This sample is thought to date from before the year C.E. 90.
Well this more or less confirms what I read 30 years ago that Mark was the first Gospel written and that subsequent Gospels were basically expounding on Mark.
RE: subsequent Gospels were basically expounding on Mark.
John’s gospel seems to be quite different though, focusing a lot on Jesus’ WORDS.
This is a very modern theory, and unless one believes that some of the Gospels were written after 80, it doesn’t confirm much of anything with regards to order of writing—all it indicates is that by 90 a copy of Mark had been either used enough to be warn out and thought this an appropriate way to dispose of it or was owned by someone who either didn’t value it much or let it go to someone who didn’t value it much.
If anything, it confirms the general judgment of most of Church History, that if you have Matthew and Luke, Mark is a nice afterthought, but hardly essential.
Matthew, Mark and Luke are called the synoptic (looking together) gospels. Mark was the first written, Matthew and Luke came a short time later and expanded on the story.
John was written much later, towards the end of the first century. It has a very different, more intimate, feel to it, probably because John was a member of Christ's inner circle.