> (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977). <a href=\"#ref-32\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-33\">Grokipedia, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Papyrus_66\">Papyrus 66<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-33\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-34\">Larry W. Hurtado, <em>The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins<\/em> (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006). <a href=\"#ref-34\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-35\">Colin H. Roberts, <em>Manuscript, Society and Belief in Early Christian Egypt<\/em>, Schweich Lectures 1977 (London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1979). <a href=\"#ref-35\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-36\">Roger S. Bagnall, <em>Early Christian Books in Egypt<\/em> (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). <a href=\"#ref-36\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-37\">Grokipedia, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Palaeography\">Palaeography<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-37\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-38\">Eric G. Turner, <em>Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World<\/em>, 2nd edn, rev. P. J. Parsons (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1987). <a href=\"#ref-38\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-39\">Eric G. Turner, <em>Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World<\/em>, 2nd edn, rev. P. J. Parsons (London: Institute of Classical Studies, 1987). <a href=\"#ref-39\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-40\">Pasquale Orsini and Willy Clarysse, \u201cEarly New Testament Manuscripts and Their Dates: A Critique of Theological Palaeography\u201d, <em>Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses<\/em> 88 (2012), 443\u2013474. <a href=\"#ref-40\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-41\">Colin H. Roberts, <em>An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library<\/em> (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1935). <a href=\"#ref-41\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-42\">H. Idris Bell and T. C. Skeat, <em>Fragments of an Unknown Gospel and Other Early Christian Papyri<\/em> (London: British Museum, 1935). <a href=\"#ref-42\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-43\">Colin H. Roberts, \u201cAn Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library\u201d, <em>Bulletin of the John Rylands Library<\/em> 20 (1936), 45\u201355. <a href=\"#ref-43\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-44\">Frederic G. Kenyon, <em>The Text of the Greek Bible<\/em> (London: Duckworth, 1937). <a href=\"#ref-44\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-45\">Brent Nongbri, \u201cThe Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel\u201d, <em>Harvard Theological Review<\/em> 98 (2005), 23\u201348. <a href=\"#ref-45\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-46\">Grokipedia, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Ferdinand_Christian_Baur\">Ferdinand Christian Baur<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-46\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-47\">Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland, <em>The Text of the New Testament<\/em>, trans. Erroll F. Rhodes, 2nd edn (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Leiden: Brill, 1989). <a href=\"#ref-47\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-48\">Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, <em>The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration<\/em>, 4th edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). <a href=\"#ref-48\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-49\">Brent Nongbri, \u201cThe Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel\u201d, <em>Harvard Theological Review<\/em> 98 (2005), 23\u201348. <a href=\"#ref-49\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-50\">Pasquale Orsini and Willy Clarysse, \u201cEarly New Testament Manuscripts and Their Dates: A Critique of Theological Palaeography\u201d, <em>Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses<\/em> 88 (2012), 443\u2013474. <a href=\"#ref-50\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-51\">Grokipedia, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Oxyrhynchus_Papyri\">Oxyrhynchus Papyri<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-51\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-52\">Andreas Schmidt, \u201cZwei Anmerkungen zu P. Ryl. III 457\u201d, <em>Archiv f\u00fcr Papyrusforschung<\/em> 35 (1989), 11\u201312. <a href=\"#ref-52\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-53\">Brent Nongbri, \u201cThe Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel\u201d, <em>Harvard Theological Review<\/em> 98 (2005), 23\u201348. <a href=\"#ref-53\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-54\">Brent Nongbri, \u201cThe Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel\u201d, <em>Harvard Theological Review<\/em> 98 (2005), 23\u201348. <a href=\"#ref-54\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-55\">Brent Nongbri, \u201cThe Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel\u201d, <em>Harvard Theological Review<\/em> 98 (2005), 23\u201348. <a href=\"#ref-55\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-56\">Brent Nongbri, <em>God\u2019s Library: The Archaeology of the Earliest Christian Manuscripts<\/em> (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018). <a href=\"#ref-56\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-57\">Don Barker, \u201cThe Dating of New Testament Papyri\u201d, <em>New Testament Studies<\/em> 57 (2011), 571\u2013582. <a href=\"#ref-57\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-58\">Pasquale Orsini and Willy Clarysse, \u201cEarly New Testament Manuscripts and Their Dates: A Critique of Theological Palaeography\u201d, <em>Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses<\/em> 88 (2012), 443\u2013474. <a href=\"#ref-58\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-59\">Larry W. Hurtado, <em>The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins<\/em> (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006). <a