Page "Epistle to the Galatians" Paragraph 1

No original of the letter is known to survive.

The earliest reasonably complete version available to scholars today, named P < sup > 46 </ sup >, dates to approximately the year 200 AD, approximately 150 years after the original was presumably drafted.

This fragmented papyrus, parts of which are missing, almost certainly contains errors introduced in the process of being copied from earlier manuscripts.

However, through careful research relating to paper construction, handwriting development, and the established principles of textual criticism, scholars can be rather certain about where these errors and changes appeared and what the original text probably said.

Scholars generally date the original composition to c. 50-60 AD.