mountainman

Thanks Toto. Looks like an interesting read.

From the front page ....

PhilosopherJay

Hi Toto

Thanks for this Toto. I was intending to research this and this saved me a lot of time.

The book "the Canon Debate" edited by Edited by Lee Martin McDonald and James A. Sanders came out in 2002 with two articles supporting the Fourth Century dating of the MT. Here's a review

Here's a review of some of the relevant material in the book:

Geoffrey M. Hahneman, "The Muratorian Fragment and the Origins of the New Testament Canon" (405-15), continues the case against Ferguson, Henne, and Hill that the Muratorian Fragment represents a fourth-century text. He wonders how the terms "very recently, in our times," three words in Latin, could form the cornerstone of Hill's argument, and then proceeds to invalidate the argument on historical and internal grounds relating to the Shepherd of Hermas. Furthermore, the absence of lists before Eusebius and the abundance of them in the fourth and fifth centuries suggest that only then did a closed canon reach relative consensus.

On the other side we have:

Thus beside Grant mentioned in the Hill article, we have Albert C. Sundberg, Jr, Geoffrey M. Hahneman, John Barton, and Lee McDonald having reviewed the literature and coming out in favor of the Muratorium Canon as being from the Fourth Century. Hill and Balla seems to be the only ones upholding the old idea of it being Second century.

Since Hill's arguments seem ad hoc and Hahnerman has already answered them, I think we can take the Muratorium Canon off the list of Second Century documents and place it firmly in the Fourth century with all the other Canon lists. This makes logical sense rather than to imagine a canonical list being put out in 190 and nobody mentioning it again for well over 100 years and suddenly lots of people start talking about it in the 300's. The equivalent case would be finding a tiny fragment of paper talking about writing a constitution for the United States and dating it to 1625 solely based on it saying that people came over on the Mayflower in "our Time." Obviously there is no evidence that anybody contemplated a separate United States or a separate constitution in the 17th century. It makes sense to interpret "Our Time" in the broader sense of the last couple of hundred years. Likewise it makes sense to attribute the phrase as "Our Time" in the fragment to mean in post-Apostle times and not "in our lifetime." It is only through this illogical interpretation that the fragment can be placed in the Second century instead of with its brothers in the Fourth century.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

stephan huller

Nonsense. The accepted date is the late second century (I'd say third century) and the people you cite represent the aberration. Poll one hundred scholars and you'd likely find near unanimous dating to around the third century. Just keeping it real.

DCHindley

What a totally confused article. Wallace's discussion is fragmentary and out of coherent order. I think this has a bit to do with the interviewer, who seems to be over his head and just didn't clearly understand what Wallace was saying.

Using my peep stones, I have deciphered the part of this exchange that precedes the part you quote. I've repositioned some fragments and added glosses to clarify what appears to have been the intended meanings:

HH: I’ve got to tell you, Professor, you turned a lot of heads when you alluded in your recent debate with Bart Ehrman to a new manuscript, or fragment of a manuscript concerning the Gospel of Mark. I know you’ve got scholarly restrictions on what you can and cannot say, but can you tell the audience what you’re allowed to disclose about that?

DW: I’ll be happy to. First of all, there is a fragment of Mark, and it’s a very small fragment, not too many verses, but it’s definitely from Mark. And the most amazing thing about this is that it’s from the 1st Century. This is the first [to be so dated, if the dating stands]. And it’s dated by one of the world’s leading paleographers, whose name I’m not allowed to reveal yet. It will be published in a book with six other manuscripts that are either probably or definitely from the 2nd Century in about a year from now.

And this is very, very exciting news, frankly. To have a fragment from one of the Gospels that’s written during the lifetime of some of the eyewitnesses to the resurrection is just astounding. We don’t have any other New Testament manuscripts that are written within the same century that the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament were written in.

HH: Now when you say verses, can you tell us how many verses are in the fragment?

DW: Well, not really.

So all of our papyri are fragmentary because of the nature of the material, and because of the age of the material. There’s [i.e., there are papyrus] leaves [that have been found] that just got eaten away or just eroded.

I can say we [textual critics, on one hand,] have fragments, [where] some of our fragments are so small that it might be part of one verse.

This [fragment] is bigger than that [that is, a few letters of a verse]. But this [fragment of Mark] is one leaf, I should say, or part of one leaf. So it can’t be [i.e., have] very many verses on it. [By saying this Wallace has just admitted that he has no idea which verses are represented in this fragment, only knowing it is part of one leaf of a papyrus codex.]

