so, though two important papyri are 100 years closer, the famous John Rylands Fragment is thought to date from A.D.117–138 and three tiny fragments of papyrus in Magdalen College, Oxford, have been dated to the third quarter of the first century. Critics are quick to seize on these gaps as a reason for rejecting the Bible, yet ignore much bigger time-gaps for other documents which are accepted without question. Only one copy of Livy’s Roman History gets closer than 400 years; with the works of Pliny