Editing Rylands Library Papyrus P52 (section)

=== Philip Comfort ===

Subsequently, other comparator literary papyri have been suggested, notably P. Oxy. XXXI 2533,<ref name="Nongbri, p. 47">Nongbri, p. 47.</ref> where a literary text of the second century in a hand proposed as very close to 𝔓{{sup|52}} is found written on the back of a re-used document in a late first century business hand;<ref>Philip W. Comfort and David P. Barrett, ''The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts'', Wheaton Ill; Tyndale, 2001, p. 367</ref> and also three biblical papyrus codices; P. Oxy. LX 4009 (an apocryphal gospel fragment, dated paleographically to the early/mid second century);  and P. Oxy. L 3523 ([[Papyrus 90|𝔓{{sup|90}}]]) and P. Oxy. LXIV 4404 ([[Papyrus 104|𝔓{{sup|104}}]]) both dated paleographically to the later second century.<ref>Roger S. Bagnall, ''Early Christian Books in Egypt'', Princeton; Princeton University Press, 2009, pp. 15–16</ref> In addition, the discovery of other papyrus codices with second century hands, such as the Yale Genesis Fragment (P. Yale 1),<ref>T. C. Skeat, "Early Christian Book Production, Papyri and Mancuscripts" in G. W. Lampe ed. ''The Cambridge History of the Bible'', Cambridge; CUP, 1969, pp71-75</ref> suggested that this form of book was more common for literary texts at this date than had previously been assumed. Consequently, until the 1990s, the tendency amongst New Testament commentators, supported by several paleographers such as Philip W. Comfort, had been to suggest a date for 𝔓{{sup|52}} towards the earlier half of the range suggested by Roberts and his correspondents.<ref name="Nongbri, p. 31">Nongbri, p. 31.</ref> However, a cautionary note was raised by the discovery that a papyrus fragment in Cologne constitutes part of the Egerton Gospel.<ref>M. Gronewald et al, ''Kolner Papyri VI'', Opladen; Westdeutscher Verlag, 1987, p. 136-145</ref> In this fragment the letters gamma and kappa are separated by an hooked apostrophe, a feature infrequent in dated second century papyri; which accordingly has been taken as implying a date for the Egerton Gospel closer to 200 CE – and indicating the perils of ascribing a date for a papyrus text of which only a small part of two pages survives.