In recent years much work has been done toward establishing the original Greek text of the Gospel of John. Codex Vaticanus is usually considered to have the best text; but two other famous codies, Sinaiticus and Bezae, often agree on a reading not in Vaticanus (especially in the first seven chapters) and may supply a more original text for a particular verse. These codices all date from the fourth and fifth centuries. Two recently discovered papyri of John. In some verses the text of John may originally have been more concise than the form we known in the Greek manuscripts. Here quotations from John in the Fathers and the ancient translations, like the Syriac, are of help. There was a tendency on the part of the transmitter of a text to add on occasional explanatory phrase to a concise and sometimes obscure verse; in time this addition crept into the text of the manuscripts themselves.