The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts

This book provides transcriptions of sixty-nine of the earliest New Testament manuscripts up to and including P115, the most recently published early New Testament manuscript. All of the manuscripts are dated from the early second century to the beginning of the fourth (A.D. 100-300). We chose A.D. 300 as our terminus ad quem because New Testament manuscript production changed radically after the persecution under Diocletian (A.D. 303-305) and especially after Constantine declared Christianity to be a legal religion in the empire. Many of these manuscripts are nearly two hundred years earlier than the well-known uncials codex Vaticanus and codex Sinaiticus. These early manuscripts, containing about two-thirds of the New Testament text, were discovered (most in the twentieth century), disbursed to various museums throughout the world, and subsequently published in transcriptional form in various books and journals (with editorial comments in several different languages). Since it is exceedingly difficult for most individuals to observe the actual manuscripts or even see photographs, let alone collect the editio princeps of each manuscript, our goal has been to publish a fresh transcription of these manuscripts in one volume and thereby provide students, scholars, and translators with easier access to the manuscripts themselves. Furthermore, several manuscripts have been published in progressive phases, as new portions were identified in various museums. This book presents for the first time a unified transcription of all portions of the manuscript, and for certain manuscripts, new portions are presented. This is especially true of P4/P64/P67, P30, P40, P45, P46, P49, and P66.

This book provides a representative sample of the New Testament that was read by Christians in the earliest centuries of the church. These manuscripts were the "Bible" they read and revered; to them, these manuscripts were the New Testament text. Today's Greek New Testaments are critical editions produced by the eclectic method, where the preferred reading is determined on a case-by-case basis from among the many variants offered by the early manuscripts and versions. These critical editions of the Greek New Testament do not completely replicate the evidence of any one manuscript. Using the critical apparatus, one can attempt to piece together the text of a particular manuscript, but it requires great skill and much labor. Thus, it is our desire to present the complete text of each early manuscript so that readers can study them for themselves.

The papyrus manuscripts are among the most important witnesses for reconstructing the original text of the New Testament. It is not the material on which they are written (papyrus) that makes them so valuable, but the date when they were written. Several of the most significant papyri date from the middle of the second century. These manuscripts, therefore, provide the earliest direct witness to the New Testament autographs. Among the extant New Testament papyrus manuscripts, three groups are worthy of mention: the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, the Chester Beatty/Michigan Papyri, and the Bodmer Papyri.

Beginning in 1898, Grenfell and Hunt discovered thousands of papyrus fragments in the ancient rubbish heaps of Oxyrhynchus, Egypt. This site yielded volumes of papyrus fragments containing all sorts of written material (literature, business and legal contracts, letters, etc.) as well as more than thirty-five manuscripts containing portions of the New Testament. Some of the more noteworthy biblical papyrus manuscripts are P1 (Matt. 1), P5(John 1, 16, 20), P13 (Heb. 2-5, 10-12), P22 (John 15-16), P90 (John 18-19), P101-4 (Matt. 3-4, 13-14, 21, 23), and P115 (Rev. 2-15).

The Beatty Papyri were purchased from a dealer in Egypt during the 1930s by Chester Beatty and by the University of Michigan. Three of the New Testament manuscripts in this collection are very early and contain a large portion of the New Testament text. P45 (ca. 200) contains portions of all four Gospels and Acts, P46 (second century) has almost all of Paul's epistles and Hebrews, and P47 (third century) contains Revelation 9-17.

The Bodmer Papyri (named after the owner, M. Martin Bodmer) were purchased from a dealer in Egypt during the 1950s and 1960s. The three important papyri in this collection are P66 (second century, containing almost all of John), P72 (late third or early fourth century, having all of 1-2 Peter and Jude), and P75 (ca. 175-200, containing large parts of Luke 3-John 15).

This book provides a fresh transcription of each early New Testament manuscript. For the work of making new transcriptions we observed the following actual manuscripts: P1, P4/P64/P67, P9, P20, P24, P37, P38, P39, P46, P66 (in part), P69, P70, P72 (in part), P75 (in part), P77, P78, P90, P100, P101, P102, P103, P104, P105, P106, P107, P108, and P109.  [...]

As we studied these manuscripts and photographs, we always compared our work with that found in the editio princeps (noted with an asterisk * in the bibliography for each manuscript) and other published transcriptions. In the process of doing this work, we often trusted the judgment of the original editors with respect to their readings of broken letters along the margins of manuscripts inasmuch as manuscripts often break off along the edges in the process of handling them or mounting them. Thus, a manuscript in its present condition may not preserve the lettering the first editors saw. Our transcriptions, therefore, should reflect the most pristine condition of the text and not the condition of the text as it presently stands in storage. A photograph taken soon after the time of discovery usually provides documentation of the most pristine form. Often when this photograph is compared to a manuscript in its present "museum" form, it is manifest that certain fragments of the manuscript have been lost over time. This is true, for example, for P1 and P49 (see notes there). In any event, we have noted all significant (indicated by the symbol ?) differences between our transcription and that found in the editio princeps (abbreviated as ed pr).

We have attempted to reconstruct the beginning and ending of several manuscripts, wherever we could determine original margins. These reconstructions, indicated by opening and closing square brackets, are conjectural. Bracketed portions within the transcriptions represent letters or words most likely to have been in the original manuscript. The supplied letters and words often, but not always, accord with the text printed in the twenty-seventh edition of Nestle-Aland's Novum Testamentum Graece. Differences are most pronounced when the text of a manuscript is Western (e.g., P29, P38, and P48). Double square brackets enclose scribal erasures. Arabic numerals indicating chapter and verse divisions have been inserted in the transcriptions as an aid to the reader. Neither the numerals nor the gaps they create in the transcriptions appear in the original manuscripts. Page and paragraph breaks present in the original manuscripts are clearly indicated in the transcriptions.

In the transcriptions, we have represented the text of the manuscripts as they actually read; we have not corrected scribal errors of any kind. For the sake of our readers, we have noted several scribal errors (indicated by an asterisk), but only those that would be considered bad misspellings or "nonsense" readings. We have done our best to provide an accurate transcription, always recognizing that our work may need emendation. We welcome any comments that will help make this book better. This volume includes all manuscripts made available to the public by the summer of 1999. We hope to expand this collection as more evidence becomes available.