The Extremely Narrow Basis of the Papyri

The following is a map showing all the major archaeological sites where papyri have been discovered:

Click to Enlarge

 Of course we must immediately note that virtually all papyrus sites are located in Egypt.   The main trade and commerce route of this country was naturally the Nile River.   The flow of water goes from the mountains in the South, and finally Northward, branching out to Alexandria and other Mediteranean ports.  The flow of the New Testament texts however was in the opposite direction, reaching the main port Alexandria, and from the underground church and scribal centers there, spreading Southward and branching out to various smaller towns and colonies along the Nile.
The significance of this is profound:  pretty much all of the Egyptian papyri come from a single source or fountainhead, Alexandria.  At the same time, most of the actual NT papyri come from one single site or cluster centering around the colony of Oxyrhynchus (see map).  Fully 95% of all these NT fragments come from this one town.
The papyri then have two strikes against them as to purity of text:

1)  The narrow basis of their texts, namely Alexandria.

2)  Their secondary nature, as copies from a small town in Southern Egypt.


This is the severe weakness of the papyri witnesses to the text:  They simply can't adequately represent the state of the text throughout the Empire in the 1st and 2nd centuries, and they only survived at all because of the extremely dry climate and isolated nature of the deposits.     Scrap papyrus is regularly burned for fuel, for warmth and cooking by nomad tribesmen who discover them.   Their value is often unknown to their discoverers.

mr.scrivener