Gamera

I'm happy to artificially limit myself to the date of the manuscript in assuming the date of authorship of early mss like P52, but Pearse' probability argument applies. We have a universe of John mss. Only one is the original. The rest are copies. Assuming more than one copy was made (and we know that to be the case because we have more than one copy), then it is more likely that P52 is not the autograph than that it is. This is true even if we don't know how many copies were made in the Second century, because we do know that ultimately more than one copy was made.

gregor

Gamera
You make a reasonable probability statement with "more likely," while Pearse does not.

Perhaps I'm being a pendant, but I think "not sensibly possible" states too much. "Not likely" is a defendable statement, but not possible cannot be supported.

hatsoff

I think I agree with Pearse. There are several things which diminish the chances of it being a portion of the original manuscript or a "close copy." First of all, the fragment could have been written as late as century III. Second, the Gospel itself seems to have been written in late I, which gives you thirty years until 125. Third, P52 was Egyptian, while John seems to have been written in Greece or modern-day Turkey.

All these factors taken together seem to exponentially diminish the possibility of the Rylands fragment being a particularly close copy of the original, much less the original itself.

Mythra

I'm not sure exactly what "find their natural date" means. Since all dating seems to be based on educated guesses, I don't see anything wrong with considering reasonable alternatives to the standard orthodox view.

Elaine Pagels makes a pretty good argument for an early dating of Thomas.

hatsoff

I think he was saying you shouldn't force one conclusion to fit with the preconceived big picture, so to speak, without sufficient reason. What you're saying is fine, too--that one shouldn't force himself to conform to the orthodox, either. It's just that a lot of extreme conclusions have obvious Christian or anti-Christian biases behind them.

Mythra

Well, now that I agree with. There is way to much force-fitting of the data.

I just don't think we'll ever get truly unbiased dating of any of these writings, as long as personal investment of the individual scholar is in the picture.

I haven't seen much mention of Carbon 14 dating here. I understand even with this method, we only get a range of dates. But I did see where Judas was C14 dated.

Are the earliest fragments (such as P52) just too small and priceless to have a sample taken from them?

hatsoff

I believe that's because very few mss. are carbon-dated, not because it's not being reported. I'm not sure why that is, though.

S.C.Carlson

One reason is they tend to give a larger range of dates than paleography. Why burn a piece of P52, paleographically dated to 125-175, only to find out that the carbon-dating is anywhere from 75-225?

Stephen

Roger Pearse

Another is that the technique is destructive. In addition parchment can be used/reused over centuries, so a C14 date could be wildly misleading.

Finally manuscript libraries seem generally to be run for the benefit of their staff, not their readers, and there is a definite attitude that the latter can go whistle.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

In case I didn't make myself clear -- I feel, in my amateur way, that one should not force the data in *any* direction; not even in the direction of sanity and common sense (since that means in the direction of what someone considers 'common sense'). Let the data speak.

All the best,

Roger Pearse