Toto

Roger Bagnall's "Early Christian Books in Egypt" (or via: amazon.co.uk) is reviewed here. The book touches on several areas that are frequently part of the discussion here.

Chapter 1 online

archibald

Judging by the review, this sounds like a very interesting book. I've only just skimmed the 1st chapter, but that looks good as well.

Another ancient historian applying the best, evidence/scientific-based historiographical methodologies to this particular subject seems like good news to me.

Well worth posting. :thumbs:

Unfortunately, at 25 dollars for 90 pages (the first 24 of which are free online already) I may not buy. Recession and all that, don't you know.

But I am thinking that the review and the first chapter alone would make an interesting basis for discussion here, should anyone be inclined.

Vorkosigan

Thanks Toto.

tanya

Yes, I do know.

That's another reason, why, in my opinion, it makes more cents to purchase his newer (November 2011) Handbook of Papyrology, at 50 dollars for 700 pages (a book which he edited, with contributions from a couple dozen folks)....

I have got my eye on chapters 17, 18, 25, & 26 (or via: amazon.co.uk), in particular.

50$ sounds like a bargain....

archibald

It does.

Though I may wait for a sloppy purchaser to sell a used version, with jam and chocolate-stained pages, for $2.99, not least because the jam and chocolate may provide bonus nutritional value.

yalla

I'm surprised this thread is drawing so little attention and comment.

Bagnall's book appears to be a very strong attack on the standards and integrity of many christian scholars.

I say 'appears' because I am judging from the several reviews and a quick read of the online Ch. 1 which I cannot find since my original quick look .

Bagnall appears to have a strong reputation in this field and his criticisms against the relevant christian scholarship are, to my mind, a damning indictment of such.

This, the only quote I was able to preserve from my quick visit to Ch 1. [my bolding]:

"The narrowness of much of it has permitted its practitioners to reach conclusions that I believe are profoundly at odds with fundamental social realities of the ancient world and with basic probability; and the lack of a self-critical posture has been particularly damaging in that it has tended to allow problematic assumptions, interests, agendas, and desires to escape being made explicit.”

is extremely harsh.
It is rare for an academic to publicly lash other academics in terms such as these [privately maybe but not in a published book and not from a member of the authoritive elite] and I would expect it to have excited some response in the relevant academic fields.

Worth keeping an eye on to see what develops.

DCHindley

yalla,

I got the impression from the RBL review, and the 1st chapter, that he feels that too many text critics are in a bubble about Christian oriented papyri, dating the hands early on the basis of flawed comparables and ignoring the later hands that have more similarities, and then these datings get used to reinforce other datings as if they are more secure than they really are.

Imagine, biblical critics in a bubble. Impossible! :melodramatic:

DCH

andrewcriddle

Based entirely on the RBL review I get the impression that Roger Bagnall may be arguing that since there were many more Christians reading and copying Christian texts in the 3rd century CE than in the 2nd century one should prefer 3rd century dates to 2nd century when the palaeographical evidence is inconclusive in itself.

Andrew Criddle

DCHindley

I guess it would help if we included links to the reviews we are referencing. Archibald found a link to two reviews, but there is a second link to a third review as well.

Andrew, were you referring to the review by Larry Hurtado (1/19/10)?

He says

In support of his contention that the widely accepted number of second-century Christian papyri is too high, Bagnall points to the slightly later dates [about 50 years] of early papyri assigned by the great papyrologist/palaeographer Eric Turner, rightly observing that Turner’s expertise was unsurpassed."

However, he minimizes the significance of these later dates when he says, in parentheses

It must be noted, however, that in general Turner’s dates differ by only a few decades, e.g., dating several items to the early/mid-third century instead of the late second century.

Hurtado definitely is not impressed with Bagnell's chapters that support his preference for 3rd century dates on the basis of the cost of production of books or estimates of early Christian population in Egypt. He complains that the cost estimates are centered on what elite households would experience, not the experience of private copiers, who often resorted to reused materials. He reject's Bagnall's suggestion that on the basis of the use of the Jewish practice of using nomina sacra, Christians may well have adopted the codex as their preferred form from Jewish practice, noting there is essentially zero evidence for Jewish use of the codex in the 1st four centuries CE.

So, in the end, Bagnall does not really offer any new light on Christian preference for the codex and seems more concerned to challenge the view that Christian preference may have contributed to the wider adoption of the codex evident in the fourth century and later. He may have a point on this latter question, and it will be interesting to see how the debate progresses hereafter.

However, I was referring to the review by Allen Kerkeslager, (10/7/11)

Chapter 1 introduces the focus on methodology by citing discomfort with the “excessively self-enclosed character and absence of self-awareness” in research on early Christian literature.

Chapter 2 provides two case studies demonstrating the tendency of specialists in early Christian literature to subjugate inferences verifiable through tangible paleographic evidence to a priori confidence in unverifiable statements made by ancient Christian authors. At one extreme are Carsten Thiede’s sensationalist arguments that a Magdalen papyrus of Matthew (P64) should be dated early enough to rehabilitate the reliability of Matthew itself. Bagnall adduces Thiede’s “parody” (48) of scholarship to highlight similarities with methods used in more respectable studies of the Shepherd of Hermas. Bagnall recommends that tendentiousness in dating manuscripts be controlled by requiring a broad consensus and more numerous and precise paleographic parallels (49).

Kerkeslager is far more supportive than Hurtado of Bagnall's estimate of the cost of book production (analysis of Egyptian papyrus remains and socioeconomic issues related to their production is something he is well known for) and criticism of the rise of codex use in Roman times being due to their use by a supposedly rapidly expanding Christian population.

Bagnall’s charge that even Thiede’s idiosyncrasies can be used to illustrate methodological flaws endemic to the field of early Christian literature is hardly unique. But the impact of similar criticisms has been minimal. Too many scholars have built careers on applying forms of literary criticism to promote untestable speculation about how early Christian literature preserves remnants of “oral traditions” and “lost sources” generated by imaginary “communities.” It is almost routine to assign these imaginative constructs to dates as early as possible before the actual documents from which they are inferred. As in the case of Thiede, this habit is typically motivated by a wish to find support for a preferred view of the origins of Christianity. This motive is not easily resisted because the intangibility of hypothetical documents invites self-authenticating circularity. This conditions practitioners to extend this compartmentalized approach to the dating of more tangible papyrus remains of early Christian literature.

There is a third, by Stephan Witetschek, but in German (6/14/11). I ran some of it through Google translator but would feel embarassed to attempt to comment on it.

DCH

andrewcriddle

Hi David

Sorry; I was referring to the Kerkeslager review which is the one linked in Toto's OP. I didn't realize there were 2 reviews in the RBL.

Hurtado's review confirms that Bagnall is making an (IMHO dubious) argument from intrinsic probability to prefer 3rd century dates to 2nd century dates.

Andrew Criddle