The "Magdalen" papyrus was purchased in Luxor, Egypt in 1901 by Rev Charles B. Huleatt (1863-1908), who identified the Greek fragments as portions of the Gospel of Matthew (Chapter 26:23 and 31) and presented them to Magdalen College, Oxford, where they are identified as "P.Magdalen Greek 17/P64" and whence they have their name. When the fragments were finally published in 1953, illustrated with a photograph, the hand was characterized as "an early predecessor of the so-called 'Biblical Uncial'" which began to emerge towards the end of the 2nd century. The uncial style is epitomised by the later biblical Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. Comparative paleographical analysis has remained the methodological key for dating the manuscript: the consensus is, ca AD 200.

The fragments are written on both sides, conclusive proof that they came from a codex rather than a scroll.

In late 1994 considerable publicity surrounded Carsten Peter Thiede's redating of the Magdalen papyrus to the last third of the 1st century, optimistically interpreted by journalists. His official article appeared in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik the following year. The text for the layman was cowritten with Matthew D'Ancona and presented as The Jesus Papyrus, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1996.

External links

• Peter M. Head, "The date of the Magdalen Papyrus of Matthew: A Response to C.P. Thiede": published in Tyndale Bulletin 46 (1995)251-285; the article suggests that he has both over-estimated the amount of stylistic similarity between P64 and several Palestinian Greek manuscripts and under-estimated the strength of the scholarly consensus of a date around AD 200.
• `Abd ar-Rahman Robert Squires and M S M Saiful "Papyrus 64": bibliography

Reference

• T. C. Skeat, "The Oldest Manuscript Of The Four Gospels?", in New Testament Studies, Volume 43, 1997, pp. 1-34.