LONDON.- Sotheby's London announced that it will offer for sale a rare and exceptionally large fragment from what is possibly the oldest copy of part of the Gospel of John, dating to 200AD, to be included in the sale of Western Manuscripts and Miniatures on Wednesday, 3 December, 2008. Estimated at £200,000-300,000 the fragment dates back to less than 170 years after the crucifixion of Christ.

Written in original Greek, almost certainly produced in Alexandria, and used in the important Christian community at Oxyrhynchus at a time when Christianity was illegal, it is one of the largest fragments to survive from this era. It was excavated from a site in the desert west of the Nile about 120 miles from Cairo which furnished many of the finest and most precious records of early Christianity ever found, including the sensational ‘Sayings of Jesus’ (later known as the ‘Gospel of Thomas’). Given the size of the text and the section of the Gospel of John detailed, it can be determined that it originated from an unusually large and impressive book for the period. The other known fragments of this antiquity and quality are almost all owned by public institutions such as The Bodleian Library in Oxford, or other public institutions.