funinspace

I asked this in another thread that was dying, and alas the thread died...What is the oldest near complete (or containing substantial portions of) copies we have of the traditional 4 Gospels? I've read that we have one (John I thought) from the late part of the second century. What about the others?

One of the apologist criticisms against the Apocalypse of Peter is that our oldest copy is from circa 400AD (Nag Hammadi). Though our copy is late, it is my understanding that it was considered written in the first half of the second century. One theist has argued that we can't trust this, since it is a late copy. So the theist is right to ignore the wildly divergent stories within it.

I know about the Codex's. But I haven't seen much detail on approximate dates for the oldest copies of singular books like Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Are the Codex's the oldest complete, or near complete copies we have? Or are others about? If there's a good article here about it that would be great.

Julian

This should help some:

http://alf.zfn.uni-bremen.de/~wie/te...pyri-list.html

Julian

Clivedurdle

Has anyone labelled a new testament showing the various dates for passages? I note Romans 1 is sixth century!!!

funinspace

Thanks. Not the easiest to read for info, but still good.

So is the Codex Sinaiticus, for example, actually one of the oldest sources for individual books as well. I see that none of the Codex's were listed in the above link. And that most of the P#s are not very complete. I am assuming that the Codex's were not included in the above link because they were Latin translations?

Julian

Here is more from the same site. It has some info on Sinaiticus and much more interesting info:

http://alf.zfn.uni-bremen.de/~wie/ww_tc.html

The original link I posted in my previous above is a little hard to read, I agree, but it is the most complete list I have found so far.

Julian