Christian Archaeology - Papyrus Fragments

Papyrus Fragments

Papyrus is a primitive form of paper produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, a wetland sedge that was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt. Papyrus was in common use in the Roman Empire during the 1st century CE. Sheets of papyrus were glued together to produce a scroll of approximately 30 feet.

Archeologists have discovered many papyrus fragments. In studying these fragments, they noticed that the material, ink, glue, script, punctuation, writing style, language, etc., was slowly evolving.

Just as a book printed at the time of H.G. Wells is easy to distinguish by the trained eye from a book published in 2000 AD, so too can the trained papyrologists distinguish the subtleties of different fragments and date them reasonably accurately (generally within a thirty-year window).

An example of this took place recently and created quite a stir among Biblical Scholars . While analyzing a fragment of the Gospel of Matthew, Carson Theide of the Paderborn Institute found the sample to be identical to another fragment found at Qumran . Furthermore, it matched a second legal document . This legal document was dated, while the fragment from Qumran was known to be written around 65 AD . (in any event, before the community was destroyed by the Romans in 68 AD).

Thus, Theide had two dated documents from the 60s that have the same ‘time signature’ as the Canonical Matthean fragment . Therefore, he argues that we know that the Canonical Matthean Gospel was written in 65 AD. (+ or – 15 years).

Biblical scholarship has shown that the fragment Theide used was of a much later version of the Canonical Matthean Gospel . Therefore, the original of the Matthean Gospel was composed in 55 AD. (+ or – 15 years) .

Biblical scholarship has proved that the writer of Matthew based his work on three earlier documents (M source, Mark, and Q source). Therefore, the three primary source documents for the Canonical Matthean Gospel would have been written between 40 and 55 AD. (+ or – 15 years). Yet the debate has just begun and the dating of Matthew is far from being resolved. (See Markan priority)