PhilosopherJay

Hi Julian,

I've been going to bed too late again. Yes, Carbon.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Stephen,

This is a very valid and sharp criticism. It would tend to negate the idea that Constantine specifically ordered this text.


However, the possibility of scribes purposefully using older handwritings still remains. Multiple copies in different 2nd/3rd century handwritings or a carbon dating test would eliminate that possibility quite forcefully.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Julian

The problem is that paleographic dating is just about as accurate as Carbon-14 dating. They both give a rough estimate and a margin of error and both achieve about the same amount of accuracy. Where there are wildly divergent opinions, like Kim's dating of P46, carbon-14 dating could probably resolve the issue. It could also resolve any issues regarding dating P46 after Eusebius. In the case of P46 it is rather surprising that it hasn't been done seeing how modern C14 dating techniques require very little material and P46 is a substantial manuscript. A tiny snippet taken away wouldn't hurt it any.

Julian

Toto

From the quote I gave above from Doughty, it appears that paleography cannot date this more accurately than to the 3rd c.

Darrel Doughty: This appears to be a case where the earliest date has been chosen, rather than a middle date. If P46 does date to the late 3rd century, Eusebius is still in the running.

Catholic Enc. on Eusebius

Accurate, of course.

But did Eusebius think of this by himself? He could well have picked up this idea from someone earlier - say Pamphilus.

Toto

BTW, Jay - on p 501 of your book, you make a common mistake with the phrase "untimely born." It does not mean that Paul was born too late to see Jesus in the flesh. The word in the original Greek is ektrwma, and means "miscarriage" or born too early.

See comments in Will Durant and Jesus' Historicity

There are also comments from Andrew Criddle in The post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus

PhilosopherJay

Hi Toto,

Thanks for noting this. "Miscarrriage" works for me here.

In most cases, my arguments do not depend on specific word translations, so I just went with the RSV or even the King James translations because of their popularity.

Occassionally, I find one bible translation hits an important point that the others miss, but then it'll be totally misleading on another passage. So translation can be quite a problem, but in EVOCC I did try to avoid arguments that turned on unusual translations of words or passages and stuck to the most common translations.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

darstec

Why do you say paleographic dating is about as accurate as Carbon 14 dating? Good forgers can accurately duplicate earlier writing styles. In fact, that is the whole point of forgery, to pretend to be something else and from someone else other that what it in reality is.

My guess as to why most of those early documents are NOT tested is that their owners have a vested interest in them being early rather than late.

mountainman

Another aspect directly related to the above that might be considered
by the future students of the history of antiquity is this. The work of
Origen on the OLD hexapla brought to those who studied Origen (ie:
Eusebius) the immediate understanding of the value of tabulated data,
which in todays terminology may be easily seen to be the equivalent of
rudimentary database-like technology. That it, it enabled people to
manage large numbers of concurrently operating threads, and to cross
reference events and other data, with relative ease.

The cohesiveness of extensive Eusebian interpolation is effectively
managed by this Origen inspired invention of tabulated data, or did
Philo (or indeed another ancient author) have priority on the presentation
of "tabulated data"?

Appreciate your thoroughness Philosopher Jay.
Thanks for the interesting analysis.
Best wishes,



Pete Brown
www.mountainman.com.au

judge

Quite correct, these conclusions are "generally accepted" but should be viewed with much suspicion as there is no evidence that the OS predate the peshitta.

In fact even though Aprahat quotes the peshitta and we have no evidence whatsoever for the OS before this time it is still "generally accepted" that the OS are earlier.

Curious isn't it?

Why is sometning generally accepted without any evidence? This is expected of religious folk,but not from scholars.

The problem is that rethinking these ideas might require a re-thinking of all NT criticism.

This might be frightening to scholars who earn their living and prestige from the study of Nt greek.

It is intersting that consenssus was that Tobit was originally penned in greek too, before the discovery an Aramaic version.

Julian

Well, I don't read syriac so it is hard for me to form my own conclusions. The arguments I have seen from William Petersen, Tjitze Baarda, Bruce Metzger and Bart Ehrman have been rather convincing. It does seem that the date of the Peshitta is hard to pin down but they give some decent reasons for putting it later than Tatian's and the Old Syriacs. Even if we put the Peshitta ahead of sy^c and sy^s there is no way it can be reasonably placed before the Diatessaron.

I find your arguments unconvincing. The experts tell me that Aphrahat did not quote the Peshitta and I will have to go with that being unable to read it for myself. Saying that scholars are "frightened," a weak argument that you have used before, makes me think that you have no case. I will be happy to start a thread on this but all I will be able to do is quote the experts and add a little of my own stuff.

Julian