Notes

A reader-facing archive on biblical history, manuscript scholarship, and the research questions behind The Oldest Fragment. Each note separates what surviving evidence shows, what scholars debate, what remains uncertain, and why the question interests a thriller writer.

July 6, 2026

Why the Book Opens in 614 A.D.: The Persian Sack of Jerusalem and the Manuscripts That Survived

In 614 AD, the Persian army took Jerusalem, burned the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and carried away the True Cross. For the monastic communities of the Judean Desert, the catastrophe raised an urgent question: what do you do with manuscripts when the walls are coming down?

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July 6, 2026

The Textus Receptus and Why It Still Matters

In 1516, Erasmus published the first printed Greek New Testament from a handful of late manuscripts. For the next four hundred years, this was the Greek New Testament for Protestant Europe. Understanding what it is — and what it isn't — is essential to understanding how the text was transmitted.

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July 6, 2026

Why I Wrote a Thriller About a Textual Scholar

The premise of The Oldest Fragment began with a question about how evidence, interpretation, and public attention can pull in different directions.

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July 6, 2026

Why the New Testament Writers Used a Greek Bible

The New Testament writers quoted a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures — not the Hebrew original. Understanding why explains a great deal about the world early Christianity was born into.

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July 4, 2026

Marcion and the First Canon List

The first known attempt to define a Christian scriptural canon was made by a man the church eventually declared a heretic. Marcion of Sinope forced a boundary the proto-orthodox church had not drawn — and in responding to his heresy, it built something it might not have built quite so deliberately otherwise.

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July 4, 2026

Nicaea Did Not Choose the Bible

The most durable myth in popular history about early Christianity is also one of the most specific. The Council of Nicaea was called to settle Arianism, not choose the Bible — and the real canon history is slower, messier, and more compelling than the myth.

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July 3, 2026

What Faith-Based Fiction Owes the Historical Record

Most faith-based fiction is in the business of reassurance. This is about the other kind — fiction that takes the Christian historical record seriously, including the parts that complicate the tidy version of the story.

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July 3, 2026

The Letters Paul May Not Have Written

Seven letters in the New Testament are undisputedly Paul's. The other six are a different matter — and understanding why that distinction exists is one of the more illuminating problems in New Testament scholarship.

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July 2, 2026

What Historical Questions Bring to a Thriller

A thriller can make room for historical questions without turning scholarly debate into a verdict.

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July 1, 2026

The Letter That Didn't Make the Cut

Some letters attributed to Paul were welcomed into the New Testament canon. Others weren't. The editorial process that decided which was which is one of history's most fascinating stories.

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July 1, 2026

What We Talk About When We Talk About the Oldest Manuscript

No two early New Testament manuscripts are identical. Understanding why — papyrus, copyists, centuries of transmission — is one of the most fascinating rabbit holes in biblical studies.

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July 2, 2026

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament

The Dead Sea Scrolls contain no New Testament manuscripts. What they do contain is the world the New Testament grew from — apocalyptic expectation, messianic language, and a community waiting for the same kind of deliverance.

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July 1, 2026

What Was in the Jar at Nag Hammadi

A sealed jar near Nag Hammadi, Egypt held thirteen codices of Gnostic gospels that circulated in early Christianity but never made the canon.

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