---
title: "Early New Testament Manuscripts"
category: "resources"
description: "earlynewtestament.com — English translations of the 83 earliest known New Testament papyri, all dated to AD 300 or earlier"
tags: ["manuscripts", "papyri", "new-testament", "method/textual-criticism"]
draft: false
date_created: 2026-07-20
date_modified: 2026-10-06
ai_provider_models:
  - anthropic/claude-opus-5
  - anthropic/claude-opus-5.5
  - anthropic/claude-sonnet-5
---

# Early New Testament Manuscripts

[earlynewtestament.com](http://www.earlynewtestament.com/index.htm), maintained by Craig Davis, is an English-translation project covering the 83 known New Testament papyri and fragments dated to AD 300 or earlier — that is, everything older than the great uncial codices (*Sinaiticus* and *Vaticanus*, both c. AD 350). Content is organized [by New Testament book](http://www.earlynewtestament.com/Manuscriptlist.htm) (Matthew through Revelation), with each manuscript given its standard papyrus number (P1, P4, P52, etc.) and an English translation of exactly what survives on the fragment — not a reconstruction of the whole book.

![A small torn scrap of papyrus with seven partial lines of Greek capitals, beside a colour calibration strip](https://the-way.lewy.au/assets/img/archaeology/p52.jpg){ loading=lazy }
*Papyrus 52 (John 18:31-33), one of the 83 papyri the site translates. Photo: [John Rylands Library, University of Manchester](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JRL19071950.jpg), [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/), via Wikimedia Commons.*

## Why it's useful here

This site's own [bible-text.db](https://the-way.lewy.au/resources/public-data-sources/) pipeline holds Bible *text* (WEB, LXX, Tischendorf) and *lexical/morphological* tagging, but not manuscript-level detail — it doesn't tell you which papyrus a given reading actually survives on, or let you read what a specific 2nd-century fragment says in English. earlynewtestament.com fills exactly that gap, and complements the manuscript entries already cataloged in [Ancient Texts and Manuscripts](https://the-way.lewy.au/scripture/ancient-texts-manuscripts/) (P52, P46, P66 there are three of the 83 covered here).

- **Dating**: mostly follows Philip Comfort and David Barrett, *The Complete Text of the Earliest New Testament Manuscripts* — the site is upfront that manuscript dating (paleography — dating by handwriting style) is an expert judgment call, not an exact science, and that some dates (P52 in particular) are disputed.
- **Nomina sacra**: the site explains the early scribal convention of abbreviating sacred names (Jesus, Christ, God, Lord, Spirit, and others) with a line drawn over the abbreviation — worth knowing about if a manuscript image looks unfamiliar.
- **Companion site**: the same author maintains [dssenglishbible.com](http://www.dssenglishbible.com) for the Dead Sea Scrolls, alongside [Sefaria](https://the-way.lewy.au/resources/jewish-sources/) as a source for that literature.

## Using it in a study

For a study that leans on New Testament manuscript evidence (dating, textual reliability, a specific reading's attestation), earlynewtestament.com is a good primary-source check before citing a manuscript secondhand — read what the fragment actually says, in translation, rather than relying on a summary. As always, cite the specific manuscript (its P-number) and translation source when quoting it in a study, per the citation conventions in [AGENTS.md](https://github.com/ding0t/bible_studies/blob/main/AGENTS.md).