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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria University College, Wellington N.Z. Vol. 21, No. 9. July 23, 1958

Discovery of New Testament Manuscripts

Discovery of New Testament Manuscripts

The oldest manuscript of Horace dates from the seventh or eighth century, of Cicero, Caesar, Plato from the ninth, of Thucydides and Heredotus from the tenth, of Aeschylus and Sophocles from the eleventh, of Euripides from the twelfth or thirteenth, yet no one doubts that these manuscripts, though ever so many centuries later than their authors' day, are, substantially, the uncorruptcd descendants of the originals. No one would ever have thought of questioning the integrity of the Gospel texts, but for the fact that they contain a Divine law of belief and conduct irksome to the irreligious. So writes Archbishop Sheehan.

We have a better foundation for the text of the Bible than for any other ancient book. More than 170 papyrus manuscripts of the New Testament have been found, some of them, of course, being only fragments. Besides these we have over 200 uncial manuscripts and more than 2400 cursives. The age of many of these works is astonishing. From the fifth century we have the outstanding codices: Alexandrinus, Ephracmi, Bezae, and Washingtonianus; from the fourth century we have the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. Even more important are the group of manuscripts known as the Chester Beatty papyri. They consist of portions of eleven papyrus books, ranging in date from the early second to the late fourth century. Besides containing substantial portions of the Old Testament they include portions of the four Gospels and the Acts, nearly the whole of the Epistles of St. Paul and nearly a third of the Book of Revelations. The New Testament works are mostly early third century, i.e., dating from 200-250 A.D. Besides these early Greek manuscripts we also have a document known as a palimpsest, being a copy of the Gospels in Old Syriac. Its chief importance is not so much the fact that it was written in the early fourth century but rather that it is a translation of a second century Greek text used possibly as early as 150 A.D. This is only half a century after the writing of St. John's Gospel. But this is not all! There are even two older works that date back themselves to the early second century—almost to the time of the death of St. John himself. The first of these is a papyrus, now in the British Museum, written in a hand dating from the first half of the second century, and containing a narrative. This is derived from all four Gospels and tells of certain episodes in the life of Our Lord. Important texts of scripture are quoted, e.g., John V, 39. The other is the tiny John Rylands fragment. Dating from between 100 and 150 A.D., this contains the five verses of St. John XVIII, 31, 32, 33, 37 and 38. The text of this ancient fragment is identical with the text in the great fourth and fifth century codices. This gives us renewed confidence in our later Greek manuscripts, which our translations of the Bible are based upon.

T. J. Kelliher.