dost

Hello.

I wish to know what are the EARLIEST manuscripts of: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Their dates and contents. Just their earliest manuscripts, nothing else.

If there is an article which presents the earliest manuscripts of all New Testament books, then let me know.

Finally, this is a claim I came across while surfing the net:

"The Lukan papyrus, situated in a library in Paris has been dated to the late 1st century or early 2nd century, so it predates the John papyrus by 20-30 years (Time April 26, 1996, pg.8)."

http://debate.org.uk/topics/history/bib-qur/bibmanu.htm

Any comments on this claim? I thought the earliest New Testament fragment was p52, which can be dated anywhere between 125-180 AD.

Elsewhere, it is claimed that:

"we have copies of the NT which date approximately 15-20 years after the authors of scripture originally penned the autographs."

http://www.answering-islam.org/Shamoun/documents.htm

As far as I knew, there were no New Testament manuscripts from the 1st century, fragmentary evidence after the mid second century, and substantian evidence only from the 3rd century and onwards. So the gap from the original was enormous. Given the fact that almost all variants are said to to have arisen before the end of the 2nd century, it was only logical to think that the present texts still contain significant corruptions, since we have no manuscript evidence from the 1st century. Was I wrong?

Peter Kirby

That's weird. This is the first time I've crossed such a claim. There were issues of Time magazine on April 22 and April 29 of 1996, but not April 26. In any case, Time magazine is not a valid source for a paleographical argument! The web page doesn't even give the papyrus number of the Lukan fragment. I consider it to be a fabrication.

best,
Peter Kirby

Peter Kirby

Regarding the alleged NT mss. at Qumran:

http://www.bible.org/docs/soapbox/7q5.htm
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~petersig/thiede2.txt
http://www.depts.drew.edu/jhc/theide.html

A description of the papyri is found here:

http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn/ManuscriptsPapyri.html

A comprehensive table of Greek NT mss.:

http://www.earlham.edu/~seidti/iam/table_gkmss.html

If you are looking for the actual texts of the earliest Greek manuscripts, treated individually instead of in an apparatus (a running text of the NT noting variations in different mss.), then you could use The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts if you have knowledge of Greek.

best,
Peter Kirby

dost

Thanks for the links Peter.

I came across two more articles examining Thiede' claims:

http://www.bowness.demon.co.uk/thiede.htm

http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Tyndale...Head/P64TB.htm

Are the following late or early second century fragments:

P32, P64, P67, P4, P66, P90, P98, P104 ?

Unfortunately the papyri link does not state if these are late or early second century.

I am a little confused, for example, P32 is said to be "c. 200 CE." http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Bib...t/Mss/P32.html

Isn't 200 CE = 3rd century? Just as 100 CE is the second century or 450 CE is mid 5th century?

At another place, P66 is said to be "ca. 200" http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/t...pyri-list.html

Is that supposed to mean the 3rd century or late second century?

I know these might appear very silly questions, but I am really confused with the datings...

thanks again!

Peter Kirby

As far as I know, all of these papyri are dated using paleography. This involves looking at the shape of the Greek letters and comparing them to other papyri of known date. It is known that these shapes change over time. But it is pure folly to say "this was written in the year 200 CE." Paleography has a minimum span of fifty years. So, for example, Schnelle says that we shouldn't date p52 to 125 CE but rather to the period 100-150 CE. So, "c. 200" means "late second or early third century." (Others might say that the minimum span is even longer, so that it would be normal to find a manuscript described as "5th-6th century" as a date.)

None of those other fragments are affirmed to date before 150 CE, although I suppose it is possible that one or two actually was written in the first half of the second century.

Finally, since 1 CE is the first year of the era, 100 CE is in the first century, and the first year of the second century is 101 CE. Likewise, the first year of the third century is 201 CE.

best,
Peter Kirby

dost

Thank you again Peter

What is the "Magdalene Ms (Matthew 26) "? Is this also supposed to be one of those alleged Qumran NT fragments, or is this a different fragment?

Peter Kirby

Here is an article:

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~petersig/...xt.final.reply

best,
Peter Kirby

dost

Thanks Peter. The links have been extremely helpful and informative.

As I read on the manuscripts of the New Testament, I note that the earliest witnesses are quite fragmentary. There is no mss evidence from the first century, and perhaps only two papyri, p52 and p90, are securely placed within the second century. The rest are either late second-early third century, or even later.

I have also come across numerous statements, such as those by Helmut Koester, that the texts underwent most changes in the first decades of their transmission. We have no mss from this period. So is it not logical to suppose that the texts, those of the gospels, are more than likely to contain all sorts of major interpolations and deletions? Afterall, we know that the scribes did make major alterations to the texts, such as the longer ending of Mark, the woman taken in adultery in John - interpolations of 2nd century. And if the period before this was more chaotic, then how can one a priori dismiss the possibility of similar interpolations within the texts? Though many scholars admit that at the earliest times, the Christians, believing they were filled with the spirit, casually altered the Gospel texts, many still conclude that the restored texts are "generally authentic". How can one arrive at this conclusion? I know Metzger, an authority, believes the texts are generally authentic, so do others. But what is the reasoning behind this conclusion? Is this belief based upon scholarly arguments or is it based upon faith?

What is your view (and other readers) on this?

Also, I have not been able to locate this information, but is there any site that tells us how many manuscripts we have for individual NT writings? For example, how many manuscripts are there of Revelation, 1, II Peter, Jude, Pastoral Epistles, Acts etc?

Peter Kirby

Let's take the Gospel of John as an example.

As you note, p52 and p90 are small fragments of the second century from the Gospel of John.

Papyrus Bodmer II (p52) is dated "around 200 C.E." and contains most of John's Gospel (including verses from every chapter).

The third century papyri agree with the p52 on the level of verses (i.e., they don't add verses, drop verses, or contain significantly different content at such a level). As with all manuscripts, of course, there are variations, most of them unintentional, some of them intentional, but none of them qualifying as "interpolations" or large deletions. Which is to say, we do know that the Gospel of John had only one recension in the third century and all later centuries. (You can see other papyri here. You can also compare it with the codexes such as Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, as well as the patristic cites here.)

Now, suppose there were two very different versions of John circulating in the mid second century: the church at Rome had one version, while the church at Alexandria had another. It stands to reason that we would inherit representatives of both. There was no centralized Christian power in the first three centuries that could monitor the transmission of texts. And in the fourth century, when the patristic literature explodes in volume (with plenty of internicene dispute and dispute with "heretics"), and when we get many more complete manuscripts (in the fourth and fifth centuries), there is no trace of any type of cover-up with regard to the essential text of the four Gospels.

What this implies (in my mind) is that a version of the Gospel of John was published (i.e. it began to be copied in the Christian world at large) in the second century (possibly late 1st) that consisted of basically the same contents we have now. Text critics who work only with variations/additions/deletions attested in the manuscript evidence are well-equipped to get close to what this published version looked like. This is probably the most rigorous of the New Testament disciplines, as the text critic is limited to the readings he can find and has guidelines that make a majority of the decisions convincing enough to achieve consensus.

Of course, what went on before this "published" version of the Gospel of John is open to debate. It is possible even to sidestep any such discussion by classifying any earlier recension a "source" and saying that you (generic "you") are not concerned with source criticism but with the text that we have, as it is the only text we know for sure to have existed. Or one can posit a variety of theories, all of which have been proposed for the Gospel of John:

1. The Gospel of John depends on Mark (and maybe Luke or Matthew) and largely invents the rest of its material.
2. The Gospel of John has a source document for the miracle tradition (a "signs source"). Also proposed are a passion narrative source and (according to Bultmann) a discourse source (although this last is widely discredited).
3. The Gospel of John had numerous rearrangments (either of lines or perhaps of leafs in a codex).
4. The Gospel of John had a redactor who added material (such as the 21st chapter).
5. The Gospel of John was the eyewitness memoir of John, son of Zebedee.
6. And so on...

...speculation is much easier when trying to discern the "prehistory" of the Gospel of John. The text as we have it, though, is what has been the object of interpretation for centuries. It seems to be a Protestant view that "only the 'original text' is the sacred scripture." For example, the RCC regards the longer ending of Mark to be canonical, but Catholic scholars may regard it as an addition to the main text of Mark.

So, is there a text of the Gospel of John? Maybe there is more than one: what can be reconstructed with text criticism of existing manuscripts, and what we consider to be the sources behind it. And perhaps even what has been loaded on top of the Gospel of John in the intervening centuries; the story of the woman accused of adultery has always been popular, and you could surprise the average man in the pew by telling him that it isn't in the Bible.

best,
Peter Kirby

Amlodhi

Hi Peter,

Of course, you meant to say (p66) in the above statement.


Do you mean p66 here also?


As you mentioned, p52 is a very small fragment. As such, it is difficult to discern anything at all in regard to it's textual affiliations. The fragment itself is only about 9 cm. by 6 cm. (at its widest) and contains only about 104 +/- legible letters. Although p52 is listed as representing 5 verses, these verses are very fragmented and must be conjecturally reconstructed. The actual fragment looks like this:



And, front & back, would read basically like this, (in rough transliteration):

recto:

OIIOYDAI[..] HME[.........................]
OYDENA INA O L[.........................] -
IIEN XHMAINW[.............................] -
TNHXKEIN IX[................................] -
RION O P[.....................................]
KAI EIP[........................................] -
[..]IO[.....

verso:
[.............................]TO G[ ]NN[ ]AI
[.........................]XMON INA MARTY
[.................................]THX ALHTE[.]
[..................................]LEGEI AYTO
[...........................................TOYT[.]
[.......................................]TOYX I[..]
[..............................................]MI[..]



p90 is 15 cm. by 6 cm., representing 2 verses of John. It is badly damaged and contains only a part of a single leaf, with many of the extant letters illegible and any reconstruction highly conjectural. Though (I think) there is actually too little text available here to categorize, the one comparative study I have read reported the following percentages of agreement between p90 and the following later manuscripts:

p90>> p66 - percent agreement - 45%
p90>> Sinaiticus - 64%
p90>> Alexandrinus - 9%
p90>> Vaticanus - 27%


p66 - Aland lists p66 as "free text", which is described as having a greater degree of variation than what he terms "normal text" (whatever that is). In the "text family" assignment, p66 has most often been categorized as Alexandrian, however, in many sections it should more likely be considered a "polyglot". For instance, in John 1 - 14, p66 shows agreement with the modern TR 47.5% of the time, with Sinaiticus 44.6%, and with Alexandrinus (MT) 45.6%.

There are many variant readings in p66 and some scholars have also seen a docetic/gnostic element. Some of the variants are:

p66 Jn. 1:18 reads "only begotten God" instead of "only begotten Son".

p66 Jn. 3:13 omits the phrase ". . . even the Son of man which is in heaven".

p66 Jn. 5:4 entire verse omitted, "For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water; whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had".

p66 Jn. 7:53 - 8:11, (as you also mentioned), the story of the adulteress, is completely omitted.

p66 Jn. 19:5 omits the sentence, "And Pilate saith unto them, 'Behold, the man' ".


As such, I'm not sure that I am understanding what you intend in saying that, ". . .we do know that the Gospel of John had only one recension in the third century and all later centuries." It seems to me that p52 and p90 are far too small and fragmentary to discern any significant content. P66 then, would be our earliest substantial witness to the gospel of John.

Yet, apparently, later manuscripts do indeed exhibit significant and theologically motivated alterations to this (p66) text. Are you then saying that p66, being our single earliest substantial witness, is more likely to reflect the original contents of an autograph than the later recensions?

As I do respect your considered opinion, can you clarify your position on this for me?


Thanks in advance,

Amlodhi