Objection · Case 03 · Reliability of Scripture
P52 is a credit-card-sized scrap with a few words, and paleographers such as Brent Nongbri argue it could date anywhere from the second century to the early third. Isn’t building on it shaky?
One objection from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
Response
Nongbri’s caution is well founded, which is why P52 is given a range rather than a single date. The larger point survives the correction. Even at AD 200, the gap between composition and earliest fragment is about a century, and substantial papyri such as P46 (Paul’s letters) and P66 and P75 (John and Luke) date to around 200. For Plato and Tacitus the gap is over a thousand years. P52 is a symbol; the case rests on the whole body of early papyri.
About this exhibit
This objection is to How soon the earliest copies were made.
The gap between when a work was written and the earliest substantial surviving copy matters as much as the count. For most classical works that gap runs from about 400 years to more than 1,300…
Under Claim 01: We can recover what the New Testament originally said better than any other ancient book.