Updated American Standard Version
Giving Bible readers what God said not what translators think God meant
In the case of the New Testament papyri manuscripts, our early evidence for the Greek New Testament, size is irrelevant. They range from centimeters encompassing a couple of verses to a codex with many books of the New Testament. But all of them add something significant.
Why is this fragment of John’s Gospel so valuable to those who love the Bible today? What did the experts conclude about it?
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.).
Why should every Christian buy THE P52 PROJECT book? There is a course of action in the dating and redating of the earliest Greek New Testament papyri that will lead inevitably from one action or result to the unintended consequence of undermining the actual trustworthiness of the New Testament. Christians need to be able to defend against this trend. Much effort was put into THE P52 PROJECT book so that we could understand it and the issues at hand.
In the case of the New Testament papyri manuscripts, our early evidence for the Greek New Testament, size is irrelevant. They range from centimeters encompassing a couple of verses to a codex with many books of the New Testament. But all of them add something significant.
Papyrus 26 designated by P26, is an early copy of the New Testament Greek. It is a papyrus manuscript of the Epistle to the Romans. It contains only Romans 1:1-16. The manuscript paleographically has been assigned to c. 600 C.E.
Papyrus is a tall, aquatic reed, the pith of which is cut into strips, laid in a crosswork pattern, and glued together to make a page for writing. The papyrus rolls of Egypt have been used as a writing surface since the early third millennium BC.
In the year 1898, Bernard P. Grenfell and Arthur S. Hunt discovered thousands of papyri fragments just outside the ruins of the ancient city of Oxyrhynchus. These fragments turned out to be one of the most important papyri discoveries of all time.
Papyrus is a writing material made from the water plant by the same name, which name means “product of the river.” Papyrus is possibly the longest used writing material, with the oldest known fragment dating to about 2400 B.C.E., and the use of it coming to almost an end around 600 C.E., some 3000 years of use.