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.
Philip Wesley Comfort (born October 28, 1950) is a professor, writer, editor, and expert on the Bible who specializes in textual studies of the Greek New Testament.
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.
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that P52 is dated to 100-150 C.E., and then the atheist responds to the Christian with, ‘no your evidence from 1935 is outdated, as recent research points to a date of 200 C.E. or later.’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?