I created an interactive map locating all New Testament manuscripts dated to the first four centuries, based on geographical data provided by Leuven Database of Ancient Books and OpenStreetMap.
All the earliest New Testament manuscripts were found in Egypt, except one in Greece and another in Italy. It is interesting that locations of provenance (marked in blue and purple) are generally populous and accessible to travellers. For example, in Egypt they are all situated along the Nile, Kellis is an oasis in the desert, and Megara in Greece is a trade port. There is Oxyrhynchus, where almost half of all the earliest NT manuscripts are found, in a refuse site no less, and Nag Hammadi, known for the discovery of Gnostic texts, including the Gospel of Thomas.[1]
These manuscripts are currently housed in locations (marked in orange and red) around Europe and the United States, except seven in Cairo Egypt. About one-third are housed in Oxford UK, in Sackler Library (30) and Bodleian Library (5). All thirty manuscripts in Sackler Library are from Oxyrhynchus, including one recently published fragment of the Gospel of Mark that caused some controversy.[2]
Libraries and museums around the world have made an amazing effort to digitize the ancient manuscripts and other artefacts in their collections and make them accessible online to the public. These are extremely valuable resources. Click or touch the marker on the map, and it will show the number of earliest New Testament manuscripts at each location, and provide a link to the collections website for further exploration.
Notes:
- ^1.If extant manuscript count is an indication of popularity, the Gospel of Mark (5) is the least popular of the canonical Gospels in the first four centuries, but still more popular than the apocryphal and gnostic gospels, led by the Gospel of Thomas (4).
- ^2. Hixson, Elijah. “Despite Disappointing Some, New Mark Manuscript Is Earliest Yet”. Christianity Today. June 06, 2018. Accessed December 11, 2018. https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/may-web-only/mark-manuscript-earliest-not-first-century-fcm.html.
References:
- Leuven Database of Ancient Books. Accessed December 11, 2018. https://www.trismegistos.org/ldab
This is really neat – I had no idea the manuscripts were spread out geographically as much as that.
How the New Testament manuscripts were spread around the world is an interesting question. What is more fascinating is that a majority of them are now freely accessible online, so you can view them as if they were all gathered in one place.