Vorkosigan

:notworthy :notworthy :notworthy

Vorkosigan

http://pages.sbcglobal.net/zimriel/Mark/

Scroll down to the middle "The mIssing ending of Mark."

Streeter's The Four Gospels is online here

http://www.katapi.org.uk/4Gospels/Contents.htm

Michael

Atheos

I waddled through the article linked in the original post as best I could. It appears that Kim is making two arguments:

(1) He claims that the style of handwriting is consistent with a style used in certain older papyri. He lists several papyri dating from the late 1st century and on into the late 2nd century, and makes a case that the movement of strokes in P46 are more like samples taken from the earlier (pre-Domitian) documents than later ones.

(2) He suggests that the eg form of certain greek words were gradually replaced with ek versions of the same words during the 2nd century.

In the first case I'd say that he could have a point although it's not outside the bounds of reason to suggest that a few scribes continued to use an older style of writing for decades after it was abandoned by the mainstream scholars. This might be especially likely in this particular instance as the most likely scenario might be a dark period in which christianity was not considered fashionable and the writings were handed down through a series of scribes apprenticed informally through several generations. Such young men, entrusted by a wizend old scribe with the sacred duty of preserving these writings and nothing else, might rarely or never be exposed to outside scholarship. It's not like papyri was common or cheap in those days. Such an inbred scribal tradition might preserve not only the style of handwriting for many years after it had been abandoned by the mainstream, but it might also account for the continued appearance of Kim's second assertion, the "eg" form of the "ek" greek words.

But in regard to the second proposition I think it's almost laughable. Using the same scholarship someone 2000 years hence might date a current page of the KJV bible to the early 1600's. The fear of tampering with with outdated words just because they are believed to be god's words is an old fear and could easily explain the presence of the "eg" forms of greek words in a papyrus scripted long after secular writers had been using the "ek" versions.

Just my humble thoughts. A layman to be sure.

-Atheos

Atheos

Thanks for the link. I'll check it out later this morning.

-Atheos

Bede

Well, that is one way of avoiding justifying your assertions. Anyway, having read Kim's work, it does seem that he is more likely right than not, the classicist establishment notwithstanding. I'd hoped that Vork would have some counterarguments but it seems I overestimated him...

Best wishes

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Jedi Mind Trick

What books are in P46?

Bede

Hi Atheos,

Glad you are willing to address the issues! I'm an amateur too so here is my two cents.

What you say is quite true but not to the point. It is always possible than someone is totally out of synch with their times and never beyond the bounds of reason that something doesn't fit. But that is not what the paleographer is about. The most likely date is the date that best matches the hand writing. We always assume a +/- 25 years of uncertainty with paleography which does catch both the 'with it' scribe and the old timer. So P46 could be later but for our purposes the date is most likely to be the median date Kim assigns.

BTW, papyrus was not that rare and expensive (you may be thinking of parchment) although their was an Egyptian monopoly. As Egypt was part of the Roman Empire this didn't matter at the time of our papyrus but it did make papyrus rare after the Moslem invasion about 700AD.

I could easily tell you which century a printed KJV came from both by the letter forms and the spelling (which is modernised in modern editions. Also, if it contains the long 's' we would know for certain it predated 1800. If other NT papyri of around 200AD use the 'ek' form and P46 uses the earlier form then that is both strong evidence both that P46 is earlier and that scribes were happy to change the forms even for sacred texts.

FWIW, it is axiomatic here at Infidels that early Christians would change and forge anything they bloody well pleased which would also defeat your counter argument, although I'm sure you are too sensible to buy into Infidels orthodoxy.

So at the moment Kim is on strong ground for a dating of 125 +/- 25 years.

This actually tells us nothing we didn't already know as 2 Peter, written about this period, assumes that Paul's letters exist as a corpus. It might deal with some of the wilder Pauline interpolations theories though...

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Jedi Mind Trick

Is it just Hebrews?

Bede

It contains most of the Pauline Corpus except the Pastorals but including Hebrews.

B

andrewcriddle

FWIW Metzger in 'Text of the New Testament' third edition pages 265-266 is highly sceptical about Kim's proposed dating of P46.

Apart from the question of whether a collection of Paul's epistles was in wide circulation before the end of the 1st century, P46 has a highly developed system of nomina sacra that probably links it to late 2nd century or later texts.

Andrew Criddle