Non-Christian Historians
Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius—all non-Christian Roman historians, confirm New Testament details about Jesus. These confirmations of New Testament details date from 20 to 150 years after Christ, “quite early by the standards of ancient historiography.”3
Early New Testament Manuscript Copies
In the early 20th century a cache of New Testament papyri fragments was discovered in Egypt; among them was a fragment of the Gospel of John (specifically, P52: John 18:31-33) dated to about AD 125, only 25-50 years after John wrote the original. Since P52 was a copy of John’s Gospel, his original writing would have already existed.
Princeton New Testament professor, Bruce Metzger, explains its significance in dating the New Testament much earlier than critics like Baur had claimed:
Just as Robinson Crusoe, seeing but a single footprint in the sand, concluded that another human being, with two feet, was present on the island with him, so P52 [the label of the fragment] proves the existence and use of the Fourth Gospel during the first half of the second century in a provincial town along the Nile far removed from its traditional place of composition (Ephesus in Asia Minor).4
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