An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library

C. H. Roberts's An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library, published by Manchester University Press in 1935, is the editio princeps, the first scholarly publication, of what became known as Rylands Library Papyrus P52, a small papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John that Roberts dated on palaeographic grounds to the first half of the second century, making it for decades the earliest known New Testament manuscript. Its strength is that it is the founding publication by the papyrologist who first identified and dated the fragment, and it remains the starting point for all later discussion of P52. Its limit is that Roberts's palaeographic dating, always an estimate rather than a measurement, has been challenged by later scholars proposing a wider range extending into the later second century, so a claim stating P52's date as settled fact should note that the narrow c.100-150 CE range is Roberts's own original proposal, not an uncontested consensus.