Ben C Smith

One of the articles in that book gives estimated transportation times between various ports of call around the Roman world. It establishes to my satisfaction that a fairly rapid dispersal of texts is possible; it does not, on its own, establish that such a quick dispersal actually took place. IOW, just because people could rapidly take texts across the empire does not necessarily entail that they did so; cultural barriers and protocols may be a factor.

However, I myself am under the impression that such a rapid transmission did often take place. The Bauckham book gives cogent reasons for thinking that the later evangelists knew of the efforts of the earlier ones (as indeed church tradition maintained in the case of the gospel of John, for example). And, as the patristic period begins to get underway sometime between Papias and Justin, it starts to become evident that virtually everybody knows the work of most of his predecessors. For example, Papias (in Asia) finds it possible to make inquiries as to the teachings of the disciples (not claiming that all such transmissions were accurate, but it shows that, however they originated, they got around); I think Justin (to Rome from Palestine) knew of Papias; Irenaeus (to Lyons from Asia via Rome) certainly knew of Justin; Tertullian (in Africa) knew of both Irenaeus and Justin.

The movement of some of the fathers would facilitate the movement of texts. As noted above, both Justin and Irenaeus moved from east to west. Origen moved from Alexandria to Caesarea. Various controversies (such as the quartodeciman argument) and church gatherings would also have facilitated the movement of texts.

This rule cannot, however, be pressed in all cases. Just because many texts found their way across the empire does not mean that all did. It is likely that some remained pretty much where they were written for a long time. I would wager that most of the ones considered valuable to the church (especially heresiological works and defenses of the faith, or apologies), however, found a wide audience.

Also, we can find genuine and very broad divides. For example, once the church took on a Greek side and a Latin side, this linguistic and cultural barrier slowed down the exchange of texts (Eusebius seems to have very little knowledge of Latin literature; he even knows the original Latin father Tertullian in Greek translation). I do not think the Syriac and Coptic sides of the church had a universal and free exchange of texts with the Latin church, though their interrelations with the Greek church seem more substantial.

As for the latest possible dates of the gospels themselves, based on patristic testimony, much depends upon explicit references to a written text in Papias, Barnabas, the Didache, Justin, and others. Much also depends on finding what appears to be evangelistic redactional material in some of the patristic parallels or allusions to gospel tropes or events; Ignatius refers to John baptizing Jesus so as to fulfill all justice, for example, and that sounds like Matthean redaction.

Ben.

Gamera

Thanks Ben. I haven read that book and need to.

I am wondering if, beyond mere transmission (which is limited by the transportation system of the time) the apparatus of copying also doesn't put time contraints on encorporating quotes.

The texts need not only to be dispersed from their place of origin, but first copied, then transported, then perhaps recopied to the "consumer", then reviewed, then encorporated into the new text, which is then copied. I take it we could caluculate some of these rates, given a rough knowledge of the manpower needed for each, and the manpower available at the time.

I doubt this would lead to earlier dates for any of the Christian Scriptures, since I suspect even the most onerous of tasks in transmitting these texts wouldn't take too much time. However, I was interested if anybody had studied this phenomenon in more well-documented limited-literacy culture (like Britain) before the printing press.