The Question of the Greek New Testament

[Aractus]

Isn't it interesting that you link to an article that is purely speculative?

Craig Evans and Daniel Wallace are both respected New Testament scholars.

• "We're recovering ancient documents from the first, second and third centuries. Not just Christian documents, not just biblical documents, but classical Greek texts, business papers, various mundane papers, personal letters," Evans told Live Science. The documents include philosophical texts and copies of stories by the Greek poet Homer....The technique is bringing many new texts to light, Evans noted. "From a single mask, it's not strange to recover a couple dozen or even more" new texts, he told Live Science. "We're going to end up with many hundreds of papyri when the work is done, if not thousands."...Evans says that the text was dated through a combination of carbon-14 dating, studying the handwriting on the fragment and studying the other documents found along with the gospel. These considerations led the researchers to conclude that the fragment was written before the year 90. With the nondisclosure agreement in place, Evans said that he can't say much more about the text's date until the papyrus is published.

It speaks volumes about Ehrman that he isn't more excited about this given that he's supposedly a serious New Testament scholar.

Again, for now we have the word of two respected historians who say they have discovered a first century text of one of the Gospels, and yes some scepticism is healthy and it will be interesting to get opinions from other scholars once it is published. Neither Evans or Wallace would want to disgrace their names by making claims that are untrue or exaggerated.