Although Rylands 𝔓52 is generally accepted as the earliest extant record of a canonical New Testament text, the dating of the papyrus is by no means the subject of consensus among scholars.

[8] The papyrus is written on both sides and hence must be from a codex, a sewn and folded book, not a scroll, roll or isolated sheet; and the surviving portion also includes part of the top and inner margins of the page.

The text translates as: ... the Jews, "For us it is not permitted to kill anyone," so that the word of Jesus might be fulfilled, which he sp- oke signifying what kind of death he was going to die.

There appears insufficient room for the repeated phrase (ΕΙΣ ΤΟΥΤΟ) in the second line of the verso, and it is suggested that these words were inadvertently dropped through haplography.

Roberts notes comments that had recently been made by the editors of the Egerton Gospel (P.Egerton 2); and says similarly it could be said of 𝔓52 that it "has a somewhat informal air about it and with no claims to fine writing is yet a careful piece of work".

Roberts noted that the writing is painstaking and rather laboured, with instances of individual letters formed using several strokes "with a rather clumsy effect" (e.g. the lunate sigma ('Ϲ') at line three of the recto, and the eta ('H') immediately following it).

Roberts noted that in addition to alpha and upsilon, other letters also tend to be given decorative hooks, especially iota ('Ι') and omega ('Ω') (both seen in the seventh line of the recto).

He considered that only three of these texts had a calligraphic bookhand, such as was then standard in formal manuscripts of Greek literature, or in most Graeco-Jewish biblical scrolls.

[19]It may be added that the codex of 𝔓52, with its good quality papyrus, wide margins, large clear even upright letters, short lines in continuous script, decorative hooks and finials, and bilinear writing,[16] would have presented an overall appearance not far from that of professionally written Christian codices such as 𝔓64 or 𝔓77, even though its actual letter forms are not as fine, and are closer to documentary exemplars.

The significance of 𝔓52 rests both upon its proposed early dating and upon its geographic dispersal from the presumed site of authorship, traditionally thought to have been Ephesus.

As the fragment is removed from the autograph by at least one step of transmission, the date of authorship for the Gospel of John must be at least a few years prior to the writing of 𝔓52, whenever that may have been.

6845[7] (a fragment of an Iliad scroll conserved in Berlin and dated paleographically to around the end of the first century) which he suggested (other than in the form of the letter alpha) is "the closest parallel to our text that I have been able to find, a view that I was glad to find shared by so great an authority as Sir Frederic Kenyon"; and P.Egerton 2 itself,[28] which was then estimated to date around 150 CE.

[38] Roberts also proposed two further dated papyri in documentary hands as comparators for 𝔓52: P. London 2078, a private letter written in the reign of Domitian (81–96 CE),[39] and P. Oslo 22, a petition dated 127 CE;[40] noting that P. Oslo 22 was most similar in some of the more distinctive letter forms, e.g. eta, mu and iota.

1, a loan contract dated 153 CE;[41] but Roberts did not consider the similarity to be very close, other than for particular letters, as the overall style of that hand was cursive.

Nongbri suggests that this implied that older styles of handwriting might persist much longer than some scholars had assumed,[22] and that a prudent margin of error must allow a still wider range of possible dates for the papyrus: What emerges from this survey is nothing surprising to papyrologists: paleography is not the most effective method for dating texts, particularly those written in a literary hand.

I have not provided any third-century documentary papyri that are absolute "dead ringers" for the handwriting of 𝔓52, and even had I done so, that would not force us to date P52 at some exact point in the third century.

Specifically he notes that P.Egerton 2 is in "a less heavy hand with more formal rounded characteristics, but with what the original editors called "cursive affinities".

"[59] Stanley Porter has also questioned Nongbri's assertion that valid comparisons can be made between 𝔓52 and documentary papyri of the later second and early third centuries; noting the warning from Eric Turner that, "Comparison of book hands with dated documentary hands will be less reliable, the intention of the scribe is different in the two cases.

[62] Porter suggests that Nongbri's proposed late second and third century comparators are in several cases quite different from 𝔓52 so that they force comparison to focus on detailed letter forms without consideration of the overall formation, trajectory and style of the script.

[66] An altogether different approach to dating New Testament papyri has been proposed by a number of paleographers in recent years, drawing on the notion of "graphic stream" developed by Guglielmo Cavallo.

Barker maintains that the letter formation within this the graphic stream "appears to have great holding power", and proposes that it is consequently difficult to place 𝔓52 into a narrower time frame within it. "

"[68] Pasquale Orsini and Willy Clarysse also adopt the "graphic stream" approach; and have applied it to reviewing the dating for all New Testament manuscripts proposed as having been written before the mid-fourth century, including 𝔓52.

Of the papyri discussed by Roberts and his correspondents, and in contradiction to Barker, Orsini and Clarysse maintain Kenyon's proposed dated parallel, P. Flor 1.

Recent research points to a date nearer to 200 AD, but there is as yet no convincing evidence that any earlier fragments from the New Testament survive.

There are, in addition, a number of papyrus fragments of Old Testament books in Greek (chiefly Psalms) which have also been dated to the 2nd century, and whose characteristics have been advanced as indicating a Christian, rather than Jewish or pagan, origin.

Furthermore, an assessment of the length of 'missing' text between the recto and verso readings corresponds with that in the counterpart canonical Gospel of John; and hence confirms that there are unlikely to have been substantial additions or deletions in this whole portion.

Other than two iotacisms (ΗΜΕΙΝ, ΙΣΗΛΘΕΝ), and in the probable omission of the second ΕΙΣ ΤΟΥΤΟ from line 2 of the verso, 𝔓52 agrees with the Alexandrian text base.

[81] 𝔓52 is small, and although a plausible reconstruction can be attempted for most of the 14 lines represented, the proportion of the text of the Gospel of John for which it provides a direct witness is necessarily limited, so it is rarely cited in textual debate.

[82][83][84] There has, however, been some contention as to whether the name 'ΙΗΣΟΥ' (Jesus) in the 'missing' portions of recto lines 2 and 5 was originally written as nomen sacrum; in other words, was it contracted to 'ΙΣ' or 'ΙΗΣ' in accordance with otherwise universal Christian practice in surviving early Gospel manuscripts.

On the assumption that the nomina sacra were absent from 𝔓52, Roberts originally considered that the divine name was more likely to have been written in full,[85] but later changed his mind.