sentences:  The earliest of the papyri are dated to the middle of the 2nd century, so were copied within about a century of the writing of the original New Testament documents.Grenfell and Hunt discovered the first New Testament papyrus (), on only the second day of excavation, in the winter of 1896–7.This, together with the other early discoveries, was published in 1898, in the first volume of the now 70-volume work, "The Oxyrhynchus Papyri".