Updated American Standard Version
Giving Bible readers what God said not what translators think God meant
Textual criticism of the New Testament is the identification of textual variants. or different versions of the New Testament, whose goals include identification of transcription errors, analysis of versions, and attempts to reconstruct the original text.
Papyrus 45 P45 or P. Chester Beatty I) is an early New Testament manuscript that is a part of the Chester Beatty Papyri. It has been paleographically dated to about 175-225 CE. P45 is one of the oldest codices in the world that contains most of the four Gospels and much of the book of Acts.
What are the churchgoers, the Bible college students, and seminary students to do when one Bible scholar says one thing and another Bible scholar says something entirely different, or worse still, as is the case with P52, several Bible scholars are saying other dates for the time when the Greek New Testament fragment P52 was written? P = Papyrus (a plant in Egypt), the material used to make sheets of papyrus paper written on by scribes to make copies of Bible books. 52 = the number assigned to that discovered manuscript. What makes it even more alarming is when one is not an expert in the field of study, only having basic knowledge. How can they possibly know who is correct? Worse still, the Christian is put in the embarrassing position on social media of telling an atheist that P52 is dated to 100-150 C.E., and then the atheist responds to the Christian with, ‘no your evidence from 1935 is outdated, as recent research points to a date of 200 C.E. or later.’ What is the Christian to do?
Papyrus 3 is designated by the sign P3 in the numbering Gregory-Aland. It is a small fragment of fifteen verses from the Gospel of Luke (Luke 7:36-45; 10:38-42) dating to the 4th century.
Textual Character: P4 is of the Alexandrian text-type and agrees with P75 and B 93 percent of the time. The copyist of P4 was likely a professional scribe. “P4 and P75 are identical in forty complete verses, with only five significant exceptions (Luke 3:22, 36; 5:39; 6:11, 14).”
Papyrus 1 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering) designated by "P1", "ε 01 (von Soden)", is an early copy of the New Testament in Greek. It is a papyrus manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew dating palaeographically to the middle of the 3rd century (c. 175 - 225 C.E.).
The Alexandrian text ... is usually considered to be the best text and the most faithful in preserving the original. Characteristics of the Alexandrian text are brevity and austerity. That is, it is generally shorter than the text of other forms, and it does not exhibit the degree of grammatical and stylistic polishing that is characteristic of the Byzantine type of text (Bruce M. Metzger)
Friedrich Constantin von Tischendorf [1815-1874] Tischendorf was a world-leading biblical scholar who rejected higher criticism, which led to his noteworthy success in defending the authenticity of the Bible text.
Codex Sinaiticus (01, א) alone has a complete text of the New Testament. It is dated to c. 330–360 C.E. The codex is an Alexandrian text-type manuscript written in uncial letters on parchment in the 4th century. Scholarship considers the Codex Sinaiticus to be one of the best Greek texts of the New Testament, along with the Codex Vaticanus.
Codex Vaticanus (03, B) contains the Gospels, Acts, the General Epistles, the Pauline Epistles, the Epistle to the Hebrews (up to Hebrews 9:14, καθα[ριει); it lacks 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, and Revelation. It is written on 759 leaves of vellum and is dated to c. 300–325 C.E.