Updated American Standard Version
Giving Bible readers what God said not what translators think God meant
The latest calculations have all known Greek manuscripts at about 5,898, written from as early as 110 C.E. to as late as the end of the fifteenth-century. P52 although a fragment is one of the most important.
The oldest manuscript of the New Testament known today is P52, a small fragment from John’s Gospel, dated to the first half of the second century (110-150 C.E.).
Matthew: The Greek name rendered “Matthew” is likely a shortened form of the Hebrew name rendered “Mattithiah” (1 Chron. 15:18, 21; 25:3, 21), which means “Gift of Jah.” None of the four Gospel writers named themselves in their accounts, and titles were seemingly not part of the original text.
The Egerton Gospel (British Library Egerton Papyrus 2) refers to a collection of three papyrus fragments of a codex of a previously unknown gospel, found in Egypt and sold to the British Museum in 1934; the physical fragments are to be dated to about 150 C.E. What does the nomina sacra tell us? And how has a simple hooked apostrophe impacted two of our earliest manuscripts for many new textual scholars?
Nomina Sacra (singular: nomen sacrum from Latin sacred name): In early Christian scribal practices, there was the abbreviation of several frequently occurring divine names or titles within the Greek manuscripts.