aa5874

There is P46 [the Pauline writings] dated by paleography to the mid 2nd-3rd century.

This dating of P 46 which is earlier than the Codex Sinaiticus may be the cause of the confusion [Chinese Whispers] where it is claimed the Pauline writings are the earliest sources when no part of the Canon or Pauline writings have been found and dated by paleography BEFORE C 70 CE.

The dating of P46 [the Pauline writings] from mid 2nd-3rd century is compatible with my theory that the Entire Canon was derived from sources that were composed AFTER the Fall of the Temple.

My theory EXPECTS that NO books of the Canon will ever be found and dated by paleography or carbon dated BEFORE c 70 CE.

So far my theory is SOLID. I cannot be contradicted unless actual evidence is found and dated.

The Entire Canon is derived from sources that were composed AFTER the Short-Ending gMark was written after c 70 CE.

[color=red] The Fall of the Temple was the event that caused the Jesus story to be written[/cor] so there can be NO mention of Jesus, the disciples and Paul before the Jewish Temple fell c 70 CE.

la70119

Really? Everything I've read was that only two MSS were carbon-dated, the gospel of Judas and one of the Nag Hammadi codices; but the canonical gospels and other NT documents were only dated paleographically.

Yes, I saw that. The way the dating paragraph is written, is very confusing. It talks about carbon-dating and paleography, but no mention of which canonical MSS were dated by Carbon-14, if any.
To me, it looks like someone edited it to sow confusion. Abe, was it you?

la70119

Well, it deserves to be trashed. A lot of the citations likely don't exist. The ones I tried looking for weren't there, or were in a different place with completely different meanings. This sort of dishonesty should be left to the NTJers and the HJers.

The Greek σωτήρ does mean saviour. It's the Latin soter that means sower. Again, the author of this piece was being dishonest. Now I wonder if the bust of the penis-nosed, rooster-headed "Saviour of the World" and the other bronze researched by Acharaya S were ancient digs at Christianity, conflating the Greek and Latin meanings of homonymic words in two different languages?

Toto

Actually, it is sator that means sower in Latin (as in the Sator square - still close enough for linguistic confusion.

Toto

The wikipedia section on the dating of NT manuscripts appears to have been added recently by a user called TheTruthWSYF (history)

aeebee50

Just because the writer of the article says he is a Dr. does not make his statements any better than anyone else. For some people, it is easy to attack than to just state the facts. Riccardo is too subjective.

Invisible 1

Wow, it looks like user thetruthwsyf has been putting his own little truth into wiki.

He added this under Biblical manuscript:

Although he does say he did to add support to the previous sentence.

But come on, every book? By AD 75?

DCHindley

Well, actually, in the right circumstances, the margin of error for paleography can be as small as a decade (these would be 11th century monastic hands). In the 1st to 2nd centuries CE it is about 50 years, and that is only for finds from Egypt, where lots of dated documents have been found whose hands can be compared to. The margin of error for C-14 testing in this period is apparantly between 150-300+ years, if our experience with the DSS means anything.

As for the early dating frenzy (it is as true of some of the Gospel of Thomas and Q scholars as it is for evangelical/fundamentalist Christians), The Magdaline papyrus (p64 specifically, buy from the same mss as p4 & p67) was dated by Carsten Peter Thiede to the middle of the 1st century based on the style of inscriptions from Italy and Greece, not manuscripts (earlier, Y.K. Kim dated p67 to the late first Century).

Scribal hands in manuscripts found in Egypt are closest in the mid 2nd through the early 3rdd century. The early dating is forced in the mss by supposing it originated in Italy in mid 1st century, and was somehow transmitted to Egypt by ship (either as a trade book to be sold in an Alexandrine bookshop, or carried by an individual Christian). Evangelical Christians are anxious to imply that this copy was so early it could have come from the author of Matthew himself and shows definitively that the words of Jesus must have been put to writing immediately after he uttered them! How different is this from Q/GoT critics who want to believe that the sayings of Jesus they contain were written down in the mid to late 1st century, because it confirms their belief that Jesus was a harmless libertine itinerant wisdom treacher around whose legend evil apocalyptic Jews wove the picture we find in the Gospels?

DCH

sotto voce

They can't both be Christians.

ApostateAbe

No, it wasn't me editing the Wikipedia page, but I was mistaken about the carbon dating. I had assumed wrongly. Sorry about that.