href=\"#ref-59\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-60\">Peter M. Head, \u201cSome Recently Published NT Papyri from Oxyrhynchus: An Overview and Preliminary Assessment\u201d, <em>Tyndale Bulletin<\/em> 51 (2000), 1\u201316. <a href=\"#ref-60\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-61\">Pasquale Orsini and Willy Clarysse, \u201cEarly New Testament Manuscripts and Their Dates: A Critique of Theological Palaeography\u201d, <em>Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses<\/em> 88 (2012), 443\u2013474. <a href=\"#ref-61\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-62\">Brent Nongbri, \u201cThe Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel\u201d, <em>Harvard Theological Review<\/em> 98 (2005), 23\u201348. <a href=\"#ref-62\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-63\">Grokipedia, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Papyrus_66\">Papyrus 66<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-63\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-64\">Larry W. Hurtado, <em>The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins<\/em> (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006). <a href=\"#ref-64\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-65\">Roger S. Bagnall, <em>Early Christian Books in Egypt<\/em> (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009). <a href=\"#ref-65\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-66\">Larry W. Hurtado, <em>The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins<\/em> (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006). <a href=\"#ref-66\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-67\">Andreas Schmidt, \u201cZwei Anmerkungen zu P. Ryl. III 457\u201d, <em>Archiv f\u00fcr Papyrusforschung<\/em> 35 (1989), 11\u201312. <a href=\"#ref-67\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-68\">Grokipedia, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Egerton_Gospel\">Egerton Gospel<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-68\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-69\">H. Idris Bell and T. C. Skeat, <em>Fragments of an Unknown Gospel and Other Early Christian Papyri<\/em> (London: British Museum, 1935). <a href=\"#ref-69\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-70\">Brent Nongbri, \u201cThe Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel\u201d, <em>Harvard Theological Review<\/em> 98 (2005), 23\u201348. <a href=\"#ref-70\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-71\">Grokipedia, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/grokipedia.com\/page\/Rylands_Library_Papyrus_P52\">Rylands Library Papyrus P52<\/a>\u201d. <a href=\"#ref-71\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-72\">Brent Nongbri, <em>God\u2019s Library: The Archaeology of the Earliest Christian Manuscripts<\/em> (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018). <a href=\"#ref-72\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-73\">Larry W. Hurtado, <em>The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins<\/em> (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006). <a href=\"#ref-73\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-74\">Pasquale Orsini and Willy Clarysse, \u201cEarly New Testament Manuscripts and Their Dates: A Critique of Theological Palaeography\u201d, <em>Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses<\/em> 88 (2012), 443\u2013474. <a href=\"#ref-74\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-75\">Brent Nongbri, \u201cThe Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel\u201d, <em>Harvard Theological Review<\/em> 98 (2005), 23\u201348. <a href=\"#ref-75\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-76\">Brent Nongbri, \u201cThe Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel\u201d, <em>Harvard Theological Review<\/em> 98 (2005), 23\u201348. <a href=\"#ref-76\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-77\">Pasquale Orsini and Willy Clarysse, \u201cEarly New Testament Manuscripts and Their Dates: A Critique of Theological Palaeography\u201d, <em>Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses<\/em> 88 (2012), 443\u2013474. <a href=\"#ref-77\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-78\">Colin H. Roberts, <em>Manuscript, Society and Belief in Early Christian Egypt<\/em>, Schweich Lectures 1977 (London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1979). <a href=\"#ref-78\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-79\">Colin H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat, <em>The Birth of the Codex<\/em> (London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1983). <a href=\"#ref-79\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-80\">Colin H. Roberts, <em>Manuscript, Society and Belief in Early Christian Egypt<\/em>, Schweich Lectures 1977 (London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1979). <a href=\"#ref-80\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-81\">Colin H. Roberts, <em>An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library<\/em> (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1935). <a href=\"#ref-81\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-82\">Brent Nongbri, \u201cThe Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel\u201d, <em>Harvard Theological Review<\/em> 98 (2005), 23\u201348. <a href=\"#ref-82\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n<li id=\"note-83\">Pasquale Orsini and Willy Clarysse, \u201cEarly New Testament Manuscripts and Their Dates: A Critique of Theological Palaeography\u201d, <em>Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses<\/em> 88 (2012), 443\u2013474. <a href=\"#ref-83\" aria-label=\"Back to text\">\u21a9<\/a><\/li>\n\n<\/ol>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the collections of the John Rylands Library in Manchester there is a scrap of papyrus a little smaller than a playing card. It carries on one side parts of seven lines&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":598,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-text-transmission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/masoretes.online\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}