Tommy Wasserman of Evangelical Textual Criticism writes that an early manuscript of the book of Hebrews has been discovered. He quotes Brian Small writing about

a newly-discovered (three weeks ago!) papyrus fragment containing a portion of Hebrews 11. It was discovered in a funerary mask and is dated to the second century!

Small apparently wrote this on his blog Polumeros kai Polutropos but then deleted his post – still available as a Google cache. Probably the deletion is related to the accusations made against Small in comments on Wasserman’s post by someone who is not prepared to give their name. My policy is to ignore anonymous accusations as irresponsible gossip.

The discovery is apparently among the collection described by Dr Scott Carroll as “some of the earliest biblical texts known to-date”. I think he means New Testament texts, as these are certainly later than the Dead Sea Scrolls which include much of the Hebrew Bible. But no images are available of this new discovery – the image I am showing here is of a different second century New Testament papyrus fragment.

Wasserman is careful in what he says about these discoveries:

we have to be extremely cautious about the claimed second-century date. …  of course there is … a real danger to through out sensational claims about “earliest biblical texts known to-date,” etc (which media just loves).

Well, I’m sure he is right to distrust the media, as I do, especially in the wake of the fiasco of the forged ancient lead books. But if this fragment is indeed as old as is claimed, while it will not exactly be “the major discovery of Christian history” as was claimed for the lead books, it could be the discovery of the year or even of the decade in terms of confirming the antiquity of the New Testament text.