Bruce Metzger, have argued from the proposed dating of 𝔓 prior to this, that the latest possible date for the composition of the Gospel should be pushed back into the early decades of the second century; some scholars indeed arguing that the discovery of 𝔓 implies a date of composition for the Gospel no later than the traditionally accepted date of c. 90 CE, or even earlier. Scepticism about the use of 𝔓 to date the Gospel of John (not about the fragment's authenticity) is based on two issues. First, the papyrus has been dated based on the handwriting alone, without the support of dated textual references or associated archeology. Secondly, like all other surviving early Gospel manuscripts, this fragment is from a codex, not a scroll. If it dates from the first half of the second century, this fragment would be amongst the earlier surviving examples of a literary codex. (Around 90 CE, Martial circulated his poems in parchment codex form, presenting this as a novelty.) The year before Roberts published 𝔓, the British Museum library had acquired papyrus fragments of the Egerton Gospel (P.Egerton 2) which are also from a codex, and these were published in 1935 by H. Idris Bell and T.C. Skeat. Since the text of 𝔓 is that of a canonical gospel, the Gospel of John, whereas that of the Egerton Gospel is not, there was considerable interest amongst biblical scholars as to whether 𝔓 could be dated as the earlier of the two papyri. Colin Roberts 𝔓 is a literary text and, in common with almost all such papyri, has no explicit indicator of date. Proposing a date for it ultimately required comparison with dated texts, which tend to be in documentary hands (contracts, petitions, letters). Nevertheless, Roberts suggested two undated literary papyri as the closest comparators to 𝔓: P. Berol. 6845 (a fragment of an Iliad scroll conserved in Berlin and dated paleographically to around the end of the first century) which he suggested (other than in the form of the letter alpha) is "the closest parallel to our text that I have been able to find, a view that I was glad to find shared by so great an authority as Sir Frederic Kenyon"; and P.Egerton 2 itself, which was then estimated to date around 150 CE. Roberts stated that in the Egerton Gospel, "most of the characteristics of our hand are