Phlox Pyros

This is an oft repeated phrase that I find very misleading. It seems only to be mentioned when someone is attempting to diminish its importance as an ancient witness to the book of John.

First, when compared with other manuscripts of John, one may make out at least 30 words.

Second, when one takes spacing into account and reconstructs both front and back of the text, it becomes obvious that the text is significantly the same as that found in complete manuscripts of John 18.

Third, since part of the passion narrative is found on p52 and is significantly the same as that found in complete manuscripts, it is probable that it contained at the very least the passion narrative and plausible (if not probable) that it also contained the rest of the book of John as we know it.

Wikipedia is an interesting and informative website but not always the most credible of sources. People from this very forum have made and modified its entries, not necessarily experts and scholars. I, myself, have added information only to have it removed by ideologues who cannot stand information that goes against their views having any representation.

gregor

You'll excuse me if I am skeptical of your "probable" and "plausible" terms based upon 30 words. I think statistical analyses are inappropriate to unique items. It's no more probable that there is consistency than there is a great divergence of the remaining verses.

S.C.Carlson

That would be Brent Nongbri. I chatted with him a little bit at last year's SBL. He's now a grad student at Yale and a fairly sharp individual (like most grad students).

The positive contributions his article makes are threefold:

(1) He reviews the evidence behind the original dating of P52 by Colin Roberts to c. 150 and shows how later people tended to push the date earlier without adding new comparisons that are as good the original comparanda.

(2) One of the new comparisons he offers, P.Mich. inv. 5336, dated c. 152, is quite close to P52.

(3) He assembles the relevant comparanda in one convenient place for other people to check his work and/or build on it. (The comparison materials for paleography are too often spread throughout too many different publications.)

The criticisms I would have of the article are:

(1) No guts, no glory. In the end, he does not endorse much of a dating at all.

(2) I suspect his reticence in proposing a date is that he has a preference the later part of the range, but the evidence was not good for him to put it on record. The samples from the early third century are not as close to P52 as one would have to have them for a late date.

In sum, the main value of his investigation is a useful reminder back to Roberts' original work on P52 that we should not be overly precise. Supporting Roberts' original dating, in my view, is his new comparison material with P.Mich. inv. 5336. I would date P52, based on the materials he provided, to about 150 with a rather large margin of error. In the end, we're still very much where we began.

Stephen

Ben C Smith

The story of much NT scholarship, I fear.

Ben.

Phlox Pyros

LOL! I have to agree.

Phlox Pyros

Being skeptical can be good. No problem there.

P52 has quite a lot of information in it, actually. Note that the top margin of the manuscript page is preserved. From this, knowing the average sizes of papyrus sheets and the average line lengths, one can calculate what the manuscript would have looked like. You see, if there are large variants or variations in the text, then the "window" of text that we have in P52 would look different than other manuscripts. In other words, the text on back might be shifted much more or much less than we would expect. Since this manuscript fragment matches up with what we would expect, I would say it is "probable".

Finegan then goes on to show how to rescontruct the text of P52.

The manuscript was apparently discovered amongst many other biblical manuscripts, so it is "probably" another biblical manuscript.

Anyway, to me, all of this adds up to the "probability" of P52 being from a codex that contained the entire book of John.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Phlox,

Here is another relevent website: http://www.hypotyposeis.org/weblog/2005_08_01_arch.html


First, I find it misleading to say that P52 is a part of the Gospel of John without mentioning that it is a tiny fragment that appears to match somewhat five lines (out of 40) from chapter 18 of the 21 chapters of John.

Second, taking spacing into account, we do seem to be able to match the recto side pretty well with verses 31 to 33, assuming about 32/33 letters per line. However, the verso side which is supposed to be verses 37 and 38 does not appear to match as well. The author has to put in as many as 46 letters or as few as 25 letters in the space of 32/33 letters to make it match our current text. In other words, the words that should appear do not appear where they should, being either too late or too early to match our current text. So of the five lines, the letter spacing of three lines match well, but the letter spacing of the verso 2 lines appears not to match very well. You can go to http://rylibweb.man.ac.uk/data1/dg/text/frag3.htm and http://www.kchanson.com/ANCDOCS/greek/johnpap.html to check this out.


Thirdly,
As Ken Humphreys notes on his website JesusNeverExisted:


P52 'Rylands fragment' – 5 complete & 9 part-words on one side, 6 complete & 7 partial words on the other.
If we imagine 79 missing words we can derive a passage found in chapter 18 of John's Gospel (or the Gospel of Nicodemus for that matter)

The fragment may or may not match five lines (out of 40) in the 18th chapter of the gospel of John. The passage may or may not match five lines from the Gospel of Nicodemus. The passage may or may not match other gospels about Jesus. The passage may or may not match a Jewish source text that was later used to write the gospels about Jesus.

These considerations are in addition to the fact that the consensus of the scholarship now seems to place the paleography only at some time in the second century.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Phlox Pyros

Oops. You're correct.

I do not doubt that there have been many attempts to push it earlier. However, there have been several attempts lately to push it later, as well, which is hardly better.

Jack Finegan (granted he is "late" in the grand scheme of things) says:

On the conservative side, Phillip Comfort mentions that P.Berolinenses 6845 (ca. A.D. 100) bears the most significant resemblance.

Unfortunately, I only have the transcription portion of C.H. Roberts' book photocopied, so I don't have access to the rest. However, it seems that quite different claims are being made by Nongbri, Finegan and Comfort.

Nongbri seems to be saying that Roberts originally dated P52 to ca. 150 A.D. However, Finegan (in the quote above) cites Roberts in saying that the letters are most like dated manuscripts of A.D. 94 and 127 A.D. Comfort makes a similar claim to Finegan and states: "...P.Berolinenses 6845 is the closest parallel, in Robert's opinion."

Who is correct here?

If Roberts really wrote that the palaeography of P52 most closely resembles two early dated manuscripts, then why does Nongbri state otherwise?

This was a good contrubution. I have looked up one of the Oxyrhynchus papyrus mentioned by Comfort, but I have not found many of the others yet for comparison.

Well, everyone has their preferences, I suppose. However, this may definitely reveals something about the analysis. Why would he have a "preference" to date it later than Frederick Kenyon, H.I. Bell, Adolf Deissmann, and W.H.P. Hatch?

Currently, I consider 125 A.D. a nice moderate date between two extremes. However, I have talked over this with many people and never really looked at the comparison manuscripts in any great detail. This will challenge me to do so, and to get photocopies of them and place it all in a nice handy folder for when the subject comes up again. Sounds like a fun project.

Phlox Pyros

I would find this misleading, too, but it seems that the first thing many like to throw out instead of the fact that it is, in all likelyhood, a part of the Gospel of John is that "it's the size of a credit card and doesn't have more than 14 words". To me, it's kinda like presenting an aquaintance to someone and introducing them by saying "Hi, this is John... He's short and fat."

The variation is small, and the variants in this part of the text known. See my previous post as well as Jack Finegan's reconstruction.

That was about all I needed to tell me what kind of scholarship follows...

Does anyone have a comparison of the Greek of P52 with that of the Gospel of Nicodemus or other? The Gospel of Nicodemus may have been too late for this comparison, but I would have to look that up.

I can agree with this, as 125 A.D. is in the second century.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Phlox,

I am ordering Finnegan's book, but could you tell me if the reconstruction at http://www.kchanson.com/ANCDOCS/greek/johnpap.html matches Finnegan's reconstruction? If it differs, how does it differ? Thanks.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay