dost

Hello everyone.

I know that there are no NT manuscripts from the 1st century, however, I am a bit curious to know a little regarding the status 2nd century MSS. P52 is way too small to assess the status of the text in the early 2nd century. But besides this there are other Gospel manuscripts from the 2nd century. Do they contain siginicant portions of the NT or are they just small scraps here and there? Glen Miller writes:

"p45: 150-250ad; contains some (or all) of Mt 20, 21, 25, 26; Mr 4-9, 11-12; Lk 6-7, 9-14; Jn 10-11; Acts 4-17.
p46: 90-175ad; contains some (or all) of Rom 5-6, 8-16; all of I & II Cor, Gal, Eph., Philp., Col, I Thess 1,2,5; all of Hebrews.
p47: third century, contains Revelation 9:10-17.2
p66: 150-200 AD, contains almost all of the Gospel of John
p72: 200's, containing all of I & II Peter, Jude
p75: 175-200 AD, contains most of Luke 3-18, 22-24; John 1-15."

The above gives the impression that there are significant portions of the NT from the 2nd century. Is Miller correct or are these exagerrations? Further, Ehrman writes that our earliest manuscripts display remarkable variations, so much so that even conservative scholars concede that in the earliest period the text of these writings were in a state of flux, they were constantly changed by Christians who believed they were filled with the spirit. Do the above referred manuscripts present remarkable variations or are the variations found therein well within acceptable limits - that is to say that they are significantly the same as the present text?

Secondly, one argument that is raised by the defenders of Pauline authorship of the Pastorals is that if someone other than Paul authored them a long time after Paul, then why would he include an itenerary so different from Acts? Would he not be likely to follow Acts as closesly as possible in order to get his forged letters accepted? In response to this I can think of various apocryphal acts that proliferated in the 2nd and 3rd centuries that are quite different from what we find in Acts. For example the Acts of Paul and many other Acts attributed to John, Peter etc. Though these were later rejected, for a time they were quite popular among the masses. I would like to know whether the Acts of Paul contains Paul's travel itenerary significantly different from the canonical Acts or does it closely follow it, or whether it contains no itenerary at all?

Thanks

dost.

CX

There was a fairly lengthy discussion on MSS evidence from the first 4 centuries here