'It has an almost relic-like quality to it'

The prisoner stands before the provincial governor. He is bound, a red mark on his face from where he has been struck. The noise of the baying crowd outside, far from being dimmed, is echoed and amplified by the palace walls.

The governor never wanted any of this. The subjugated people to whom this prisoner belongs — whose obscure customs he will never understand, whose rebellious tendencies cause him constant anxiety — aren’t backing down. He has tried to delegate the problem back to them, but without success. For only he can decree what they crave — a death sentence.

He knows he must go out to the crowd soon, must give an answer. Why do they hate this man so much? All the governor has to go on are vague reports of power claims being made. “Are you a king?” he demands.

The prisoner calmly considers this. “Is that your own idea,” he asks, “or did others talk to you about me?” 

Sweat beads on the governor’s neck. Why can’t this man make it simple? If there’s a crime to be considered, perhaps a trial can take place. “Am I one of your people?” he retorts. “They brought you here. What have you done?”

Measuring just 6cm by 9cm, the fragment of papyrus could sit in the palm of your hand, were it not pressed between two, slightly smudged, panes of glass. The dried reeds, pulled out of a Middle Eastern riverbed almost two millennia ago, run horizontally on the front face, vertically on the back. And etched on both sides, by a careful hand, are a series of minute Greek characters. 

It’s only a small part of the original page; decay has eaten its way in from the margins, clawing at the sentences. But we can see enough to know what it recounts — Jesus before Pilate, from John’s gospel. Over 1,800 years old, it has a strong claim to being Manchester’s most important artefact.

“It has this almost relic-like quality to it,” Jeremy Penner tells me. Penner is Curator of African and Near Eastern Manuscripts at the John Rylands Library. A Canadian, with a floral shirt and anchor tattoo on his forearm, Penner doesn’t match my mental image of classical curators. He exudes warmth and a childlike enthusiasm for the ancient texts in his care.

Most Mancunians will have little awareness of the fragment, but within the right circles it is a big deal. It’s believed to be the oldest copy of part of the New Testament known anywhere in the world. That makes it particularly important for Christians, who this week have been remembering the events it describes.

While the fragment is usually on display, renovation work means it’s currently being kept in storage. But the public’s loss is my gain, as Penner takes me deep into the bowels of the library. In an archive room with floor-to-ceiling cabinets as far as the eye can see, he consults a reference and, after a minute of rifling through catalogues, slides the glass panel out from among its neighbours. I’ve seen the fragment before, but it gets me again — that reflexive jolt from being in the presence of something extremely ancient.

How old is it? “A date that a lot of papyrologists are happy with is maybe mid second century [AD]”, Penner tells me. That’s pretty astounding — and explains its “relic-like” status for some Christians. Given the original gospel is widely believed to date from some time towards the end of the first century AD, the fragment could come from only a generation or two on from when the book was first written. In terms of ancient documents, that’s next to nothing. For works like Homer’s Iliad or Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars, the equivalent gap between original and extant copy is around 900 years.

“The historicity of Christianity is often questioned or pondered upon,” Penner tells me. “For a lot of people this is evidence securing some very early origins.” That’s because, while many would treat the Bible as mythology, pure and simple, the gospel is presented by its author as a historical account. If there are copies from very soon afterwards it’s much less likely to have been corrupted. And if the original was composed soon after the events took place, it would have been much harder to make factual claims — particularly about a miraculous event like the resurrection — that couldn’t be immediately debunked by those who remembered otherwise.

The mid-second century date has been arrived at using palaeography, the study of historical writing. It’s not an exact science, but there are two main pointers. Firstly, there’s the style of the Greek characters. These would change according to fashion, and we can compare to other documents that we can date more precisely to get an idea. And secondly, the name of Jesus seems to be unabbreviated (the name has actually been lost to decay, but we can make an estimation based on how long the lines on the page would be). Later practice was for his name to be shortened as an act of reverence, but this document predates that.

It would be possible to more exactly date the fragment by using carbon dating techniques, but to do so would cause irreparable damage to it. This pits the desire for a firm date against the principle that archaeology should do as little harm as possible to its object of study. “There’s politics involved in all of this,” Penner comments. “All archaeology is actually destruction. But it’s carefully documented destruction.”

