Johnny Skeptic

http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papy...nuscripts.html

The article is by Peter van Minnen. Another article at http://www.cirs-tm.org/researchers/r...ers.php?id=751 shows that van Minnen is a distinguished papyrologist and ancient historian.

Comments please.

Petergdi

It looks pretty good, but there was nothing "mere" about £100,000 sterling for the Sinaiticus in 1933 when many people were doing ok with incomes of £200/year and many others were making do with less. It was a serious amount of money to pay the Soviet Union for it at the time.

Peter.

rhutchin

It says, "Until the nineteenth century New Testament scholars and translators availed themselves only sparingly of other manuscripts. Then, within a fairly short period, a number of manuscripts of superior quality became available, mainly thanks to the work of the German scholar Constantin Tischendorf."

In reality, people who have read the copies say that they are of extremely poor quality containing gross errors throughout.

spamandham

I'm certainly no expert on paleography or on papyri, but I don't see anything implausible in the link.

Clivedurdle

Is there a general problem because of the assumption of a last common ancestor?

What if these are open source products or mass produced? Who says there is an original?

yalla

From the link in the OP:
"For about sixty years now a tiny papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John has been the oldest "manuscript" of the New Testament. This manuscript (P52) has generally been dated to ca. A.D. 125. This fact alone proved that the original Gospel of John was written earlier, viz. in the first century A.D., as had always been upheld by conservative scholars." [My emhasis]

I'm not sure I would accept such a confident assertion that P52 can be dated so specifically or so early.
There has been discussion here previously and authoritive sources have differed in their dating by a fair margin.
The date of c125CE seems partly to be 'chosen' so as to justify the rest of the assertion above, namely ".. proved that the original Gospel of John was written earlier, viz. in the first century A.D., as had always been upheld by conservative scholars."

rizdek

The following isn't just directed to you, rather anyone here wishing to inform me.

What about this?

"How do we know these manuscripts are so very early? How do we know their dates for certain? Some of you may think "scientific" tests on the physical structure of the papyrus may yield such dates. In fact they cannot, because such tests are very inaccurate. No, we can date papyrus manuscripts, any manuscript for that matter, simply by looking at the way it is written. Handwriting is a product of human culture and as such it is always developing. Differences in handwriting are bound to appear within one generation. Just compare the handwriting of your parents with your own. Or look at your own scribblings of a few years ago. It is the same handwriting as today but an expert, a paleographer, can distinguish not unimportant differences. He cannot establish the exact date but he can confidently place one handwriting in the 30's and another in the 80's. Even printed texts can easily be dated according to the outward appearance of the type or font used by the printer."

Do they tend to use "the way (structure of the letters, punctuation, writing styles in general, I am assuming) it was written" to date text? That sound like an interesting science. When they say the tests to age papyrus are "very inaccurate" do they mean relative to the precision they are trying to achieve?

And this:

"Even within the period that runs from c. A.D. 100-300 it is possible for paleographers to be more specific on the relative date of the papyrus manuscripts of the New Testament. For about sixty years now a tiny papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John has been the oldest "manuscript" of the New Testament. This manuscript (P52) has generally been dated to ca. A.D. 125. This fact alone proved that the original Gospel of John was written earlier, viz. in the first century A.D., as had always been upheld by conservative scholars."

Is that how it's done? Someone finds a bit of script that contains a few of the words that are found in some later manuscripts that come to called the gospel of John and concludes that the entire book had been written in its entirety by that date? That proves it? I know nothing of these things but that sounds equivocal. Is it because the whole thing (book of John) "hangs together so well" that they don't acknowledge the possibiilty that what they found, the bit of script was just that, some notes jotted down by someone trying to recall a story they they had just heard, and as that person wanders about, they hear more stories, so they jot them down, etc. and then even later someone collects them all and viola, we have an entire book. And then, because some of what is written in these bits of script seems to be about/by someone called John, they decide the entire thing must have been written by John? Or perhaps the person that eventually collects and compiles these bits of manuscripts, the editor as it were, knew someone who knew someone who knew someone named John who claimed to be a follower of said Messiah/cult leader, so somehow the document his is compiling comes to be called the gospel of John.

Just wondering.

edit: I see Valla raised similar questions while I was composing my post.
second edit...hah, post 999

Huon

The article by Peter van Minnen is dated 1990.
The article by Brent Nongbri is dated 2005.

JoeWallack

JW:
Jesus guys, we've already gone over this. Nongbri has demonstrated that P52 could be as late as early 3rd century. His related article:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action...17816005000842

shows based on comparison that P52 looks just as much as late 2nd and early 3rd century papyri as it does earlier ones. Asserting only that P52 matches early 2nd century papyri is Apologetics. It does, but it also matches much later papyri. Moses, I showed you how the game is played. This is your wake-up call. Wake up.

The other serious problem is there is no quality external evidence for such an early date as demonstrated by:

The Papias Smear, Changes in sell Structure. Evidence for an Original 2nd Cent Gospel

van Minnen's credibility has been impeached and he is useless as a supposed authority since every thing he says now needs to be checked.



Joseph

ErrancyWiki

Toto

It does appear that P52 can rule out a 4th century date with some reasonable probability.