Important papyrus discoveries number more than a hundred and include: Papyrus manuscripts from Oxyrhynchus, which had been a Christian community in ancient Egypt, comprise about a third of all New Testament papyri: p¹ was the first papyrus published, in 1898, a careful and strict text from Matt. 1, dating to the 3rd century A.D. The Chester Beatty papyri of the 3rd century: p⁴⁵ has parts of all four gospels and Acts; p⁴⁶ (ca. 200 A.D.) has the greater part of Paul’s epistles, with Hebrews coming between Romans and Corinthians (implying Paul was believed to be the author); and p⁴⁷ which contains a good text of the center third of Revelation. p⁵² of ca. 125 A.D., contains a few verses in John 18:31-33, 37-38, including Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” [Claims by the school of higher criticism that John’s writings could not have preceded the late 3rd century had already fallen from favor when this fragment was published in 1935.] The third great papyrus find is the Bodmer Papyri, published 1956-1961: p⁶⁶ (ca. 200 A.D.) constitutes most of John’s gospel; good, though not quite as reliable as p⁷⁵; p⁷² (ca. 300 A.D.), with most of Peter and Jude; p⁷⁴ (7th century), with the greater part of Acts and the General Epistles, is of high quality in spite of the late date; and p⁷⁵ (3rd century), with the greater part of Luke and John, contains a strict text (highest quality). p115 (ca. 300 A.D.) contains several high quality fragments of Revelation 2:1-15:7.
Some manuscripts of later date also preserve the text type of Sinaitic and Vatican 1209 and other high quality manuscripts. Among 300 uncials and nearly 3,000 minuscules:
Ephraemi (C, or 04); 5th century, is a palimpsest: the Bible text was mostly scraped off, so the writings of St. Ephraem could be written over it! About 209 leaves throughout the Bible were recovered, with about 60% of the New Testament preserved. The epistles are very good, and it is our best, yet incomplete, text in Revelation (but its 616 instead of 666 in Rev. 13:18 shows that it too is not perfect).
L (019); 8th century, very good in Mark, but not in Matthew.
Z (035); early 6th century palimpsest of Matthew; very good.
Ψ (044); ca. 800, very good in Mark and good in the General Epistles (James-Jude).
048; 5th century double palimpsest (two successive texts scraped off), 21 fragments; very good in Acts and Paul’s epistles.
070; 6th century Greek-Coptic diglot (not interlinear), with other parts of Luke and John designated 0110, 0124, 0178-0180, 0190,
0191, and 0202; very good in Luke.
0281; ca. 700, fragments of Matthew; very good.
Minuscules
33; 9th century, good in Paul’s epistles.
81; 1044 A.D., very good in Acts, good in Paul’s epistles.
1611; 12th century, very good in Revelation. 1739; 10th century, very good in the epistles.
2053; 13th century, Revelation (preserves an early 6th century text, with Aecumenius’ commentary); very good.
2427; was a good 20th century forgery of Mark; worthless.
Ancient Versions
Coptics (various Egyptian dialects, headed by copsa and copbo); ca. 3rd to 9th centuries; very good except in Revelation.
Latin Vulgate; ca. 5th century; very good except perhaps in the gospels.
Armenian; 5th century; very good in Paul’s epistles.
Other good versions are: Old Syriac (syˢ, syᶜ), 4th century gospels; some Old Latin (the Afra Latin, itᵉ, itᵏ), 3rd or 4th century gospels; Georgian (geoᴬ, geoᴮ), 6th century gospels; Syria-Harkleian (syʰ), 7th century Revelation.
No single manuscript contains the Nestle-Al- and text (in any of its 28 editions, the latest of which is also GNT⁵), the so-called Textus Receptus (TR, or Byzantine Text), or the Majority Text (which takes the reading seen in the most manuscripts, regardless of perceived quality; very similar to TR). The earliest manuscript with a TR text type is 026 (also known as Q) of the 5th century, while the only papyrus with such a text type is p⁷³, with seven verses of Matthew from the 7th century. Fewer than 10% of pre-Constantine papyri support a so-called Western Text, while the large majority loosely or strictly support the GNT/Nestle-Aland texts. There is less variation among most of the early manuscripts than among the multitude of Majority Text manuscripts.