The fragment is also one of the earliest surviving examples we have of a codex — the precursor to the book. It has writing on both sides, whereas a scroll would only have writing on one side before being rolled up. It’s well ahead of its time — almost everything was written on scrolls at that point. “For some reason, [the] early Christian community really favoured the codex, or the book, and some people would say that it's Christianity that really propelled that,” Penner explains. “They used it to such an extent that eventually, when Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, it just spread this technology throughout the world.”

The noise outside swells; the prisoner’s gaze remains steady. “My kingdom is not of this world,” he replies. “If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

The governor paces now. Why won’t he give a straight answer, when the stakes are so high? Is he deluded? Why does none of this make any sense? “You are a king, then,” the governor states, trying to find some firm ground.

The prisoner once again considers. “You say so,” he replies, before again changing the subject. “In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

Something inside Pilate snaps. “What is truth?” he snarls.

The fragment was found in Egypt in 1920, by Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt, who bought it from an antiquities dealer. Most of our important papyri records come from Egypt — where the hot and dry climate means that papyri can survive over centuries, despite being an organic material. Grenfell and Hunt were “manuscript hunters” at a time when there was a great clamour in British academic circles for ancient documents (Grenfell was at Oxford University at the time, but later came to be based in Manchester).

We don’t know where the antiques dealer found the fragment, but before manuscript hunters pitched up, it probably wasn’t considered valuable — it was likely turned up in a rubbish dump. Used papyri were also put on crops as fertiliser. Penner shows me an extraordinary case of an even older document, from the third century BC — a Greek copy of part of Deuteronomy, one of the earliest of the Hebrew scriptures. On the back of the sacred text are scribblings that detail various business dealings. Then the papyri got a third life in its final use as mummy “cartonnage” — as part of a mask or other covering in a burial rite, bound together in a manner similar to papier maché. When another manuscript hunter, James Rendel Harris, discovered the congealed wad of papyri, he used steam to prise the pages apart. “As fragile as [papyrus] is, it’s really, really durable,” Penner says.

Going further back, we don’t know how the fragment ended up in Egypt. Was it written there originally? That would imply a very fast early spread of Christianity to the area. Or perhaps it was later moved — but why? It would have been copied out by a professional scribe whose job was to make replicas of texts, but beyond that, we know nothing about them.

What seems particularly extraordinary is that it is this section that was preserved. The encounter between Jesus and Pilate is one of the most charged scenes in the whole Bible, happening immediately before the crucifixion. “The accidents of history are preserved in fragments,” Penner tells me. “You see these lines in Greek — what is truth? — and that’s where your attention is drawn to.” I’ve often wondered how Pilate delivers that immortal question. With the cynical sneer of the jaded politician? The evasive sidestep of someone trying to avoid picking a side? The genuine perplexity of a man trying to understand?

As the narrative continues past the end of the fragment, the rising pressure on Pilate makes him increasingly frantic. “Where do you come from?” he almost screams at Jesus. “Do you refuse to speak to me? Don’t you realise I have power either to free you or to crucify you?” But the location of power is the key to the dramatic tension. The fettered prisoner is in control of the conversation. The governor, for all of the vast weight of Rome behind him, is powerless.

Penner is pulling out more and more fragments in the collection: a section of Homer, part of the Gospel of Mary (which isn’t widely accepted by the church) and another codex from the practice of palmomancy, which would interpret twitching body parts as omens of what was to come (a twitching anus apparently portends “the discovery of secret matters”). Then he whisks me off to another far corner of the library, past ornate smaller reading rooms, to an unlit corner where a major papyrus restoration project is taking place (and of which I have been sworn to secrecy). 

In just an hour exploring the depths of the John Rylands I’ve felt how intoxicating this world of ancient papyri, sacred texts and manuscript hunters can be. “To work with all of these old, old texts — it’s pretty cool,” Penner says, with an understated smile. The fragment will remain in storage for the time being, but should be back on display in Spring 2025, perhaps in time for next Easter.

Manchester’s most important artefact is incredibly ancient. But in a confusing and contradictory world, the question it asks us — what is truth? — is timelier than ever.

A 3D model of the fragment is available to view here.