gnosis92

I've heard it claimed (i.e Josh McDowell) that radical skeptics were dating the Gospels to late second to third century, hundreds of years after the supposed events.

A piece of the Gospel of John, Ryland papyrus P53 has been found in Onyxxfrus Egypt, and dated around 120-150CE.

I call the following the fossil approach

One way to date the Gospels that would be "scientific" and quantitative would be, how many copies of John's Gospel were circulating, in order that that fragment be present in Egypt, based on similar documents, and how long would it take to copy such a document by hand, and how many people were doing the copying, and how expensive is the papyrus and how many people could read and write, and how many would own it,

etc.


So if, for example, supposed there were 50000 copies of John's Gospel circulating in order that that one fragment be found in Egypt, and there were about say 50 people at the time writing it up, in order to reach 50, 000 copies at a rate of say 1500 new copies, with 500 old copies being destroyed, resulting in 1000 increase in copies, means that it has been around for about 50 years, so 120-50 = 70AD low end, 150-50=100CE high end.

etc

KeithJM

The problem with that is that those fragments were in codex form, which was newly introduced in Rome around 90C.E. according to Martial(38C.E.-103C.E.). It was quickly seized on by Christian scribes, but it did take time to propagate.

An actual scientific approach would be to date the material itself, which hasn't been done. So far, the "St. John's Fragment" has only been dated based only on it's handwriting, which, along with the fact that it was in codex form is what leads to the skepticism.

Gamera

My expertise is the late medieval period. I know in that period, the estimate is that a good illuminated vellum mss was worth about $30,000. Even if that's an overestimated, the point is well-scribed mss of any significant length were precious by any standard.

The price may have been mitigated in 1st century Judea due to the availability of papyrus paper. Paper was hard to get Europe and vellum was used instead up until about the 12th century when a paper industry arose.

mountainman

And rightfully so according to the precepts of
even the weakest forms of logical argument.

An historical foundation based upon the presumption
of a correctly dated handwriting recognition is
not what an objective historian would call secure.

rob117

On a related note, if papyrus was so expensive (and if the early Christians were mostly poor/lower class), how did they afford to write and copy the documents? Also, given the low level of literacy back then, who in the Christian community would be expected to read them?

I know Paul came from a literate, presumably middle-class background as he says he was schooled in Jewish law, and Luke was apparently a physician according to one of Paul's letters, but how common was this kind of demographic among the early Christian communities as a whole?

Elizabeth0618

Not all early Christians were poor and lower class. There were those who possessed wealth and shared what they had to support the early church.

For example, in Acts 16, Lydia, is referred to as a "dealer of purple cloth". Such cloth was expensive and valuable and a sign of nobility or royalty. So more than likely, she was probably a wealthy businesswoman. Early church tradition credits Lydia, along with Phoebe, with assisting and financing Paul's ministry.

The early church met in individual homes of affluent members - as they owned the larger of the houses. Corinth was a city of wealth, and Paul specifically addresses issues of money in his letters to the churches there (2 Cor. 8). Other churches such as Ephesus, Colosse and Laodocia were also affluent.

Most scholars believe Paul wrote his letters before the Gospels were penned, somewhere around 55 AD. So, judging by the information we see in Paul's epistles as well as early church history, it's safe to say that paper could easily be obtained by certain church members long before copies began to appear.

Roger Pearse

This would seem to be the case, up to 1936. See H. I. Bell, Recent Discoveries of Biblical Papyri Clarendon (1937), which alludes to one such study. (Other people can no doubt give better references).

T. C. Skeat's papers on papyri tended to be quantitative, and I recommend them. I agree in principle with you about sticking some numbers on things.

However I fear that you approach presumes greater numbers of papyrus fragments in existence than is actually the case. The numbers for all texts are so few as would render the above statistically unsound.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

On the other hand students made their own. Think of the pecia system. Low-grade mss were not particularly valuable in that period. That said, of course, the advent of printing reduced book prices to 20% of what they had been.

Paper mss in the west are all 15th century, as far as I know. (Greek mss start using paper in the 12th century). Parchment was a by-product of monastic farming of sheep, therefore limited in quantity, and Poggio Bracciolini's letters are full of instructions to try to get hold of some!

I don't believe that price was really a factor in antiquity to any important extent.

All the best,

Roger Pearse