And we [on the other hand also] have some of these early papyri, this [one] is [also] on papyrus, that are as much [i.e., as large] as, well, P-46, which is our oldest manuscript [ca 200+/-50], or [I should say now] was our oldest manuscript for Paul’s letters, [a papyrus codex that] has nine of Paul’s letters in it almost intact. That’s a pretty large papyrus.

…

HH: Now why is it taking so long [to publish these new papyrus fragments], Professor Wallace? And is there a threat of the repeat of the Dead Sea Scrolls fiasco, where it took forever to get the scrolls out?

DW: That’s a great question, but no, that is not the situation we’re facing here. Of course, you’re dealing with hundreds and hundreds of scrolls among the Dead Sea manuscripts. Here [in this particular case], we’re dealing with seven [manuscripts]. It’s a matter of getting various scholars to be doing the [necessary] work on it.

And to do the work of paleography, which is dating the [papyrus] manuscript [of Mark], and we need to get more than one scholar who has done this [dating by means of paleography], even though the paleographer who has done it [i.e., the initial dating of the Mark fragment] has a remarkable reputation, we [still] need to get several paleographers to date it [as well]. And the [authenticity of the] manuscript [itself] needs to be truly vetted, or fully vetted [as to provenance and history of possession]. Once it gets published, you’ll [surely then] get a number of discussions all over the scholarly world about it.

But just to prepare a manuscript for publication that is this significant, the scholar has to measure each letter, and compare them to all the other letters. So if you have alpha or beta, you have to look at all of the betas and see how tall they are, how wide they are, and are they written the same way [or show variations]. That gives us information about the date [through comparison with dated papyri], and it gives us information about the hand, whether it’s a professional [literary book] hand or what’s called a documentary hand, [that is,] somebody who’s not trained as a professional [scribe of literary works], but at least can write this stuff out accurately [that is, make a fair copy]. All those things are very, very important. And it helps us with a number of things [i.e., peculiarities related to legibility and wording/spelling/orthography] on that manuscript.

Not just that, but we have to look [closely at] the fibers of the papyrus [to see if they are hiding parts of, or distorting, the inked letters], and sometimes, they’re [i.e., the letters are] not easy to see. You have fibers on one side, because papyrus leaves were laid out horizontally, and then the back side, they put more leaves that were stamped out vertically. And then they would naturally adhere to each other [to make each sheet of papyrus].

And [one characteristic of] our New Testament manuscripts, which I think is really interesting, [is that] these early papyri were written on both sides, both the horizontal lines or the horizontal fibers, and the vertical fibers. And that [practice of writing on both sides of the papyrus] was not what we find in the rest of the ancient world [which mainly used papyrus rolls written on only the horizontally oriented side].

HH: I’m talking with Professor Daniel Wallace of Dallas Theological Seminary. Professor, has your paleographer been able to date it within a decade? I know it has to go through additional confirmation, additional scholarly comparison and contrasting, but the original paleographer, has he come up with [whether the date] it’s [i.e., is] the 80 AD, or 70 AD? [This is a little confused, probably because the interviewer is not familiar with paleographic dating.]

DW: If he did [propose a date within a decade of its actual date of writing], he would [have to] be a miracle worker. Paleography is not that precise unless you have a manuscript that says this scribe wrote this [document] in the third year of Augustus, you know [like a business or tax document]. Then, you can be pretty sure when he wrote it.

But [with] paleography, you can get these earlier manuscripts dated to within about 50 years, and that’s actually better than what you can do for many of the later manuscripts. We actually have better evidence for the earlier ones, because the changes in the handwriting were more rapid in the ancient world than they were in the medieval world. And so he can date it within 50 years.

HH: And that [paleographer] will put it in the 1st Century, though?

DW: Not only that it will possibly do so, but his understanding is [that] it definitely is [datable to the first century].

HH: So it [i.e., the paleographer's proposed date] can’t be any later than 51 [years later than the date of writing, based on what we know of the paleography of this period - I'm guessing at his meaning here - maybe he means that if it is datable entirely within the 1st century, It could have been written no earlier or later than 50 CE, suggesting he is clueless about this matter].

All right, let me ask you about the other manuscripts, the other six manuscripts in addition to the fragment from Mark. Are they other Biblical transcriptions?

DW: Yes. All six of them are Biblical, but one is not exactly a Biblical text, which is really, in some respects, the most interesting. It’s a homily on Hebrews, Chapter 11, [that is,] a sermon on Hebrews 11. [Wallace is suggesting that this 2nd century manuscript of a "homily" on Hebrews dates Hebrews earlier than most text critics, who see Hebrews as late and added to an already existing Pauline corpus manuscript tradition.]

HH: That is fascinating. [At this point the interviewer raises one eyebrow and turns his head to clearly show one of his pointy Vulcan ears].

DCH