The earliest known New Testament manuscript is P52, a fragment of John's Gospel. The papyrus fragment was dated by various paleographers to the first half of the second century--even to the first quarter (see discussion under P52). . .no one would commit to a date earlier than A.D. 125. In the end, C.H. Roberts dated it to "the first half of the second century." This conservative dating allows for a larger time gap between the autograph and copy, but there is nothing unreasonable about assigning a date of A.D. 100-125 for P52. If the Fourth Gospel was written in the 70s or 80s, then we have a manuscript fragment twenty years removed from the autograph. No other New Testament manuscript has been assigned a date prior to A.D. 150 with any kind of consensus.