Gnostic timeline reversed?

For such an ancient period as that between A.D. 100 and 300 it is of course much more difficult to be confident about the date of a manuscript. There is infinitely less comparative material. Nevertheless we are now in a fairly comfortable position to date papyrus manuscripts according to their handwriting. We do not have to rely on manuscripts of the New Testament only. We have hundreds of papyrus manuscripts of Greek pagan literary texts from this period and again hundreds of carefully written papyrus documents that show the same types of handwriting. These documents are very important for paleographers because they are often exactly dated. As a rule New Testament manuscripts on papyrus are not. A careful comparison of the papyrus documents and manuscripts of the second and third centuries has established beyond doubt that about forty Greek papyrus manuscripts of the New Testament date from this very period. Unfortunately only six of them are extensively preserved.Even within the period that runs from c. A.D. 100-300 it is possible for paleographers to be more specific on the relative date of the papyrus manuscripts of the New Testament. For about sixty years now a tiny papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John has been the oldest "manuscript" of the New Testament. This manuscript (P52) has generally been dated to ca. A.D. 125. This fact alone proved that the original Gospel of John was written earlier, viz. in the first century A.D., as had always been upheld by conservative scholars.We now have early and very early evidence for the text of the New Testament. A classified list of the most important manuscripts will make this clear. Numbers preceded by a P refer to papyri, the letters refer to parchment manuscripts.ca.-A.D.----------------200-----250-------------300-----350-----450Matthew-------------------------P45-------------B-------Sin.
Mark----------------------------P45-------------B-------Sin.----A
Luke----------------------------P4,P45,P75------B-------Sin.----A
John--------------------P66-----P45,P75---------B-------Sin.----A
Acts----------------------------P45-------------B-------Sin.----A
Romans-Hebrews---P46---------------------B-------Sin.----A
James-Jude--------------------P72,------------B-------Sin.----A
Apocalypse---------------------P47---------------------Sin.----AAs you can see, from the fourth century onwards the material base for establishing the text of the Greek New Testament is very good indeed. The manuscripts Sin. (Sinaiticus), A (Alexandrinus) and B (Vaticanus) are almost complete parchment manuscripts. With the help of the earlier papyrus manuscripts we have been able to establish that the text of these three great manuscripts is to a large extent reliable. The papyrus manuscript P75 was the latest to be published, but it showed a virtually identical text to manuscript B. This settled the vexed question whether we have in the parchment manuscripts of the fourth and fifth centuries a safe guide to the original text of the New Testament. We have.by Peter van Minnenfrom Duke UniversityThis message has been edited by Bob, 10-25-2004 07:20 PM

the oldest books of the bible are, John, Romans,and Hebrews Dating the Oldest New Testament Manuscripts according to this from Duke U. Of course the oldest known Bible texts are the Dead Sea Scrolls dated as being hidden in the cave during the first jewish revolt at about AD 66-70 containing 19 copies of the book of Isaiah 25 copies of Deuteronomy 30 copies of Psalms. There are also other writings pertaining to early Christianity, unknown prophecies By, Danial, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah. These are the earliest ever found.