Codex Petropolitanus (New Testament) Codex Petropolitanus (New Testament) Codex Petropolitanus, designated by Π or 041 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering), ε 73 (von Soden), is a Greek uncial manuscript of the Gospels, dated palaeographically to the 9th-century. The manuscript is lacunose. The codex contains an almost complete text of the four Gospels on 350 parchment leaves (14.5 cm by 10.5 cm) with some lacunae in Matt 3:12-4:17; 19:12-20:2; Luke 1:76-2:18; John 6:15-35; 8:6-39; 9:21-10:3. Texts of Mark 16:18-20 and John 21:22-25 were supplied by minuscule hand in the 12th-century. The text is written in one column per page, 21 lines per page. The letters are
Historical reliability of the Gospels studying the reliability of the gospels, as Acts was seemingly written by the same author as the "Gospel of Luke". Historians subject the gospels to critical analysis, attempting to differentiate, rather than authenticate, reliable information from possible inventions, exaggerations, and alterations. Since there are more than 15,000 New Testament manuscripts which present hundreds of thousands of textual variants, scholars use textual criticism to determine which gospel variants could theoretically be taken as 'original'. To answer this question, scholars have to ask who wrote the gospels, when they wrote them, what was their objective in writing them, what sources the authors